CX – or ‘customer experience’ – is the sum of experiences that a individual has in their interactions with a brand, from the time that they become aware of the brand right down to the lifetime of ownership of that brand’s products or services. CX is the roadmap which encompasses that customer journey.
CX, in addition to the customer journey, consist of two distinct sections:
- Buyer’s journey, and
- Owner’s journey.
The buyer’s journey is an outline which acknowledges a buyer’s movement through a research and decision process which ultimately culminates in a purchase. The owner’s journey consists of all the touchpoints post-purchase.
How does PR integrate into CX?
Public relations integrates into CX in two significant ways: mitigation as well as amplification.
Mitigation
One of the most common reasons for crisis communications in the public relations cycle is a poor customer experience. If a business delivers a poor experience, a customer will document it thoroughly online. This will cause a firestorm.
The part that public relations has to play, in cases like this, is mitigation of the crisis by using prompt responses. The faster as well as more skilful that the response is, the less impactful the crisis turns out to be. The very best organisations catch crises before they ever reach a critical stage and put out the sparks before these become a fire.
The key to successful mitigation is that public relations as well as customer service must be thoroughly integrated. Both of these teams must share monitoring responsibilities and these two teams should coordinate on responses to customer challenges. Effective CX for public relations necessitates the demolition of silos as well as the belief that either support or PR is only accountable for communication to the customer.
