We’ve entered a new age in business, one where Customer is King. Substantial transformation is occurring across industries as companies adopt a customer-centric approach to every aspect of business. We’re no longer focused on marketing to customers, but rather marketing with them.

But when everyone is vying for customer attention and feedback, it can be hard to stand out from the crowd of competitors. So how do you build a loyal following and create a meaningful connection between your brand and your customers? It’s all about customer experience design.

Customers equate brands with experiences. A classic example of this is choosing an airline to fly with. If someone’s plane is delayed, their luggage is lost or something about their flight is not to their expectations, it’s highly likely they’re going to be hesitant to choose that airline again. When it comes to flying, cost is an influential factor but so is reliability, safety and security. If a customer isn’t satisfied with the experience they’ve received with a brand – if they don’t feel good when they use that product or service – they’ll find a brand that better suits their needs. It’s that simple.

Customer experience design is about listening to your customers needs and personalising your product or service offering to meet those needs and connect with customers on a deeper level. To do this you need to collect information about your users – their demographic, purchasing decisions and buying behaviours and use this data to create a 360-degree view of who they are and how you can best interact with them in the future.

In order to glean meaningful insights from the customer data you collect, there must be a comprehensive data analysis system in place. Information Management is a valuable solution that gives organisations the ability to organise and interpret data so only the right kind of information is used to fuel future engagement initiatives.

For more on how you can use customer experience design to further customer engagement, check out the IM More Than A Piece of Data infographic here.