The Art and Science of Customer Experience

The world changed pretty dramatically in 2020 — and that’s an understatement. Since I joined HubSpot as Chief Customer Officer last January, I’ve watched our customers, scaling businesses in every industry, pivot to meet the totally different needs of their customers in the “next normal.”

If our customers started the year thinking that they needed to be digital ready, they ended the year pivoting to digital first and digital only. Digital transformation took a giant leap forward in 2020, and there is no going back — digital first cannot happen in one part of the customer journey and not another. In a digital first world, an entirely new set of competencies is required to delight customers.

We’ve spent a lot of time internally thinking about the state of customer experience and how we build our own, and we want to share those insights with you. But first it’s important to understand some context.

In the age of the customer, buyers are in control

A digital-first customer experience is table-stakes in 2021 and beyond, but this isn’t a new trend. Customer experience has been getting more important for a long time.

We are in the age of the customer, where customers are in control. Information that used to only be available to sellers, is now available to everyone. Therefore, the customer journey looks fundamentally different.

Think about how you buy a car today vs. in the 1980s. Back then, the seller held all the information. You had no way to know if you paid a fair price. You couldn’t even be sure what cars would be at the dealership when you showed up. This process was painful — it was full of friction, not transparent for the buyer, and created fear and distrust.

In 2021, you don’t need a salesperson for 90% of the process. You can research make, model, brand, price point and more by yourself. By the time you meet a salesperson, you’re just there to sign some paperwork. And some brands are taking it even farther. Carvana, an online used car marketplace, is disrupting the entire dealership model by bringing the cars to you. Customers have the option to have up to three cars delivered to their homes for 7-day “test owns.”

Customer expectations shape how we do business — and since the 1980s, their expectations have shifted dramatically. Today’s buyers expect their experience to be frictionless and easy. They want businesses to be easy to buy from, easy to engage with, and easy to get service from.

That means the most important competency a business can have is the ability to orchestrate all the moving parts of your business to deliver a digital-first experience. A customer service call should dynamically change the content of a marketing email. Customers should never have to give you the same piece of information twice. Therefore, CRM software has gone from important to indispensable. A single system of record and system of engagement are necessary to create seamless handoffs and a frictionless experience.

Customer experience is a differentiator, but not everyone is doing it well

In this list, every brand on the left is an incumbent in their industry. But, every brand on the right is winning because of how they create customer delight. This is happening in both B2C and B2B.

Starting with B2C, let’s look at Chewy vs. Petco. Both brands have the same kinds of supplies, but Chewy gives customers more choice with a wider range of brands. And, Chewy has a return policy that helps them grow.

I have two cats and they are very picky eaters whose tastes are always changing. Recently, I tried a new treat that they did not like. When I contacted Chewy for a return, they did not ask me to send it back. Instead, they offered to replace or refund me and told me to share the product with a friend. This kind of policy creates positive word of mouth and a better experience for customers, and it’s no surprise that Chewy’s market cap is over $30B.

In B2B, IBM vs. AWS is a great example. Once upon a time, businesses had to buy physical, rack-mounted servers. These were expensive, and costly for the customer to maintain. You had to optimize for peak loads yourself and spend a lot of time forecasting usage.

Then came AWS, which flipped the entire model on its head. Instead of a high upfront investment to set up servers, customers essentially rented space on Amazon’s. Customers only paid for what they used and AWS did all the optimizing for them. This saved money and time.

Ten years ago, you won if your product was 10X better than the competition. Today, how you sell is why you win. In industry after industry, we’re seeing incumbents be disrupted by businesses with better experiences.

Creating a delightful customer experience requires art and science

Customer experience is critical to differentiate and win. But how do you actually do it? First, let’s take a step back and define what it is:

Customer experience is how your customers perceive their interactions with your company. It’s about all the touchpoints they experience with your business, from their first website visit, to their first interaction with your product, to the first time they need support.

At HubSpot, our mission is to help millions of customers grow better and we do this by delivering delightful customer experiences. Dozens of teams, dozens of systems, and thousands of employees support this mission.

What we’ve learned from doing this at scale is that there is an art and a science to delightful customer experience.

Art is your culture. Art is something you create. It’s freewheeling and unique — no two companies have the same culture. What’s important is that your culture lives in your company’s DNA and is operationalized, so every customer has a consistent experience.

The science is your disciplines. Science follows a methodology and order of operations, and similarly there is a set of core practices that can be applied across different industries and types of companies and still work well. These disciplines are: aligned teams, aligned strategy, aligned systems, and aligned incentives.

We believe that both art and science are equally important and neither can flourish alone. The magic of a really great customer experience comes when a unique culture is paired with rigor in disciplines. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be going in-depth on each facet of delightful customer experience and sharing how we’ve approached it at HubSpot.