When thinking about customer experience (CX) from a marketing perspective, it helps to think like a customer about the things we value ourselves. Examples of customer experience are all around us. They live in the interactions we have with brands, stores, restaurants, and facilities every day. They help us to feel valued as customers and show us which brands have our best interests at heart.
For some brands, a great customer experience comes naturally. They’ve written the proverbial book on customer experience examples because they’ve woven great experiences into the fabric of their culture.
Need a lesson in customer experience? Not sure what great CX looks like? Look no further than brands that are getting it right. Let’s explore some of the best customer experience examples that can inspire your strategy:
Customer Experience in the Service Industry
BMW Customer Experience Example
Customer Experience in Real Estate
Azure Customer Experience Example
Customer Experience in Healthcare
AT&T Customer Experience Example
Customer Experience at Starbucks
Apple Customer Experience
Customer Experience at the Airport
Airbnb Customer Experience Example
Customer Experience in Higher Education
Customer Experience in the Service Industry
When looking for good customer experience examples, the service industry (restaurants, hair salons, pet groomers, delivery drivers, etc.) can help put things into perspective.
It’s an industry that just about everyone has experienced, often on a daily basis. Because service workers interact with so many people per day, it’s no surprise that examples of good customer experience (and bad customer experience examples) happen here every day.
Take Chick-fil-A, for instance. The company embodies what a great customer experience in the service industry should be like. They're one of the most customer-centric brands; the company lives and breathes its values.
Chic-fi-A took customer experience to the next level when one Maryland customer cashed in more than 50,000 Chick-fil-A rewards points to feed the homeless. She redeemed the points for 100 sandwiches to take to a local shelter, and the restaurant responded by donating cookies to round out the meal. Not only did they support her good deed, but they also contributed to the cause.
Tip: Download our Quick Service Restaurants (QSR) Customer Experience Trends Report for free.
BMW Customer Experience Example
The luxury car brand BMW needs no formal introduction. Its customers choose the brand due to the brand’s history of performance and quality, not to mention the status that comes with it. BMW's customer experience has always set a high bar for others to follow.
However, BMW understands there’s always room for improvement, which is why it conducted research to improve its digital experiences and bring more drivers to its vehicles.
Like other brands, BMW experienced challenges in creating a holistic customer persona among multiple touch points, devices, and locations. It aimed to transform its showroom experience into one that’s interactive and engaging, which required detailed consumer insights and learning more about triggers throughout the customer journey.
Easier said than done, given that BMW’s global presence means there are myriad unique customer journeys taking place at any given time.
By taking time to develop robust analytics, social listening, and behavior tracking across multiple channels, BMW was able to reimagine its showroom and online experiences. This reinvention included more personalized offers (such as lease expiration reminders or test drive offers), streamlined online sales, and saved time during processing.
Customer Experience in Real Estate
A shift in recent years has put the power of home buying into the customer’s hands. Buyers expect to be able to research neighborhoods, view homes, and compare prices and home data at their convenience.
Studies found that the majority of the home buying or agent selection process takes place online, well before reaching out to a real estate agent. This created new challenges for agents, as they were entering conversations with customers at a much later point in the buying or selling journey.
In response, agents have taken a more tech-forward stance in listing homes and connecting with buyers and sellers. They’re making use of real estate websites like Zillow and Realtor so customers can “shop” at their convenience. They’re filming live virtual tours that are akin to on-demand open houses. They’re using live chat and chatbots to qualify leads around the clock.
In real estate, a lackluster customer experience simply isn’t an option. Realtors who stay on top of trends and deliver on expectations will be in the best position to grow their brands.
Real estate reading Tips:
- Keller Williams Realty - Meltwater customer story
- Juwai IQI - Meltwater Customer Story
- Knight Frank x Meltwater | Customer Story
- Meltwater x FCT - Customer Story
Azure Customer Experience Example
As a company that provides the foundation upon which better digital experiences are built, Azure empowers other brands to create and deliver better experiences.
But the company has also invested in its own company experience, and the Azure Networking Managed Service Provider (MSP) program is a prime example.
Azure introduced the program as a way to help customers scale their business’s critical applications. Users can connect with vetted MSPs and deploy richer applications on the Azure platform. This takes some of the lift out of finding trusted networking partners and makes the Azure platform even more valuable to its end users.
Customer Experience in Healthcare
Does customer experience in healthcare even matter? You bet it does! Despite it being an essential service, patients have choices when it comes to their healthcare, insurance, and prescriptions. Clinics, hospitals, private practices, pharmacies, and insurance companies need to make their patient experiences as seamless as possible to stand out for the right reasons.
The image of the healthcare industry has been plagued by long wait times, complex billing processes, costly services, and poor communication. Many healthcare facilities and providers are trying to make positive changes to support a better patient experience. Examples include:
- Online accessibility to patient records
- Automated appointment reminders
- Automated prescription refills
- Online appointment scheduling
- Emailing providers directly
- Online patient intake paperwork
- AI-powered wearable devices for routine monitoring
This isn’t an exhaustive list, but it does illustrate several potential opportunities to make your customer experience in healthcare better than ever.
Healthcare reading tips:
- 3 Innovative Ways Healthcare B2B Companies Use Twitter
- The 5 Best Health Social Media Campaigns
- Ogilvy Health's Social Media Takeaways Webinar
- DNV GL Healthcare - Meltwater customer story
- Meltwater Customer Stories: International Medical Corps
- Meltwater Customer Stories: Fortis
AT&T Customer Experience Example
Improving the customer experience doesn’t always mean going above and beyond. Sometimes, it can be as simple as showing your customers you’re listening — like this AT&T customer experience example.
As part of an industry that often gets a bad rap, AT&T aimed to show their customers just how important they are.
They set out to make more than 2,000 personalized thank-you videos once they reached 2 million fans on social media. This was a great way to show support for the telecom brand, plus they personalized each thank you instead of opting for a generic message.
Customer Experience at Starbucks
A gold standard in service, the customer experience at Starbucks is usually predictable and on-brand.
Customers know they’re going to pay more than average for their drinks, wait in long drive-through lines, and probably have their names misspelled on their cup.
But the coffee brand didn’t get to where it is with its recipes alone. It’s all about the customer experience strategy (CX strategy).
Customers get personalized experiences every time by having their names written on their cups. They get remarkably fast order fulfillment times. App users earn points on every order. And thanks to the famous pay-it-forward chains, some customers may even get their Starbucks order for free!
We have another tip for you: Check out the 16 best user-generated content examples to learn from Starbucks & Co.
Apple Customer Experience
Need more examples of good customer experience? Apple has become synonymous with experiences that foster customer loyalty, satisfaction, and service.
One of the most famous Apple customer experience examples is how Apple aims to reinvent its stores into “town squares”. The company thinks the brand does more than sell products. They enrich people’s daily lives with its devices and technologies, which is why the company is dropping the word “store” from its vocabulary.
The new retail space concept will provide a more laid-back environment where everyone is welcome. Alongside products and accessories, the space will offer boardrooms for meetings, coding classes, workshops, and more. Naturally, visitors may experience Apple products (and the brand at large) in new and exciting ways with each visit.
Reading Tip: Check out these 5 Things to Learn from Apple's Marketing Strategy.
Customer Experience at the Airport
An airport isn’t the first place you think of when it comes to examples of great customer experience, but some airlines are challenging this notion — and winning.
Take Southwest Airlines, one of the best customer service experience examples in the industry.
A Southwest Airline passenger was flying to Denver to see his grandson for the last time. However, heavy traffic caused him to miss his flight by about 12 minutes. Southwest Airlines pilot held the plane, allowing the passenger to board.
In fact, Southwest Airlines founder Herb Kelleher has been credited with saying they are in the customer service business and just happen to fly airplanes. If you need further proof of their best social media customer service experience examples, check out their Twitter handle @SouthwestAir.
Airbnb Customer Experience Example
Airbnb isn't like the Ritz-Carlton, where every property is a luxury experience. But still, they are in the hospitality industry, so there’s no excuse for a poor Airbnb customer experience.
The brand doesn’t own its properties, but it still works hard to ensure guests have an enjoyable stay. To do this, the company offers outstanding customer support, takes customer feedback seriously, and is responsive to customers’ needs.
To execute on all this, Airbnb has chosen to be available to guests and hosts via multiple channels, including email, phone, SMS text, social media, and messaging channels. They answer most phone calls within one minute and most email tickets within 24 hours, according to a recent case study.
Reading Tip: Download our Report on the Digital Disruption of the Hospitality Industry
Customer Experience in Higher Education
When many think of customer experience, schools and universities don’t often come to mind. But customer experience in higher education can affect enrollment rates, recruiting, and student retention, all of which have an impact on profitability and education quality.
Universities need to be able to meet the growing needs of diverse student populations. Some may argue that better customer experience in higher education is more important now than ever before, given the rising costs of tuition, the student debt load, and the idea that college isn’t necessary to earn a decent living.
To compete for students and quality talent, schools can double down on a CX strategy that will help them to differentiate themselves beyond sports teams and tuition prices. Areas to focus on include:
- Omni-channel communications for enrollment, tuition payments, refunds, book purchases, class schedules, events, etc.
- Multiple points of contact beyond the telephone
- Personalized experiences for students to feel prepared for joining the workforce
- Easy ways to collect, analyze, and act on student feedback
- Convenient payment options for meals, books, supplies, or other on-campus purchases
- Mobile app to navigate campus, manage class schedules, track their degree progress, and more
Treating students like customers can help universities start thinking in terms of CX and make impactful changes.
Higher Education content tips:
- Guide: UGC for Universities & Higher Education
- On-Demand Webinar: User Generated Content & Higher Education
- 8 Successful Communication Strategies for the Higher Education Sector
Creating Better Customer Experiences with Meltwater
No company wants to end up on a round-up of bad customer experience examples. And when you have access to real-time data that matters, you won’t have to!
From airline customer experience management to customer experience in higher education, brands and companies of all shapes and sizes thrive on making their customers happy.
Meltwater can help by providing comprehensive insights into what your customers are feeling, saying, and doing.
Learn more about what makes your customers tick and the experiences they expect from their chosen brands. See how you compare to your competitors and learn how you can deliver better experiences using real data, not hunches.
Simply fill out the form below and get a free demo.
