If you want to create a better customer experience, you have to move beyond the old, rigid marketing systems that are holding you back. It's time to embrace an agile, composable Digital Experience Platform (DXP) that lets you build the kind of hyper-personalized, data-driven journeys modern customers actually want. A platform like Sitecore's composable DXP gives you the specialized tools to pull it off.
The Urgent Case for a Better Customer Experience
Let's be blunt: customer expectations have completely outpaced what traditional, monolithic tech stacks can deliver. Today’s consumers expect seamless, context-aware interactions everywhere—from your mobile app to their in-store visit. A good product just doesn’t cut it anymore. The quality of the digital experience has become the main battlefield for brand differentiation.
Unfortunately, many companies are losing that battle. Recent data from Forrester’s 2025 Global Customer Experience Index paints a grim picture, showing a worrying multi-year decline in CX quality across the globe.
An alarming 21% of brands saw their customer experience rankings drop worldwide, while only a meager 6% managed to improve. In the U.S., it's even worse—a full 25% of brands saw their rankings fall for the second year in a a row. You can discover more insights from the Forrester research on this growing CX gap.
The data is clear: standing still is not an option. Sticking with outdated systems leads to disjointed, frustrating journeys that actively push customers away and kill brand loyalty. The fallout isn't just a poor satisfaction score; it's a direct hit to your revenue and market share.
Before diving into the "how," let's outline the core pillars that form the foundation of any modern customer experience improvement strategy. These are the key areas where a platform like Sitecore DXP provides the tools necessary to turn strategic goals into tangible business results.
Core Pillars of Modern Customer Experience Improvement
Each of these pillars represents a critical component of a successful CX strategy. When they work in harmony, they create a powerful engine for growth and customer satisfaction.
Adopting a Modern, Composable Approach
The most effective way how to improve customer experience is by embracing a composable DXP architecture, which is exactly where Sitecore shines. Instead of a clunky, one-size-fits-all platform, a composable DXP lets you integrate best-in-class microservices. This gives you the agility to adapt and innovate on the fly.
This approach creates an ecosystem of specialized tools designed to work together seamlessly:
- Sitecore Personalize: Delivers real-time, AI-powered personalization that adapts to customer behavior instantly.
- Sitecore CDP: Unifies all your customer data into a single, comprehensive profile you can actually use.
- Sitecore Content Hub: Acts as a central command center for your entire content strategy and asset management.
- Sitecore OrderCloud: Enables flexible, headless commerce experiences that can live on any channel.
A great external customer experience is built upon a foundation of internal efficiency. When your teams are empowered with the right tools, they can focus on creating value for the customer instead of fighting with clunky technology.
This is also where a tool like SharePoint can be a game-changer for your internal operations. By using SharePoint as an internal hub for content collaboration, asset management, and approval workflows, you streamline the behind-the-scenes processes that feed into Sitecore.
This synergy ensures your customer-facing experiences are consistent, timely, and well-executed. It helps turn your CX from a cost center into a powerful revenue driver. In this guide, we'll dive deep into these practical strategies.
Map Customer Journeys with Actionable Insights
Static customer journey maps gathering dust in a folder are useless. To actually figure out how to improve customer experience, you need a living, breathing picture of how customers really interact with your brand. Forget the spreadsheets and theory—we're talking about tracking real behavior across every single touchpoint.
This is where a tool like Sitecore Personalize comes into play. It's built to connect the dots, no matter how scattered they seem.
Think about a common scenario: a customer browses a new product on your website during their lunch break. Later, they add it to their cart on your mobile app. But they don't buy it until they walk into your physical store over the weekend. Without the right tech, those are just three random data points. With a connected system, it's one cohesive story.
This unified view is where real CX improvement begins. It lets you see exactly where things are going right—and where they’re falling apart.
From Raw Data to a Coherent Narrative
The game isn't just about collecting data; it's about understanding the "why" behind it. Why did someone abandon their cart on mobile? Was the checkout form a nightmare to fill out on a small screen? Why did another person read the same blog post three times before finally making a purchase?
These are the questions that lead to meaningful change.
Sitecore Personalize grabs these interactions as they happen and funnels them into a dynamic customer profile. This means you see the journey unfold in real-time instead of trying to piece it together from last month's reports. You start to spot patterns, like which content actually convinces people to buy or where they consistently get stuck and leave.
The most powerful customer journey maps aren't static documents; they are dynamic, data-driven dashboards that reflect reality. They show you where customers are succeeding and, more importantly, where they are struggling, giving you a clear roadmap for improvement.
This approach replaces guesswork with hard evidence. You're no longer assuming what customers want; you're making decisions based on what they actually do.
Identifying Friction and Opportunity with Precision
Once you have a clear, data-backed map of the customer journey, you can zoom in on specific points to optimize. Sitecore's platform helps you segment audiences based on their behavior and test different experiences to see what truly resonates.
For instance, you might discover that users who watch a product demo video are 50% more likely to convert. That single insight opens up several clear opportunities:
- Triggered Experiences: Use Sitecore Personalize to show the demo video to anyone who has viewed a product page more than twice but hasn't added it to their cart.
- A/B Testing: Experiment with different video placements on the product page. Does it perform better at the top, or next to the "Add to Cart" button?
- Content Strategy: If video works so well for one product, it's time to create more video content for your other high-value items.
It becomes a continuous loop: listen to the feedback your data is giving you, analyze it, and act on it.
This simple flow shows how customer feedback should be the engine for all your improvements—a core principle of effective journey mapping.
As the visual shows, collecting data is just step one. The real magic happens when you analyze that feedback to make strategic changes that genuinely improve the customer's path.
Leveraging SharePoint for Internal Alignment
A great customer journey also relies on your internal teams being on the same page. If your teams don't have access to the right information and assets, you can't create a consistent experience.
This is a perfect supporting role for SharePoint. By using it as a central hub for marketing collateral, campaign briefs, and product specs, you make sure everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet.
When your content, marketing, and sales teams all have the same up-to-date info, the customer gets a coherent message at every touchpoint. For companies wanting to connect these internal and external systems more deeply, looking into different customer data integration solutions is a logical next step.
Ultimately, mapping the customer journey isn't a one-and-done project. It’s an ongoing discipline. To see how others have put this into practice, you can find valuable ideas from customer journey mapping examples across different industries. By embracing this dynamic approach, you can turn raw data into a real strategic advantage.
Deliver Hyper-Personalization at Scale
Personalization has shifted from a nice-to-have feature to a core expectation. Today’s consumers expect you to know who they are and what they need, sometimes even before they do. Getting this right isn’t just about a quick conversion boost; it’s how you build real, lasting loyalty. The key is to move past basic segmentation and embrace true hyper-personalization, delivered at scale.
This is where a composable Digital Experience Platform (DXP) like Sitecore really shines. It gives you the specialized tools needed to turn raw customer data into smart, real-time interactions that feel like they were made for just one person.
The business case for this is undeniable. Research shows that companies excelling at personalization generate 40% more revenue from those activities than average players. The bedrock of any killer personalization strategy is a unified, single view of the customer. Without it, you’re just guessing with fragmented data, leading to experiences that feel disjointed and clunky.
Unifying Customer Data with Sitecore CDP
Before you can truly figure out how to improve customer experience, you have to break down your data silos. Right now, your customer information is probably scattered everywhere—your CRM, e-commerce platform, email marketing tool, and analytics dashboards.
Sitecore's Customer Data Platform (CDP) is built to fix this mess.
Think of Sitecore CDP as a central nervous system for your customer data. It pulls information from every touchpoint and stitches it all together into a single, rich, and—most importantly—actionable customer profile. This isn't just a static file; it's a living profile that updates in real-time with every single interaction.
This unified view finally lets you see the whole story:
- A user browses hiking boots on your website.
- They click on an email about new outdoor gear.
- Later, they add those same boots to their cart on your mobile app but get distracted.
Without a CDP, those are three separate, isolated events. With Sitecore CDP, it's a crystal-clear signal of high purchase intent, giving you the context to make a smart move.
The real purpose of a CDP isn't just to hoard data—it's to make it immediately usable. It turns scattered data points into a coherent story that your personalization engine can understand and act on in milliseconds.
Once you have this solid data foundation, it's time to put it to work. That’s where the real-time decisioning power of Sitecore Personalize comes in.
Activating Data in Real-Time with Sitecore Personalize
Having a 360-degree view of your customer is great, but its value is only unlocked when you use it to shape their experience in the moment. Sitecore Personalize is the engine that makes this happen. It taps into the rich data from the CDP to make intelligent decisions and deliver hyper-relevant experiences across every channel.
Let's look at a few real-world scenarios where this technology makes a huge difference.
Dynamic Hero Banners and Content
Imagine a visitor returns to your site after previously looking at women's running shoes. Instead of hitting them with a generic homepage banner for the tenth time, Sitecore Personalize can instantly swap it out. The hero image and messaging now feature the latest collection of women's running gear. Just like that, the experience is immediately more relevant and engaging.
Triggered Cart Abandonment Offers
A customer adds a pricey item to their cart but hesitates and navigates away. Sitecore Personalize can trigger an immediate, personalized web experience or a follow-up email. This isn't your standard "You left something behind!" message. It could be a targeted offer for free shipping on that specific item or a subtle notification that it's a low-stock product, creating a bit of urgency. If you're curious about the mechanics, check out our guide on taking simple steps toward better personalization with Sitecore Personalize.
Predictive and Customized Search Results
When a customer uses your site search, their query is a goldmine of intent. Sitecore Personalize can supercharge the search experience by re-ranking results based on their browsing history, past purchases, and other real-time signals. If a user known for buying premium brands searches for "laptops," the system can automatically push high-end models to the top of the results. Their search suddenly feels predictive and effortless.
Ultimately, delivering hyper-personalization at scale is about creating a continuous loop: listen, understand, and respond. By combining the data-unifying power of Sitecore CDP with the real-time activation of Sitecore Personalize, you create seamless, relevant interactions that do more than just drive sales—they build genuine, lasting customer relationships.
Build a Seamless Omnichannel Experience
Nothing kills a potential sale faster than a clunky, disjointed customer journey. Picture this: a customer spots your product on Instagram, clicks over to your website for more details, then walks into a physical store only to find the experience is completely disconnected. That kind of friction is more than just an annoyance; it’s an open invitation for them to check out a competitor who gets it right.
If you’re serious about figuring out how to improve customer experience, you have to start thinking beyond individual channels. The goal is to make the lines between your online and offline worlds disappear. A true omnichannel strategy isn't just about showing up everywhere; it’s about making every touchpoint feel like part of one continuous, intelligent conversation.
The real challenge often comes from a classic internal divide: content teams focus on telling compelling stories, while commerce teams are laser-focused on the transaction. When those two worlds don't talk, the customer feels it. To get this right, you need to unify the entire journey, a topic covered in a comprehensive guide to omnichannel customer experience.
Unify Your Content and Commerce Strategy
The first move toward a fluid omnichannel experience is to tear down the wall separating your brand’s content from its product information. This is where a platform like Sitecore Content Hub becomes your mission control for all things content.
Think of Content Hub as more than just a digital closet for your assets. It’s the single source of truth for your entire brand—managing everything from product photos and ad copy to campaign briefs and style guides. This ensures the message a customer sees on your website is the same one they get on a partner marketplace or a social media ad.
This centralized approach pays off in a few key ways:
- Brand Consistency: Every image, video, and line of copy is approved and on-brand. No more confusing or off-message content popping up on different channels.
- Operational Efficiency: Your marketing teams aren't wasting hours digging through scattered folders for the right asset. They can find what they need, adapt it, and get it out the door fast.
- Product Storytelling: It directly links rich marketing content to your product data. This lets you weave compelling stories around your products instead of just listing specs.
By managing all your content from a single hub, you’re building the foundation for a consistent, high-quality experience wherever your customers find you. We dive deeper into this in our article on what omnichannel marketing is and how to put it into practice.
Enable Transactions at Any Touchpoint
Once your content is unified, the next piece of the puzzle is commerce. Old-school e-commerce platforms were often hardwired to a single storefront, making it tough to sell products in new and creative contexts. Today’s omnichannel world demands a more flexible, headless approach.
This is where a composable commerce engine like Sitecore OrderCloud comes in. As an API-first platform, OrderCloud separates your core commerce functions—like catalogs, pricing, and checkout—from the front-end design.
An API-first, headless commerce engine gives you the freedom to embed a "buy" button anywhere. The transaction can happen on a blog post, within a mobile app, on a social media feed, or even through an IoT device, all powered by the same backend.
This composable model means you can meet customers right where they are, turning any moment of inspiration into a point of sale.
For example, a customer might be reading a blog post about a home renovation project. With OrderCloud, you can embed shoppable products directly within the article. They can add items to their cart and check out on the spot, without ever leaving the page. That's a frictionless journey that dramatically boosts the odds of conversion.
Streamlining Internal Workflows with SharePoint
A stellar external customer experience is always built on a foundation of internal efficiency. Long before content and product data ever reach Sitecore, your teams need a central place to plan, create, and approve everything. This is where a tool like SharePoint acts as the operational backbone.
By using SharePoint as a collaborative hub, your teams can:
- Work together on campaign briefs and marketing plans.
- Manage drafts and different versions of content before it’s finalized.
- Streamline approval workflows so all stakeholders can sign off before assets are pushed to Sitecore Content Hub.
This internal alignment ensures that what the customer sees is polished, consistent, and strategically sound. When your internal processes are seamless, your external customer experience naturally follows. By integrating these specialized tools, you create a cohesive journey where customers glide effortlessly from discovery to purchase.
Streamline Your Workflows with SharePoint
A world-class customer experience doesn't just happen. The seamless, personalized journeys you deliver through Sitecore are the final product of well-oiled internal machinery. This is where your team's day-to-day operations come into play, and it’s where a tool like SharePoint becomes the unsung hero of your content creation and management process.
Before a single piece of content ever reaches a customer, it goes through a whole lifecycle—planning, drafting, review, and approval. When that process is a mess of disjointed workflows, scattered files, and version control nightmares, you get delays and inconsistencies. Those internal hiccups directly impact your ability to deliver timely, relevant experiences and can slowly chip away at your brand's reputation. A smooth internal process isn't a "nice-to-have"; it's a prerequisite for an exceptional external one.
Building Your Central Command Center
To really improve customer experience, you first have to empower your internal teams. Think of SharePoint as a central command center where your marketing, content, and product teams can finally collaborate effectively. It’s about moving on from chaotic email chains and confusing shared drives to a structured, transparent environment.
Imagine building a shared marketing calendar in SharePoint that everyone can see. Content creators know what’s coming up, and sales managers see the key messaging and launch dates. This single source of truth cuts out the confusion and ensures every team presents a unified front to the customer.
You could also use SharePoint to create a central knowledge base—the definitive home for product specs, brand guidelines, and approved marketing copy. When your support team, content writers, and social media managers are all pulling from the same verified source, the consistency in your customer-facing communication improves overnight.
A fluid customer journey starts with a fluid internal workflow. When your teams can find, create, and approve content without friction, that efficiency translates directly into a faster, more consistent, and higher-quality experience for your audience.
This isn't just about getting organized. It’s about speeding up your time-to-market and freeing up your teams to focus on what they do best: creating real value for your customers.
Nailing Content Approval and Asset Management
One of the smartest ways to use SharePoint in a Sitecore-powered setup is to manage the content lifecycle before it ever touches your DXP. You can design custom approval workflows right inside SharePoint to make sure every asset is polished and compliant.
Here’s what that looks like in the real world:
- A content writer drafts a blog post in a SharePoint document library.
- The moment they save it, an automated workflow pings the editor for a review.
- The editor makes their changes and then marks the doc as ready for legal.
- The legal team gets an automatic notification, reviews the document, and gives their sign-off directly in SharePoint.
Once it's fully approved, the final version can be pushed seamlessly to Sitecore Content Hub, ready to go live. This simple process creates a clear audit trail, slashes the time spent on manual handoffs, and ensures only vetted content ever gets published. This link between internal process and external delivery is what separates the pros from the amateurs. If you want to dig deeper, you can learn more about getting the most out of your SharePoint solutions and weaving them into your digital strategy.
By connecting your internal SharePoint processes with Sitecore's powerful customer-facing delivery, you create a cohesive content supply chain. This synergy guarantees brand consistency, reduces costly errors, and gives your teams the agility to respond to market changes with speed and precision.
Frequently Asked Questions
Jumping into a digital experience platform can bring up a lot of questions. Here are some straightforward answers to the common hurdles and curiosities businesses face when using Sitecore and SharePoint to sharpen their customer experience.
How Can a Small Business Get Started with Sitecore?
If you're a small business, the best way to start with Sitecore is to think small and targeted. Don't try to boil the ocean by implementing the entire suite at once. The smartest first move is to begin with Sitecore XM Cloud. It’s a scalable, cloud-native CMS that gives you a solid foundation without the massive overhead of a full on-premise installation.
Once that’s in place, integrate some basic analytics to see what your users are actually doing. This data is gold. It will point you to one or two critical customer journeys worth optimizing first—like the path from a high-traffic blog post to a product page. Focus on simple A/B tests and basic personalization rules in XM Cloud before you even think about a full Customer Data Platform (CDP).
This step-by-step approach lets you score some early wins and show a real return on your investment. It proves the value of what you're doing and builds the case for more ambitious CX projects later on.
What’s the Real Difference Between Personalization and Customization?
People often use these terms interchangeably, but they’re worlds apart in how they shape the customer experience.
- Customization is all about user control. The customer tells you what they want. Think of a user choosing their favorite topics for a newsletter or setting a preferred language on a website. They are actively tailoring their own experience.
- Personalization is driven by data. The platform automatically adapts the experience based on what it knows about the user—their behavior, browsing history, and what it predicts they’ll do next. It’s what happens when you see product recommendations based on past purchases or when a website’s content dynamically changes for a returning visitor.
Sitecore’s true power is in personalization. Using its CDP and AI, the platform can anticipate what a user needs and serve up the right content in the moment. It feels predictive and intelligent, going way beyond what a simple user-selected setting could ever accomplish.
Can SharePoint and Sitecore Actually Work Together to Improve CX?
Absolutely. While your customers will never see SharePoint, it plays a critical role behind the scenes. Think of it as the organizational engine that keeps everything consistent and efficient, which is the bedrock of any solid strategy for how to improve customer experience.
Here’s a real-world example of how they integrate:
You can use a SharePoint document library as the single source of truth for all your marketing assets. These assets can then be synced directly to Sitecore Content Hub, guaranteeing your branding is perfectly consistent everywhere. You can even manage your entire content approval process with SharePoint workflows, ensuring only polished, approved content ever makes it to your Sitecore site.
This kind of integration tightens up internal operations, cuts down on human error, and gets your content out the door faster. The end result for your customer? A more consistent, timely, and high-quality experience.
At Kogifi, we live and breathe this stuff. We specialize in implementing and fine-tuning advanced DXP solutions that deliver real business growth. Our deep expertise in both Sitecore and SharePoint ensures your tech investment translates into an unbeatable customer experience. See how we can help you build seamless digital journeys by visiting https://www.kogifi.com.
