What is Digital Customer Experience Strategy?
The digital reality of the customer has arrived. Research shows that some customers have become exclusively digital, which has forced a change in the approach to customer experience.
The customer experience (CX) is the sum of all interactions between the customer and the company. It covers the entire customer journey through all touchpoints encountered when interacting with your company, whether virtual touchpoints (e.g., contact with a website or mobile application) or real touchpoints (e.g., direct conversation with an employee of customer service). So far, customer experience optimization has improved the user journey at all touchpoints. It requires a thorough understanding of the customer's needs, analyzing customer feedback, and looking at reality through their eyes.
However, the development of technology and the change in consumer behavior have meant that more than ever before, every company wanting to ensure customer satisfaction must focus on the digital customer experience journey.
This approach will make your company reach all digital channels, improve digital touchpoints and reach all customers with digital customer experiences to any degree. It will translate into customer loyalty and the opportunity to gain a market advantage.
In this article, you will learn how digital customer experience management can affect your business.
What is Digital Customer Experience?
Digital Customer Experience (DCX) is the sum of digital interactions with touchpoints. It concerns multiple channels and focuses on the digital customer experience within specific touchpoints and their interaction.
Customers expect seamless access to all channels and personalized interactions that translate into their level of satisfaction. It is worth remembering that using various digital solutions is not only to improve the customer experience but also to increase the comfort of your employees' work.
What is Digital Customer Experience Strategy?
Each strategy is a well-thought-out plan of action that aims to achieve specific goals. In the case of the Digital Customer Experience Strategy, it is about creating a plan that will improve the digital customer experience and, at the same time, make other customers come to us, encouraged by the positive opinions of current users.
The digital experience strategy requires companies to thoroughly analyze how digital technology fits into the digital customer journey. Just improving or adding specific digital tools is not enough. It is essential to look at the situation through the customer's eyes and consider how it evaluates it. At this stage, customer feedback is critical because it clearly shows the areas that should be focused on.
Our experience shows that a positive digital customer experience depends on several main areas. Before creating a specific action plan, analyze how customers evaluate your company through the prism of the following areas:
Simplicity and Intuitiveness
Each digital customer touchpoint must be simple and intuitive. Modern customers are very busy and do not have time to think about how something works. They need to know it right away, without the need for frustrating trials. The same applies to any marketing materials. Whether you want to sell your client web development services or new shoes, remember to focus on the key aspects and leave out the "frills" that will only distract the client's attention. In this case, less is more.
Personalization
Every client wants to be treated exceptionally. Therefore, make sure that you use customer data to create individual offers and meet their preferences. If the customer is always looking for blue shoes, offer him models that meet his expectations. In this situation, encouraging the purchase of orange shoes will likely have the opposite effect.
Multi-channel Availability
Over 70% of customers use multiple channels during their customer journey. Therefore, please pay attention to whether your company is available in various channels and whether each of them is positively evaluated by customers.
A few years ago, the company's website was the main communication channel with customers. Today it is definitely not enough. Mobile applications and presence in social media are obvious for modern customers.
Consistent Messages
Make sure that the messages you post on different channels are consistent. The customer uses many channels, and if it turns out that he encounters mutually exclusive messages, he will lose trust in your company and go to the competition. Proper customer relationship management requires transparency and honesty.
How to Improve Digital Customer Experiences?
If you have analyzed the above areas regarding your company's digital customer experience, you already know which tasks will be prioritized. However, creating a complete and successful digital customer experience strategy is worth knowing the activities that always improve the customer experience.
Get to Know your Customers
To be able to meet customer expectations, you need to know them. With it, you can create a successful digital customer experience improvement plan. Since there are many channels and digital touchpoints where interactions occur, there are many ways to gather information on each interaction. You can hire a professional agency to deal with this topic. But you can do it using publicly available tools (e.g., social media management and monitoring tools). You can also conduct customer surveys using various surveys accessed via multiple communication channels such as websites, apps, social media, or email. Also, use push notifications, which can also be a source of valuable information. Remember that you can learn something from every type of customer contact. When the customer sends a completed customer support ticket, contact him and ask if he is satisfied with the service and what areas he thinks need improvement. Customers appreciate the fact that someone cares about their opinion and opinion.
Be Ready to Service
Customers require 24/7 contact. 2/3 of customers believe that the most frustrating aspect of customer service is waiting for a connection with a consultant and explaining the same situation to several representatives. Of course, it is not always possible for a company to organize a 24-hour hotline, but equip your employees with tools to improve their work, for example, in programs where they will describe the problem of a given client on an ongoing basis so that the next employee who answers the phone can immediately keep up to date.
Remember the conversational AI bots that can provide instant answers to customers 24/7. The AI also monitors frequently asked questions and constantly learns the intentions and moods of users to improve the quality of interaction with the customer.
Hassle-free Experiences
Customers love quick and simple solutions. And it doesn't matter if it's for in-app purchases or personalizing your avatar. Every digital touchpoint has to be extremely simple and hassle-free. If something in your app or website is not working correctly or is taking too long to load, you must fix the problem immediately without waiting for complaints to appear. Otherwise, you will lose customers.
Direct Contact is also Essential
As we mentioned earlier, digital interactions are crucial for today's customers. Of course, every effort should be made to ensure they are at the highest level. However, you can forget that direct contact with, for example, a customer service employee is also essential for online customers. Of course, customers appreciate modern and automated chatbot-style solutions. Still, the company's credibility increases when the customer can talk to a live person who will help him solve a complicated case.
Summary
The modern market is very competitive, regardless of the industry. Developing and implementing a successful digital customer experience improvement strategy is crucial to gaining a competitive advantage. However, it is worth remembering that the construction of any strategy should start with a thorough analysis of the current situation. Thanks to this, you will be sure that your strategy will focus on the areas that really need support.
As a company creating successful projects and building client relationships for many years, we will happily answer your questions on this topic. All you need to do is arrange a free consultation with our specialists at a convenient time.