There are more customers and more brands moving online, and that’s becoming an issue. Most markets are saturated and heavily competitive, which means there are more products and services than we could ever want. Brands must give their best to differentiate themselves from others in all ways accessible. They need to offer something that will help them create a connection and maintain that relationship.
Just like in brick-and-mortar stores, online consumers expect a great experience. And what makes a digital customer experience?
What is a Digital Customer Experience?
We can define digital customer experience as an amalgamation of all digital interactions that a customer has with your brand. It includes a wide range of elements, such as interacting with your brand on social networks to browsing your brand’s website. These are all touchpoints, and you should make sure that your brand is consistent across all of them.
Digital Markets are Increasingly Customer-Centric
According to the insights from The State of Digital Business Transformation 2019 study, we can see that:
- About 57% of companies with over one thousand employees claim that improving service/product offerings by digitally enabling their operations is one of the greatest sources of revenue growth.
- About 52% of companies say that meeting customer experience expectations is imperative as it rules all other categories of how a company defines a digital business.
- When it comes to launching a digital-first strategy in 2019, mobile apps and devices are companies’ platform of choice. They provide enterprises with the needed performance gains, speed-to-market, and scale.
- Driving new revenue, utilizing automation to improve process efficiency, and creating better customer experiences are the top 3 digital strategies that companies are investing in.
- Enterprises place a higher priority on data protection and security as part of their digital initiatives. Due to the increasing number of security breaches, it is encouraging to see IT leaders, CIOs, and businesses making system and data security a matter of highest priority.
How to Improve Digital Customer Experience
The things that affect offline and online customer experience are very different because online customers tend to be much more critical. Just one frustrating event could break a relationship with a customer. On the other hand, great customer experience can lead to higher customer loyalty, customer acquisition, and customer retention.
- Meet their needs directly
Instead of letting them navigate through a complex website, you should look for ways to cater to your customers’ needs directly. Bring them what they need straight to them. Effective and rapid personalization of your offerings is critical because it reflects everything you know about the customer – usage patterns, search behavior, and past purchases. Also, make the checkout experience as easy as possible. Once the customer has decided to make a purchase, there shouldn’t be anything that will keep them from completing the process. You need well-defined expectation management (showing what will happen next), clear and transparent terms and conditions, and multiple payment options.
- Enable them to give your feedback
Add a feedback tab or chat function to your website so that your customers can easily provide their feedback. When you use that feedback to improve your product, they will know that you care, and that builds loyalty.
- Consistency across all channels
Some customers use multiple channels when interacting with a brand, and your job is to create consistency across all of them. For example, someone who uses your website to book an appointment shouldn’t have to repeat their information when he or she comes to the office. You need to adopt a system that connects offline and online services.
The thing with digital transformation journeys is that they are never done. Brands and digital leaders always want to create a better and more seamless customer experience because they know it leads to loyal and long-term digital customers.