Digital customer experience strategy

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With convenience and comfort becoming a top priority for customer, the market is registering a shift to the digital world where the smallest of interactions between the brand and the audience takes place in the online world.

For companies , digital experience does the work of breaking down geographical barriers by providing accessibility to an ever expanding market which is just a click away. But it’s not a piece of cake to understand exactly what your online audience expects from you and deliver it in a prompt manner.

This task has been made more difficult when your customers are not indulging in personal interactions which is why companies must prioritize market research and constant feedback as a way to of staying up to date with customer needs and wants.

A good digital customer experience strategy has the power to make or break the company image, which is every organization’s top goal must be to work and develop a strategy that suits their target audience and use a constant system of improvement to stay up to date . This results in high customer retention, satisfaction and enhanced unpaid promotions through word of mouth.

Let’s first understand digital customer experience

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What is Digital customer experience?

Digital customer experience entails any and all interactions that the customer has with the company through the online format. People use online touchpoints to engage with the brand. The selection of these touch points is based on an objective which the customer seeks to achieve as an end result.

Planning out an effective digital customer experience strategy becomes necessary for each organization to prevent audiences from being discontent with the quality of services as well as preventing loss of market share to competitors.

Planning a digital customer experience strategy

There are certain basic areas which are generalized and can be followed easily by any organization to step up their customer experience strategy:

Customer centrality

This area basically emphasizes on being focused on customer needs and wants. This is what Forbes’ refers to as an outside- in approach. It’s not about what the company can develop, it’s about whether the market accepts these developments. Any concept or idea needs to meet the customer expectations.

This is why companies must indulge in testing their website designs, user interface or any other concept before moving ahead with launching them. Doing this , allows the companies to assess market sentiment as to whether their ideas are actually leaving the customer satisfied or not . This is a prudent approach that saves the company from losing out on customers by providing them with an idea of the market response and giving room for improvement.

Constant feedback

The market is dynamic . No business can expect customer choices and preferences to be static. The need to be constantly up to date with this varying market culture makes acquiring feedback the need of the hour. Feedback is a great tool for gaining insights about the customer mindset towards any idea, service , product or experience. The more the number of feedback, the more accurately the companies can work upon their marketing and strategizing techniques.

Customer feedback let’s the company know what they are doing right and areas where they need to up their game. This first hand information makes it easier for companies to improve customer experiences by making precise updates and modifications that are suggested by customers.

Map customer journeys

Customer journey maps are a visual representation of your customer’s interactions across a variety of touchpoints. Customers have their own distinct approach in terms of their purpose of engaging with the brand in terms of the choices they make to achieve this purpose. Mapping customer journeys enhances company knowledge about the customer psychology as to why customers, given multiple options, make the choices that they do . Further , it helps in identification of roadblocks in customer journeys.

These roadblocks are nothing but problems that customers face while trying to interact with the company. This could be the presence of an unnecessary touchpoints that makes the customer journeys long without having any value addition to bringing the customer closer to achieving their end objective or as simple as a problem with navigating through the customer website to find exactly what they are looking for.

The key is to make this journey seamless by fixing these roadblocks and minimizing the length of the customer journey.

Narrow your research

General research is good for gaining an overview about your digital customer interactions but in order for the information to be actionable, there is a need to break down the aspects for researching samples of your online audience. This discover the exact pain points for the companies to follow up and act upon. In terms of digital customer experience, these aspects may include criterias of judgement which the customer uses to make up their mind about the quality of their interactions with the company:

Online presence: This refers to the presence of company profiles across all possible touch points that generate good amount of traffic. The benefit of having a far spread online presence is that it implicates that company is larger than it is perceived to be. Moreover , it puts the customer in the driving seat with respect to selection of a touch point of their choice along with maximizing reach.

Servicing : This aspect speaks about the promptness and ease of getting a service from the company. This ask questions like :

Was the customer able to find what they were looking for ?

Was a customer’s complaint addressed on time ?

Was the customer able to get in touch with the company personnel or did they have to face extensive waiting time?

Asking such questions basically speaks about how good the company is in terms of monitoring their online audience and being able to provide timely assistance.

Ease of use and navigation: This refers to the degree of convenience and ease with which the customers are able to operate a particular touch point. The basic question here is that whether of not that particular touch point is meant for the exact goal which the customer is looking to satisfy. The number of steps and touch points a particular person has to visit is inversely related to the amount of satisfaction derived from an online experience.

Suitability: This aspect covers the amount of heed the company has paid to designing an interface which is tailor made for use by a targeted segment . This is determined by the quality of profiling of the online audience done by the company and the way this profiling has been used by the company to make informed decisions.

Gather market intelligence

Organizations need to keep a tab on the market to see if the solutions implemented by them are still effective or have turned obsolete. This helps in avoiding any uncertainty and making improvements as times and needs change. NPS^® , CSAT and CES are some survey methods that can measure customer satisfaction and experience based on the kind of online interactions that customers experience. These quantitative models not only provide a vein check on the market but their quantitative nature makes them easier to study and administer.

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The Goal

The ultimate goal of studying, analysing and implementing strategies for improving customer experience is to build omni- channel platforms. Omni-channel platforms are integrative online models which are all inclusive of company services and offerings which allows the online audience to perform any and all functions and tasks at one place so as to reduce effort.

People should be easily able to navigate and accomplish their objective of visiting a particular platform without surfing through multiple links. This accounts for a pleasant customer experience, one that encourages customers to stick with their current choice along with bringing in additional prospects through recommendations and promotions.