How Can You Improve Your Digital Customer Experience?

The 2020 Digital Marketing Trends Report, a recent survey, asked organizations to identify the most profitable venture in the current year. Once again, the customer experience was the top answer.

A well-planned and executed customer experience strategy will improve customer satisfaction, increase customer lifetime value and help you boost your bottom line. As digital transformation accelerates, online customers are becoming more important to measure a brand's success.

It is a reality that more and more businesses are realizing. Half of these companies say their digital transformation efforts depend on the digital customer experience they offer now more than ever.

What is digital customer experience?

It refers to the online interaction customers have with your company and their journey while engaging with you. It is the brand-specific interaction your patrons have online with you as part of their digital experience.

Businesses will need to develop a functional CX program that uses the following steps to help them diagnose problems, gain actionable insights and improve their digital experience.

1. Understand the behaviour of your customers

Your digital customer experience is dependent on understanding your customers' behaviour. You won't connect with your customers and understand their motivations if you don't know what they do. Understanding your customers' behaviour will give you a better understanding of their expectations and help you to reshape your digital experience.

It is best done by creating buyer personas. These buyer personas can be used to create profiles that are specific to a customer group. They will often have the same grievances or face similar problems. You can use tools such as Hubspot's "Make My Persona" to plan a route map to create buyer personas.

Once you have created buyer personas and a customer journey map, it is time to start conducting surveys to find out what your customers are suffering from. Again, it can be made more accessible by integrating business intelligence into CRM. You can then use these insights to create a customer journey map that will improve the customer experience.

2. Enable self-service

Customers are becoming more self-sufficient today. They prefer to use it rather than contacting a live agent. 40% of respondents say they prefer self-service to contact customer service agents. The super office also found that 70% of respondents expected self-service options on a company website.

It is something businesses should keep in mind when developing their digital experience strategy. Make sure you enable customer self-service options. Chatbots and self-service can increase the speed and automation of your services.

Chatbots, which are AI-powered solutions, allow customers to access their customer service via chat instantly. These bots can handle many customer requests at once and provide solutions to common customer issues while maintaining consistency in customer service.

Splashtop is a shining example of how chatbots can be used to your advantage. Splashtop, a Silicon Valley company that offers remote desktop access to businesses, was having difficulty engaging prospects using its existing chat software. It resulted in a poor UI experience and frustration for customers.

Splashtop began to look for an alternative. Acquire live chat was the answer. Splashtop could use the chatbot to start conversations and integrate it with Salesforce to record qualified leads. It resulted in them averaging 1648 chats per month, which led to a 35% increase in their sales conversions.

3. Ensure seamless customer service across all channels

The Aberdeen Group found that 89% of customers returned to businesses and brands that offer consistent customer service across multiple channels. Exolevel also found that 89% of customers want to shop online for products via any medium they choose.

Consumers want the ability to shop and contact you on their terms. An omnichannel experience allows you to provide your customers with a consistent buying and support experience across all channels. This practise is so widespread that Harvard Business Review surveyed that 73% of customers use more than one channel in their shopping experience.

It is a clear indication of how important this shift has become. Customers like to follow brands across channels. Customers are curious about the brand's involvement in which they invest and how it brings its products or services to them. It all boils down to the companies' desire to connect and engage customers through different touchpoints.

4. allow users to provide feedback

You will never get it right the first time. It is why you need to give your customers a way to leave feedback and help you improve the experience. This can be done via a website chat function or by responding to feedback surveys. It can be done by sourcing testimonials or social media messages.

This information will help you to improve your customer experience and make it easier for customers. In addition, it will help you measure customer loyalty and attrition by allowing you to collect it frequently.

Different types of feedback surveys

Customer grievances can be sourced using feedback surveys. They are one of the most effective and popular ways to get feedback. They can easily lodge complaints or inform you about problems with your product. There are many feedback surveys that you can use. However, in particular, three stand out because they are universal and help you get the most relevant results.

Periodic satisfaction survey: These surveys are done every month to gather information about products and get a clear picture of customers' expectations and digital experiences. This survey is used to assess the brand's health and the products it sells.

After-purchase evaluation: Customers often request or source these feedback surveys after receiving the product or service or during delivery. It is usually part of a CRM retention program that aims to retain customers for the long term.

Continuous satisfaction tracking: Users are asked to complete constant satisfaction surveys during product delivery. Then, they will be asked periodically after that. These surveys are used for customer retention scoring, flag accounts, and use a management tracking tool that ensures consistent, high-quality service.

5. Align KPIs with desired business outcomes

Digital customer experience is an evolving standard. Measuring customer satisfaction takes more work than just recording revenue growth or excess inventory. It is essential to get a complete picture of the customer's digital experience by benchmarking it from various angles, as it is multifaceted.

It is crucial to start and maintain your digital customer service transformation by regularly and consistently measuring KPIs and linking them with the business impact of your efforts. In addition, you will need to track and analyze the effect on your operations, finances, and employee-related measures.

Start by asking yourself what CX metrics you need to paint a comprehensive picture of customers' experiences with your brand. Then, it is worth measuring the following CX metrics to get a 360-degree view of your CX and align it with specific business outcomes to measure growth.

• Net Promoter Score (NPS).
• Churn rate
• Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)
• Customer effort score (CES)
• Customer lifetime value (CLV)

Customer experience is a long-term endeavour

Your customers are the foundation of a great digital experience. It won't happen without knowing your customers' preferences.

This is a slow, steady process that involves defining each customer journey stage and working to streamline the experience. It often requires identifying their needs using the above measures. However, it will help you make informed decisions and improve the customer experience.

Disclaimer. The opinions and views expressed in this article are the authors Judge Napolitano.