Defining and Implementing the Digital Customer Experience
What exactly is ‘DIGITAL’ Customer Experience? Is it mobile? Apps? Social media? Here, BARE International breaks down all you need to know about incorporating a seamless digital experience for your customers in 2020.
The digital customer reality is upon us. While we have more goods and services than we could ever want, this also means differentiation needs to be more than clever marketing or attractive packaging to stay ahead of the competition. In 2020, brands need to offer something at a deeper level, create a connection and foster that to win loyalty.
What is a Digital Customer Experience?
In a nutshell, digital customer experience (DCX) is the sum of digital interactions between a customer and a company and the resulting impression that a customer walks away with.
The digital customer experience is the combination of all digital interactions a customer has with a brand. This can range from browsing a brand’s website to interacting with the brand on social media. Having consistency across these touch-points can be difficult to master but it’s always in the business’s best interest.
Digital Customer Experience vs. Customer Experience
The broad umbrella of customer experience (CX) can cover anything from traditional customer service channels to new digital interfaces that people use to interact with companies. Digital customer experience (DCX) focuses on the latter, including both front-end services and back-office process optimization that ultimately benefits customers.
Because both CX and DCX are intensely focused on meeting customer expectations, they overlap as often as digital and non-digital do in today’s world.
How to Offer a Great DCX
The digital customer experience requires clarity and optimization across a myriad of touch points and interactions. It requires a level of data fluency within the organization and it requires a mindset of excellence. Global brands are finding success in this area by implementing a digital center of excellence strategy. So, what measures can brands put in place to improve their digital strategy? An effective program design will include the following steps:
1. Know Your Customers.
There is very little point in designing a digital experience if you don’t know who your customers are. Consumers want personalization from online businesses. To personalize digital interactions with customers, you must first understand who they are and what they are trying to accomplish, and that takes data.
Start with your customer facing teams and your CRM software. Then move to customer research tools, specifically digital capture research solutions to gain a deeper and more colorful understanding of who your customers are.
This will give you the foundation to make data-driven and truly customer-centric decisions.
2. Provide Users Omnichannel Support.
Customers expect to receive immediate service from organizations on the channel of their choice, whether that’s an app, email, text, voice or social platform. And they expect that experience to have the same look, feel and functionality across channels.
Achieving this requires tight integration across systems, solutions and data. For many organizations, this is easier said than done because applications are developed and advanced over time in their own technological silos. Investing in a flexible API-driven enterprise architecture going forward is essential to delivering an engaging omnichannel experience.
While every channel is important, we live in a mobile-first economy. All omnichannel strategies should center around the mobile phone, as consumers consider it their primary channel.
3. Establish an Ongoing Research Process
Your work here is never done. Consumers have changing preferences and evolving wants. What’s more, technological change will consistently influence the customer experience, presenting new ways of communicating and interacting with brands. New disruptive players will enter the market meaning you have to be prepared at all times. Iteration and flexibility is essential. Investing in customer research solutions will give brands invaluable insights into customer trends, allowing businesses to drive meaningful change, with longer-term vision guiding the changes.
Final Thoughts
Digital experiences are becoming the primary type of experience for most customers and the concept of “digital” is on the minds of most business leaders. As they make decisions about where to invest for the future, it’s imperative to look at digital CX strategy through the customer experience lens.
Companies that can determine their organization’s maturity and plan a long-term strategy will have an advantage over the competition. BARE International’s CX Research team can help you measure your current digital customer experience maturity level and provide insights and actionable feedback for improvement. Contact us here to set up a complimentary consultation of your business today!
