Beyond Clicks: Creating Memorable Customer Journeys With Digital Customer Experience

Have you observed any shifts in your shopping habits and experiences over the past few years? The expansion and evolution of shopping options into the digital realm and beyond traditional brick-and-mortar stores is hard to miss

Nowadays, customers seek a seamless and integrated shopping experience that seamlessly bridges the gap between physical and digital channels. This shift has had a profound impact on businesses’ customer experience management

Businesses that were already undergoing digital customer experience transformations took swift action to adapt their approach. They amplified their commitment to providing customers with increased resources, services, and support. As a result, these businesses witnessed a surge in referrals, repeat purchases and customer acquisitions.

On the other hand, the businesses that didn’t think of this initiative before are way behind their competitors. As found in the Progress Global Study, 59% are worried they may already be too late.

It has become abundantly clear that the key to business survival lies in enhancing customer experiences and maintaining digital relevance.

So let’s find out how can businesses achieve this objective with the help of a robust customer feedback platform. 

Before that, let’s understand what is digital CX and why is it important.

What is Digital Customer Experience?

The overall quality of customer interactions with your company online is called digital customer experience. 

It encompasses every touchpoint a customer has with a company in the digital realm, such as websites, mobile apps, social media platforms, email communications, chatbots, and more. The goal of focusing on digital customer experience is to create positive, seamless, and meaningful interactions that cater to customer needs, preferences, and expectations.

But why is it important in this day and age?

Why is Digital Customer Experience Important?

As the world is moving towards a digital revolution, customers now expect seamless and personalized experiences across all digital touchpoints. 

Here are a few important benefits of creating a digital customer experience for your business.

• Creating a positive digital CX fosters a sense of connection online as well, making customers feel understood and valued. 
• With the rise of social media and online reviews, an exceptional digital CX generates positive word-of-mouth marketing, fostering brand advocacy and customer loyalty. 
• The data-driven nature of digital interactions provides businesses with invaluable insights into customer behavior, preferences, needs, and expectations. This allows brands to tailor their offerings and strategies to better match customer expectations. 
• A well-designed digital CX can leverage technologies like chatbots and AI-driven customer support to provide real-time assistance, streamline processes, and enhance customer satisfaction.  

Create a Seamless Digital Customer Experience With SurveySensum – Request a Demo

Now, that we know why is it important, let’s now learn 6 best practices to deliver an efficient  digital customer experience 

6 Best Practices That Can Improve Your Digital Customer Experience

1. Know What You Are Doing and Why You Are Doing It

The first step to delivering an exceptional digital customer experience is to define and design your digital CX goal. 

Get everybody on board. Your employees, stakeholders, and partners. And everyone across departments should focus on that one goal. 

Now that everyone is on the same page, the second step is to evaluate what is required to achieve it. Understand where you are in terms of funds, technology, and resources and what is required to move digital. 

After you have done your internal evaluation the final step is to find out what is required to expedite your growth. Now that your goals are properly defined and you have a roadmap ahead of you, you can now embark on the journey to create a positive digital customer experience.

2. Is Your Website Up to the Mark?

When a website is not properly optimized, several issues can arise that hinder the effectiveness of the digital presence. Issues such as slow loading time, poor mobile responsiveness, complex navigation, etc.

Your website is the first point of contact between you and your customers – the experience they have at this point solidifies their opinion of your business. That’s why creating a well-designed and user-friendly website is a crucial part of crafting the digital customer journey. 

You can start your website optimization by minimizing redirects and optimizing image sizes. Each redirect adds precious seconds to the loading process, potentially frustrating your visitors and deterring them from engaging with your content.

Also, your choice of web hosting service holds substantial sway over your website’s speed and reliability. Consider upgrading to a more potent web host, such as virtual machine hosting, that aligns with the traffic demands of your site.  

By addressing these factors, you can elevate your website’s performance, resulting in swifter loading times and a more pleasant experience for your customers.

3. Leverage the Power of Innovative Technologies

The customer’s expectations are high! Every customer requires a unique solution and more personalization. So how can your team cater to so many customers efficiently?

By leveraging technologies!

Improve your digital CX with new innovative technologies such as AI chatbots, intuitive applications, quick sentiment feedback with NLP, text and sentiment analysis, comprehensive CX platforms, and more.

Your Digital CX Transformation could start with

• Feedback Management Platform

These platforms help you gather valuable customer feedback, deliver an omnichannel experience, and measure and track your key CX metrics in real-time with insightful dashboards. 

You can ask your customer for feedback right then and there when they using your service on your app or after they have purchased from you. 

• Social Media Listening Tools 

One of the key benefits of social media listening tools like Hootsuite, Sprout, etc. is the ability to monitor and respond to brand mentions and conversations in real time. This instant feedback loop enables brands to address customer concerns, respond to inquiries, and manage potential crises promptly. 

• Chatbots

Leverage the power of advanced technologies with virtual assistants like chatbots and advanced IVR that use natural language processing (NLP) to create more optimized and convenient interactions. 

They are the most efficient tools to serve many customers in one go, saving manpower, time, and effort. They give prompt responses to the customers and reduce wait time.

In fact, according to Gartner, organizations report a reduction of up to 70% in call, chat, and/or email inquiries after implementing a virtual customer assistant.

4. Don’t Frustrate Your Customers – Provide Them With Omnichannel Support

Imagine talking to three different agents just to cancel a simple video subscription. And on top of that explaining the issue, again and again. Isn’t it frustrating?

Don’t let your customers feel the same. Offer a seamless experience regardless of the support channels used by the customer. No matter the channel, you are ONE brand to them. 

It will be easier if you have omnichannel support. An omnichannel setting allows a support agent to access customer metrics across different communication platforms. The support team can seamlessly converse with the customers without asking for the information regardless of the communication platform the customer uses. 

5. Take Data-Driven Decisions With Feedback Analysis

So, picture this: you’re steering a ship through the vast ocean of customer feedback. The wind is your customers’ voices, and you’re using it to navigate toward success. With every data-driven decision you make, you’re not just moving forward; you’re sailing into a future where customer satisfaction reigns supreme.

For all the insightful customer feedback that you receive, REVIEW it. Run text analysis to identify common trends and themes. It not only saves time and effort with automated feedback tagging but also helps you identify trends & themes from unstructured customer data. This will help your team keep track of what is going on so that they can reach out to their customers in time and prevent churn proactively. 

But the true value of data-driven actions lies in the transformative impact they can have on various aspects of a business. For example,

• Data-driven actions empower decision-makers to make informed choices based on evidence rather than gut feelings or assumptions.
• The insight enables organizations to personalize their products, services, and marketing strategies to individual preferences.
• By analyzing data, organizations can streamline operations, allocate resources more effectively, and reduce wastage – resulting in efficiency in workflow.
• Data-driven actions allow for predictive analytics, enabling organizations to anticipate future trends, behavior, and events.

One notable example of the impact of data-driven actions is Netflix’s content recommendation system. Netflix uses data collected from users’ viewing history, preferences, and interactions to suggest content tailored to each user’s tastes. This data-driven approach has led to a substantial increase in user engagement and retention.

6. Monitor and Measure Your Ongoing Process

Customer experience is not a destination but a journey! You need to stop at every milestone to check if you are going in the right direction.

So monitor and measure your customers’ journey at every touchpoint. Analyze the performance, and monitor how well your processes, workflows, and tools are performing. 

For example, a lot of your customers were facing issues in the payment section of your website. You identified this issue and fixed it in time. Now monitor your customers’ reaction to it. Are they satisfied now? Or is there anything more you should do?

Moreover, the process of measuring impact fosters a culture of continuous improvement. Regular assessment of digital customer experience initiatives encourages a feedback loop where successes are celebrated, and areas for further enhancement are identified. 

Creating a positive digital customer experience is a reality and not many businesses are able to grasp its importance. Only a few have been able to create a seamless digital CX, let’s see some examples. 

Brand Examples of Exceptional Digital Customer Experience

Here are some popular real-life brands that proved to be excellent at handling their customers’ digital experiences. 

1. Starbucks

The famous reward system of this popular app enables customers to order and pay online for their coffee and collect points in exchange. The website also features a vast online community where customers’ opinions are constantly gathered. 

Image file name: Starbucks customization via app

Starbucks has also partnered up with Amazon Alexa allowing customers to order coffee by voice from anywhere. 

2. Lululemon

Image file name: Lululemon live chat support

Lululemon features engaging video content, live chat support 24×7, and your product-related queries will be answered instantly by their team. They also provide free video consultations, email support, and a FAQ section on their website.

3. Airbnb

Image file name: Airbnb booking process

Airbnb’s platform enables users to easily search for and book unique accommodations around the world. Its user-friendly website and app, along with comprehensive property listings and clear communication channels, contribute to a smooth booking process and collecting the rent.

4. Amazon

This e-commerce giant offers a browser extension/add-on that lets customers compare product prices as they browse all around the internet. It also allows users to find personalized product suggestions, reviews, offers, and ratings and find Amazon products while browsing the internet. This innovation is particularly beneficial for Internet startups seeking to optimize their online shopping experience.

By offering this solution, the company can keep its brand at the top of customers’ attention as they move across the internet.

5. Gmail

The predictive text feature of Google predicts two or three vague words after a user begins typing general emails that pretty much grasp and finish what a user is trying to communicate. 

This powerful AI is good at capturing human speech and patterns. In this fast-paced, digital world, anything that makes the email-sending process faster and allows communication to be more concise is a massive help.

Conclusively,

Digital customer experience is not only about what you provide to the customers, it’s a holistic approach that involves incorporating digitalization at all touchpoints across the customer journey. 

So developing a strong and stable digital customer experience strategy is the best way to adapt to this digital revolution. It not only improves customer satisfaction but also provides a competitive advantage.

And in order to achieve that you need an efficient customer feedback platform like SurveySensum. It helps you gather feedback from multiple channels, track feedback in real-time, and ultimately help you close the feedback loop in time.