How To Enhance And Optimize Digital Customer Experience

• By Evelyn Thomas
• 17-08-2021
• Misc

Customer experience is vital for the success of the organization in many ways. Building a sustainable customer experience model helps improve customer loyalty, retention, sales, profit, and brand reputation. As per Forbes, digital trends and customer experience will enhance customer satisfaction by 20-30%, along with 20-40% earnings. Businesses that pay attention to customer experience has 1.6 times higher customer satisfaction and 1.9 times more average sales order.

Companies that deliver a robust omnichannel experience are more likely to succeed than brands with low visibility and unsatisfactory performance. There are various ways to improve customer experience through sales, marketing, product development, and user experience (UX). But with the latest addition of technologies in the online selling space, there is another avenue that needs to be explored – digital experience.

Customer Experience vs. Digital Customer Experience

The digital customer experience (DCX) is a part of customer experience (CX). But, the way DCX evolved, it's safe to say that it's a different structure. It got its name with extra functionalities.

Customer experience is the bond that takes place between a customer and the brand across the customer journey. The relationship can be for a day, a week, or a year. The communication channels can be either human, social, digital, or technical. Customer interaction can be in the form of a website, mobile apps, products, services, customer support, chatbots, online forums, business development, account managers, sales representatives, etc.

CX is inclusive of all touchpoints that take place during the customer journey as well as post-purchase interactions. Improving customer experience at all levels will help the business get more leads, drive more sales, and retain existing customers. Instead of working on individual goals that drive customer experience, it's better to work on it entirely for better results and success.

Digital customer experience falls under the more extensive umbrella of customer experience; It's the total of all interactions between the customer and the brand's different digital channels that a customer utilizes for communication. DCX primarily focuses on digital platforms. With the growing use of technology in eCommerce and online selling space, DCX is becoming more critical than before.

For businesses that operate online, most of the interactions with customers are digital. Failure to streamline digital channels, customers will be annoyed, switch to competition, and give negative feedback about your brand. Customers interact with brands online through various channels. Monitoring interactions on each track will help in creating personalized messages on different platforms.

An Integrated Digital Customer Experience Approach

Creating a perfect and integrated digitally optimized customer experience approach has been a challenging task in recent times. A few years ago, businesses could stabilize DCX with the help of simple tools – one for managing social media interactions and the other for sending our emails or newsletters to their email lists.

But in the case of omnichannel marketing, the point is different. It requires you to keep track of who you connected with, what message you sent, what channels you used, and the personalization level. Such kind of information is helpful for the future marketing message. You can't capture this in an excel sheet. Even though CRM tools capture the prospects' details, they don't monitor and keep track of every interaction on various channels. Hence, it's essential to have a digital experience platform (DXP).

A DXP platform has multiple benefits for digital experience management like

Personalization: Personalize each messaging that goes out to every customer according to the channel and means of interaction.
Customer Journey Mapping: Tracking the customer journey across various touchpoints and improving customer life-cycle value.
Content Management: Draft, optimize and deliver content with flexibility across various social media platforms.
Building Customer Personas: Collect and gather important information about your target group and build more sustainable profiles.

All the above benefits clubbed together to create a never-ending experience for customers and reduce difficulties while purchasing. By making the best use of DCX, you will not get new customers and retain the existing customers.

Ways to Improve Digital Customer Experience

Streamline checkout process

Companies should work harder to deliver a seamless checkout experience and remove all barriers during the checkout and product pages. It can help you build better conversions. It would be great to keep a tab on the customer journey to remove any obstacles between the point of origin to the end of the exit.

Better your mobile game

Creating a mobile experience is very important in the digital era. Building your brand value on a mobile app cannot be a second thought. Mobile app only requires simplicity and access to the app across the globe. Companies should pay special attention to their mobile app platform, design the web pages, easy navigation, and checkout options with a click of a button.

Optimize your website and app for better performance

Both the website and mobile app should take the faster route. A slow-loading website or an irresponsive app will frustrate your customers, making them leave the platform, increasing the bounce rate. Too many visitors exiting your website in the first few seconds is an indication that your website is not structured correctly, or they didn't find their required product. Businesses must ensure that their website and app are optimized with minimal time and highly responsive.

Conduct customer feedback

Until you know what your customers think of your brand, you can't improve customer experience. Firstly, identify some of your best and worst customers. Ask for their feedback. Secondly, gather the data and work on the areas of improvement.

Improve your search engine optimization

SEO is often the most complicated and strange part of digital marketing. It ensures that the right audience reaches your website with the right keyword. If SEO is not done correctly, you will miss out on a significant chunk of customers. If irrelevant keywords are used, it will upset the customer and their experience.

Be transparent

Improving digital customer experience is something that every customer is excited about, and hence you should let them know. When you take customer's feedback and implement it, they feel happy. t It would help if you let your customers know that you have implemented their feedback across various digital platforms. It will help customers understand your brand value and will encourage them to share more vital input in the foreseeable future.

Know your target audience

Ensure that you are collecting feedback from the relevant target audience meant for your product or service. Capturing input from the right target audience will allow you to structure your offerings according to individual needs. Identify customers who have shopped across various channels like in-store, website, in-app. Speak to them and know their pain points. Such customers would have a lot to say about their experiences.

Conclusion:

Digital experience management was always there. But it is gathering more momentum because of the recent digital explosion. It's the latest buzzword that is a part of every marketing strategy. It will grow in size and will be the next point of differentiation. As eCommerce and online shopping increases, DCX will be more looked upon as the factor of trust and commitment. Digital experience platforms will be more critical than enterprise management tools as customers will be more active on social channels. If you want to survive, thrive, and stay ahead in the business, it's crucial to invest in a DXP at the earliest possible before it becomes the standard norm for companies in the e-commerce and online selling space.