Better Digital Customer Experience
In the digital age, business revenue is driven by digital touch points. They are used for branding and customer service to increase customer loyalty. These statements are not new. According to statistics, 70% of the online purchasing experience is based on customer satisfaction with digital channels. In the U.S., it is estimated that customers who switch due to poor customer service cost $1.6 trillion annually. Optimizing Digital Customer Experience is therefore a priority for all organizations. Our clients tell us repeatedly at Qentelli that improving the digital customer experience is their top strategic priority.
This article will outline the 10 most important things that businesses can do NOW in order to ensure they deliver value to customers at every touch point. This article is divided into two parts. The first part of this article will cover the first five steps to achieving a world-class digital experience, starting with defining customer expectations, organizing the right team, creating modern apps, delivering quickly, and measuring activities in order to administer a continuous feedback loop. We will also examine how these things can contribute to digital experience. The second part of the article will cover five more things to achieve a world-class experience for customers. These include defining the right digital customer metrics, continuously improving current practices, using automated tools, investing in talent, and acting on employee input.
1. Define digital customer experience aspirations
The type of CX that an organization is looking to offer depends on its industry, the customers’ digital presence, and their business goals. Some organizations limit their efforts to improving CX to a single digital channel while others aim to transform the entire traditional business model into digital. Amazon is an example of a traditional business model being transformed into a digital one using technology. More scenarios can be used to re-define customer experience. In all scenarios, the business vision should be based on CX aspirations to create new digital platforms.
2. Building a Digital Customer Experience team
Organizations are creating dedicated and balanced Digital Experience teams. They realized that mere online presence was no longer sufficient; they had to improve digital dialogues with their customers. According to a report by Clickable, more than 48 percent have a Digital Experience Team in place that oversees their digital strategy.
Digital Customer Experience Team is responsible for improving the digital experience in accordance with the brand’s goals.
We encourage our clients to identify a Digital Champion Leader within their existing team. This person should be someone who is well versed in the business and the customer.
3. Build modern, hyperagile apps
Enterprises must rethink their application development strategies for both existing and in progress applications. Repost, Retire Refactor Reinter face Rearchitect should be adopted by organizations. To gain agility and scalability, leading enterprises use DevOps. Descopes. Multi-Cloud, Microservices. Container Deployment. These methods allow organizations to build minimum viable digital products within weeks instead of the traditional waterfall culture that took years. IDC estimates that by 2022 90% of apps will have microservices architectures, which will improve the ability to debug, upgrade, and leverage code from third parties. 35% of production apps will also be cloud-native.
Cloud-technologies like containers and serverless computing can help enterprises deliver faster and more seamless solutions to their customers. Cloud-native apps are a must for improving CX.
4. Devops, Descopes
Customers are constantly looking for new features that will make the purchase process easier. If an application has limited sign-in choices, it can make the experience of signing up difficult. Whether they use the app or not, they want to have options for signing in using Facebook, Google etc. The technology accessibility has provided them with a wide range of choices. It is important that organizations release new features more quickly than ever.
Organizations that are aiming to be digital and those who have embraced digital technology increasingly focus on releasing new digital experiences with secure customer journeys. Organizations are looking to “release fast and securely” as sophisticated cyberattacks increase. Statistics from 2017 show that the U.S. experienced over 130 large-scale, targeted breaches, with this number increasing by 27 percent each year. 42 percent of companies leave over 1,000 sensitive files, including credit card numbers and medical records, unprotected.
DevOps teams that are mature can integrate security successfully by adhering to security principles and practices. Descopes involves integrating security into the software development process from the beginning, as well as peer code reviews and automating the build processes. Descopes has also been successful by designing secure applications.
5. Administer Continuous feedback loop
Competing in the experience economy requires an active approach to listening and responding to customer’s feedback. This requires real time monitoring of all digital channels – social media, plays tore reviews, review websites, in-app survey, customer service tickets, and salespeople. Data in real-time can be used to identify opportunities for improving CX strategies. This allows you to distinguish between high and low performing areas, allowing you to focus on the areas that are most important for CX.
As part of its regular planning process, a large US retailer used text analytics in order to gain insights from the comments made by customers. The results led to a cross-functional conversation in order to determine the root cause of significant problems. They discovered coordination gaps in the product development team, sales team and marketing teams by analyzing customer feedback. With the new information, they changed two departments’ reporting structures under a single leader to improve communication between teams.
- Digital Customer Experience Management relies on three key competencies to close the feedback loop and create greater customer value.
- Customer sentiments captured across all channels
- Use of digital intelligence to improve the experience with systems of engagement
- Close the loop by focusing on customer-centric alignment and acting quickly on feedback.
- We believe that convergence of systems can help organizations achieve new efficiencies. Organizations are constantly evolving their listening methods to customers. They are: Systems of engagements; systems of records; systems of intelligence, and systems of the things.
Qentelli considers three things when it comes to feedback loops: Capturing real-time information, identifying and improving metrics, and closing out the loop with end-users in mind.
Stay tuned!
This concludes the first five things to consider when building a good customer experience in a digital age. Next, we’ll look at the five things that organizations must do to create a superior digital experience.