Time was when businesses used to measure customer experience using NPS and metrics such as first call resolution (FCR) rate. But a large part of almost all customer journeys nowadays happens on digital channels. It might begin on a website, followed by an email or phone call, and then in-person at one of your branch locations, and then maybe back to email, Whatsapp or the website for quotations, documentation and purchase.
What can you do to provide better customer experience, as your customers travel forward through a buying cycle across various digital and offline channels? How to measure the improvement in experience? Listed below are six ways to improve the digital customer experience for businesses whose customers must be engaged on their website, email, social media, mobile apps, etc.
1. Personalization of digital customer experience.
Personalize your digital engagement of customers, based on location and language. Setup multiple language websites, multi-lingual self-serve kiosks, IVR language select, etc.
Use customer data from your CRM or traffic analytics to identify and personalize engagement based on the history of previous engagements. Greet customers by name, show them content based on personal preferences, demographics, pages visited, products purchased, etc.
2. Omnichannel engagement.
The way that enterprise marketing works are that every channel has its own team, and the data each one has is siloed from the rest. So a customer who contacts a business through their website goes through a different marketing lead qualification process before being handed over to the sales funnel, as compared to someone who talks to a call centre rep, or someone else who connects with the business on email or social media.
The problem with this traditional system is that when a customer switches channels, they have to start all over again because the new marketing team doesn’t know anything about your previous conversation. The solution to this is omnichannel marketing, where customers can seamlessly switch between channels, and anyone on any marketing team is able to pick up the conversation where it was left off at the previous engagement on another channel.
As a result, customers engaged in this manner, who make use of three or more channels, are likely to generate up to 210% more revenue.
3. Open APIs for third-party developers.
What exactly is digital banking, or digital transformation of healthcare or government? You can read about it our industry pages, but it is not just about the digitization of existing services that require human staff and resources. The key requirement is for you to open up your data core to third-party developers through APIs (application programming interfaces).
Photo credit : camwilliams96
These third-party developers can enhance the digital customer experience in a way that large enterprises cannot, simply because that is not your core competency. Support innovation by collaborating with startups that have developed tools and platforms to improve CX and operational efficiency. All they need is secure access to your data through open APIs.
4. Website optimization.
The term SEO, or search engine optimization, is a bit misleading. It would mean some activity you undertake that results in optimizing the results that a search engine produces when someone types in a query. Is that what you’re doing? To be honest, no one does that. What you’re doing, or should be doing, is website optimization - making website changes that improve the digital experience for visitors.
Specifically, speed (faster loading pages), large fonts, relevant content, pleasing aesthetics, and most importantly - be functionally cool. This is something that Ajay Banga, President and CEO of Mastercard, is quoted as saying when looking at fintech - They don’t just want cool, but something that is functionally cool.
So when you’re optimizing your website, don’t just think about Google traffic and rankings. Think of ways in which you can make it functionally cool, with innovations and back-end development that provide a better customer experience for your visitors and customers.
5. Fast response on digital.
If a customer walks into your store, you don’t ask them to come back the next day. If they call you on the phone, you talk to them right then. How can you do this on digital channels? This is what you have to figure out. Whether it is a website contact form, email, chat app, or social media, you have to respond instantly - in real-time or less than 5 minutes.
Want to see how it works? Fill up our contact form, and we’ll call you back within minutes, and explain how we can do this for you.
6. Collect feedback.
The path to improvement starts with collecting and analysing customer journey data. You have done your best to create a digital experience that works for you, but it may not be exactly what your customer wanted. Ask for feedback, and find out how you can improve your digital customer experience.
February 7th, 2020 ·