The need for a solid digital experience is now a significant differentiator for customers. With customer expectations higher than ever and continuing to rise – particularly when it comes to personalised and timely support – how a company executes its digital strategy is key.
If customers are unimpressed with the overall customer experience, it’s easier than ever for them to simply take their custom to another provider. Businesses that prioritise digital transformation are therefore well-positioned to create highly engaged and satisfied customers through excellent experiences.
Digital customer experience can be defined by how a business enables its customers and prospective customers to engage with the products and services it offers online. As customers increasingly choose to interact with businesses through websites, mobile apps and chatbots, it is vital the impact of interactions across all channels is carefully considered, assessing how easy customers find these services to use, and the customer’s general perception of the interactions they have.
Research
Industry research certainly confirms the value placed by customers on both excellent CX and service availability across digital channels. According to the Avionos B2B Buyer Report, 90% of buyers would turn to a competitor if a supplier’s digital channels didn’t fit their needs
Fully engaged customers will give a 23% greater share of their wallet, Gallup analysis shows, while Zendesk research into customer service trends found 70% of organisations see a direct connection between customer service and performance – yet 54% of consumers feel organisations still treat it as an afterthought.
These findings reinforce the importance of a strong digital experience across all channels. It has been particularly interesting to witness many companies who have now outright stopped talking in terms of ‘digital’ or ‘channels’ and have instead moved to simply referencing ‘customer experience’, implicitly assuming a high degree of customer autonomy and easy access to products and services.
More than digital
It is vital that when brands focus on their digital experience, they don’t see this as simply adding new digital tools. Rather, it is an outcome of how customers experience the online journeys and how they access live services when and wherever it is important for them to do so.
The digital experience has significantly shifted how companies think about customer engagement, with the need for continuous analysis of how online activity and live services combine to deliver the overall customer experience. Ever-changing customer demands mean the digital customer experience must be both innovative and highly adaptable.
This is why it is more important than ever for any design or journey change to be customer centric.
Seamless experience
To the customer, the channel is often irrelevant. Whether speaking with a company’s representative directly, or engaging via automated digital channels, customers expect a seamless experience.
They expect to receive a consistent experience whenever and however they engage with a business. This means that the contact centre must be an integral part of the overall customer journey and not simply remain as a traditional, single channel, telephony-based contact centre.
The value of the assisted service agent is to optimise the customer experience, delivering value to the customer and the business and creating longer-term relationships.
Effective digital transformation for a contact centre should incorporate digital technologies that provide customer insights, enable call deflection, optimise personalisation and automation. We need to shift the ‘traditional call centre’ model into one that can genuinely be described as a contact centre of the future.
Deploy these technologies in a mindful, customer-centric manner that simplifies and enhances the customer journey, and excellent customer experience can become a true differentiator for your business.