What is the digital customer experience?
Digital customer experience refers to the sum of all digital interactions between a company and a customer (website, social media, digital apps, e-commerce, etc.). An omnichannel and personalized experience is essential to achieve digital loyalty.
How data visualization improves decision making
Why is digital customer experience important?
It’s important to stay relevant to the times and follow customer trends. Today’s customers want convenience and they use their mobile phones for almost everything (food delivery, booking appointments, buying products, etc.) so it only makes sense for businesses to digitize the customer experience if they want to capitalize on opportunities for growth.
A seamless customer experience can easily become free advertising through word of mouth so it’s important to optimize customer experience management. Due to the covid pandemic, the e-commerce explosion has transformed businesses. Companies are now revamping and reimagining their strategies for digital transformation. Data-driven technological advancement enhances brand engagement and optimizes services.
Understanding the digital customer experience is the basis for the success or failure of any organization. Customer digital experiences should be valued on every online platform to improve customer satisfaction. All digital interactions should aim to be convenient, hassle-free, and smooth.
Metrics to Track for Digital Customer Experience
The digital customer experience aims to improve overall customer satisfaction by providing customer value. Here are some important metrics to track:
- Net promoter score
- Customer acquisition cost
- Rate of customer retention
- Service quality
- Customer satisfaction score
Example of Digital Platforms
There are numerous digital platforms that a company can leverage to improve its overall digital customer experience. Here are some examples:
- Social media and digital channels (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.);
- Live chat;
- Company’s website;
- Mobile apps;
- Internet-of-Things (IoT) hardware.
What factors influence market research?
Digital Customer Experience vs. Customer Experience
The customer experience (CX) refers to online and offline interactions that have a direct or indirect effect on customers whereas the digital customer experience (DCX) strictly focuses on online interactions to personalize the customer journey and generate engagement. As you can see, both concepts are interrelated.
Designing a Seamless Digital Experience
Powerful and interconnected customer experience strategies give companies a competitive advantage. The goal is to provide a customized experience, whether it is through digital channels or in person. Customers who shop online prefer a smooth experience without any delays or distractions whereas customers who shop in person may want to get help from a sales representative and avoid queuing in the store. It’s important to recognize the different needs of your customers and invest in the right technological solutions to meet their expectations.
Benefits of Omnichannel Experiences
Designing an omnichannel experience is rewarding for both customers and businesses. Engaging customers across different channels allows you to collect data from public and private sources to find opportunities for improvement as well as recurring issues with different aspects of your business (customer support, product development, delivery process, etc.).
A recent study published by Harvard Business Review explains that omnichannel customers are more valuable. The study demonstrates that engaging customers on different digital platforms increases spending on an average of 4 % in-store and more than 10 % online (source). Did you know that 89 % of customers are retained with a customer engagement strategy employing omnichannel?
Managing the Digital Customer Experience
Digital customer experiences emphasize awareness concerning digital touchpoints. Managing the digital customer experience is important to increase customer satisfaction and retention. After all, according to Salesforce, 89 % of customers are likely to repurchase after a positive customer interaction experience (source).
Analytical tools for customer experience management
Mapping the Customer Journey
The customer journey map is a strategic document that helps companies identify what steps a potential customer takes before buying a product or purchasing a service. Knowing the path of customers helps review the internal processes of the company and improve the customer shopping experience in different phases.
Companies map the customer journey for different reasons:
- To track and analyze customer behavior;
- To predict future actions of potential customers;
- To identify customer needs and expectations;
- To study customer perceptions about the brand;
- To identify the main pain points in the customer journey;
- To identify what makes consumers choose their brand to solve their problems;
- To determine the main points of contact and interaction with customers and improve them;
- To optimize internal processes;
- Etc.
Here are the steps to follow to map your customer journey:
- Set clear goals for your map;
- Define your target market through proper market segmentation;
- Focus on the buyer personas that most represent your target customers;
- Identify the points of contact with your brand;
- Survey what the greatest needs are in each of these channels;
- Determine what resources you have and what you will need.
- Take the customer journey yourself.
- Make necessary changes to personalize the customer experience.
What is text analytics used for?
6 ways to improve the digital customer experience
Here are key ways to improve the digital customer experience:
- Invest in tools to collect customer data
- Focus on data analytics
- Prioritize customer feedback
- Optimize customer experience management
- Leverage artificial intelligence
- Perform market research
1. Invest in tools to collect customer data
Nowadays data is liquid gold as it helps companies personalize the customer experience. There are different ways to gather data about interactions between customers and companies. Touchpoints, social media monitoring, and different management tools help gain valuable insights. Live chat, customer relationship management (CRM), and diversified customer support service tools further improve interactions with customers.
2. Focus on data analytics
Data analytics helps brands make sense of data by highlighting key insights and trends. Businesses leverage different data analytics tools to draw conclusions from raw data and guide decision-making. For example, text mining extracts key information from different channels (emails, phone chats, online customer surveys, social media posts, tweets, etc.) to improve processes and increase productivity.
3. Prioritize customer feedback
Customers appreciate it when a company takes into account their feedback to improve processes and the digital experience. You can collect feedback by sending surveys and questionnaires to customers about specific aspects of your business. It’s also important to respond to both positive and negative reviews online as well as interact with customers on different channels to make sure they feel heard and understood.
4. Optimize customer experience management
A data-driven digital customer experience helps improve customer satisfaction by integrating technology and automating processes. If large volumes of customer feedback are coming in fast and from different channels, Semeon can help you make sense of this data and provide the global view required to improve customer experience management.
Our platform helps you gather public data about your company and competitors so that you can conduct a competitive benchmark based on the KPIs of your choice. You can use the sentiment cloud to discover positive and negative aspects of your customer experience.
Analytical Tools Tailored to Your Needs
5. Leverage artificial intelligence
Businesses are transforming at a rapid pace due to technological advancements. Processing of data, technological integration of information, and digitization all contribute to a better digital customer experience. Artificial intelligence chatbots and other machine learning applications improve the effectiveness of interactions for businesses of all sizes.
6. Perform market research
Performing AI-driven market research can help you succeed in new markets and segments, reduce costs and analysis time, draw meaningful conclusions fast, and generate intuitive reporting that speaks to everyone. Semeon’s text analytics platform can help you close customer experience gaps, prioritize customer pain points and drive loyalty and scalability.
