The epidemic caused a commotion in consumer habits and a surge in digital connections with businesses. Due to the decline in face-to-face interactions between brands and consumers, the customer journey increasingly resembles a patchwork. Remember that most consumers do not consider their digital customer experience distinct from their in-store encounters.
An individual may, for instance, have a fantastic in-store experience.
But then they get to your website and run into new problems. However, potential clients may slip between the cracks if your online journey isn’t well-mapped. They may become aware of your brand early on but lose out on crucial touchpoints as they progress through the sales funnel.
Given the abundance and diversity of consumer contacts with brands in digital spaces, this lack of uniformity introduces unnecessary danger.
Think about the many online digital touchpoints that consumers have. They can learn more about your offer, voice their opinions, evaluate you against the competition, and converse with staff members. In other words, clients’ digital interactions with a company may either win them over for life or turn them into rabid haters.
Marketers will have to overcome the challenge of maintaining a competitive edge by providing customers with a remarkable digital experience.
Defining Digital Customer Experience (DCX)
The digital customer experience (DCX) includes every digital touchpoint between a customer and your brand. However, offline contacts, such as visiting a store or speaking with a representative over the phone, are still integral to the overall consumer experience.
However, most customers do not consider the customer journey in digital versus non-digital interactions. Both online and physical interactions must be customer-centric, high-quality, and enjoyable to provide individuals with a fantastic overall customer experience.
Advantages of DCX
Having a top-notch offering isn’t enough, though it’s vital. Every touchpoint along the buyer’s journey needs to be exceptional.
You can’t fulfill your demanding clients’ needs by treating them like a stream of faceless numbers in a funnel. Instead, please give them a 360-degree experience that makes them feel like people. Their loyalty will increase if you provide them with good times.
The competition between Google and Yahoo can serve as a helpful illustration. The two businesses competed against one another at one point. On the other hand, Yahoo kept tack-on features unrelated to internet searches (news, stock tracker, trends, weather, horoscopes, ads, entertainment, fantasy sports, etc.). At the same time, Google relentlessly focused on satisfying customer expectations and providing the best experience for users when looking for information on the internet.
Therefore, Google has cornered the market on online search, and Yahoo has become a nostalgic relic, on par with MySpace.
As for the conclusion? Many of your clients will go elsewhere if your company doesn’t give a fantastic digital customer experience.
DCX Strategies & Trends for 2022
Let’s look at some current developments and initiatives in digital customer experience and how they might benefit your business.
1. Make It a One-of-a-Kind Encounter
Customers dislike feeling like they’re just another number. On the contrary, they’re looking for a tailored experience from beginning to end.
It is more advanced than suggesting products based on a customer’s past purchases. This also includes AI-powered chatbots, tailored e-commerce content marketing experiences based on audience segments, click-to-action (CTA) contextualization based on user behavior, personalized offers based on customer data, real-time social media interactions, and a responsive, helpful support team.
Customers will feel more appreciated if they are given individualized service. Your retention rates should increase as a result.
2. Include Digital Points of Interaction With Customers in Each Process
Multiple digital touchpoints and traditional channels like in-store purchases and in-person consultations are essential for a seamless customer experience. Customer touchpoints can include articles, blogs, webinars, videos, podcasts, emails, and social media posts, depending on where they occur in the customer journey.
The quality and feel of your digital touchpoints must mirror those of your physical ones. They have as much of an impact on consumers’ mental images of your brand as any actual tangible items. By way of illustration, if you’re trying to establish yourself as an industry authority, but your blog entries are often one or two sentences long and vague, you’re doing more harm than good for your brand.
3. Sync Your Content With Your Goals
In light of Google’s changes, ensuring your content answers users’ questions is more important than ever. To succeed, you need to provide people with what they want.
Organic search engine rankings on Google will drop if your page content doesn’t match user intent. Google’s primary concern is providing search results appropriate for the user’s needs. Your bounce rate will skyrocket even if you manage to appear in Google’s search results because any visitors who click through will immediately go.
4. Publish Only Top-Notch Material
To a large extent, content is no longer paramount. Every day, a lot of content is produced. Thus, only the best of the best will stand out. Delivering high-quality content through various digital channels is crucial to establish a first-rate digital consumer experience.
Whether content should educate (by providing a solution to a problem or guidance toward a goal) or entertain (by providing a diversion) is a question that depends on your target demographic and the nature of your business.
5. Optimize for Mobile Devices
For some brands, a customer’s mobile device will be the primary point of contact for all digital engagements. It could be your target demographic shortly. Whatever the case, you should make your content and digital touchpoints mobile-friendly.
6. Create a Content Hub
Create a content hub if you want to wow your audience with a fantastic digital customer experience.
What we call a “content hub” is a central location on the web where many related pieces of information have been collected and organized. That might be a collection of ingredients used in the cosmetics industry. Another example is a company in the financial sector that offers financial planning services and publishes a comprehensive guide to financial literacy, complete with calculators and other resources.
One main page is all that’s needed for some content centers. One alternative is compiling some related blog entries into a single unit, known as a subject cluster.
The advantages are consistent with any format. Finally, establishing a network of internal links may better distribute your domain’s link equity.
7. Automate Where You Can
With automation, you can boost customer service encounters on a massive scale. Keeping things personable when your consumer base expands might be challenging. With the help of automation, it’s possible to stay in touch with customers on a human level (at least to some extent) while simultaneously expanding your business.
Automation might be helpful, but it can also irritate customers if you’re not careful. Suppose an AI-powered chatbot cannot provide a user with an immediate solution to a problem. In that case, the chatbot should guide the user to the following best resource: a knowledge base or a human customer service representative.
8. Put More Effort Into Customer Support
When people are feeling disappointed or furious, they often express themselves verbally. Therefore, excellent customer service should be the center of your digital strategy for managing the customer experience.
You can provide multichannel help using customer support technologies, customer relationship management systems, and digital experience platforms. Think about the various ways in which your customers can interact with your support staff. Some customers may use a self-service digital platform, while others prefer to call in and speak to a human.
Your customer base consists of individuals with varying expectations for how they should be assisted in times of need. Providing your consumers what they want will improve your relationships with them and lessen the amount of aggravation they experience when they run into issues. In the long run, it will boost client loyalty.
9. Check the Level of Customer Engagement & Participation
Indicators of a good or bad digital customer experience can be found in surveys and other measures of customer involvement. They aid in evaluating the efficacy of various digital touchpoints and suggesting ways to enhance such touchpoints. The method of customer interaction is altered for each channel of communication.
Improving the customer experience is a primary concern when analyzing customer engagement metrics.
10. Collect Customer Feedback
To give your consumers a better digital experience, you need to hear what they say. More so than consumer participation, it reveals the emotional state of your clientele and highlights the most common problems they face.
At a more fundamental level, consumer feedback shows you your strengths and weaknesses.
It’s crucial to pay attention to feedback that isn’t given directly to you, such as on third-party review sites like Google, Yelp, Trust Pilot, etc., in addition to gathering input now through things like Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys and customer support contacts. Showing that you value your customer’s opinions and are willing to act on indirect feedback demonstrates that you are dedicated to servicing them and want to fix any issues that may emerge.
11. Connect Your Digital Marketing Platforms
There will be a lot of channel switching as customers work their way through the conversion funnel. They may start with a video on YouTube, go on to a blog post on your site, and finally end up at a review aggregator. After that, kids may head back to YouTube or check out TikTok. Ultimately, they may return to your e-commerce site in a few weeks to complete the purchase.
Integrating your marketing channels ensures that customers get a consistent, high-quality experience across all touchpoints, which is crucial for making the digital customer journey as smooth as possible.
You want the same quality and consistency across your interactions with the company, whether talking to a customer service representative, attending a webinar, or buying anything.
You may boost your brand in numerous ways through a digital transformation that your increased level of integration will facilitate.
DCX is the Primary Driver of Organic Expansion
It’s common knowledge that focusing on providing a superior digital customer experience boosts organic traffic and sales. A satisfied customer is likelier to buy from you again and recommend your brand to others.
It causes an increase in CLV and a decrease in CAC (CAC). In the end, your brand will be more powerful, thanks to the support of a small but devoted audience. And that’s a surefire way to expand your company.
