Companies need to become adaptable and adjust their business models to reflect the changes brought by the digital era. Customer experience is a core component in today’s evolving digital economy. Customer demands are increasing day by day. These demands are increasingly focused on speed, digitization, reliability, convenience, and accessibility, influencing organizations to rethink customer experience. To meet those demands, companies must offer an exceptional customer experience. Placing effort into producing a better experience will produce more clients, more sales, and encourage loyalty. Businesses need to see the value in focusing on the digital customer experience when it comes to achieving their business goals, significantly reducing costs, and creating more satisfied customers.

What is digital customer experience?

Digital customer experience is the sum of the interactions between customer and brand taking place on digital platforms such as mobile, desktop, iPad, or other tablets. It may start with your company website but could also include mobile apps, chatbots, social media, and any other channels where the touchpoint is virtual.

The more digital the journey, the higher the customer satisfaction.

“We cannot promote our brands as responsive, caring, and customer-focused while ignoring too many of our customers’ needs and complaints in social media.” – Augie Ray 

Digital technology has transformed customers’ habits. They expect to get what they want almost the exact moment they want it. Customers are market-savvy, comparing the prices of products, or checking reviews, all within seconds thanks to this digital era.

Making customer service functions digital means more than just creating a company Twitter or Facebook account for customers to tweet complaints or leave reviews/ratings. To offer a great customer experience, you need to implement an airtight strategy that reflects the requirements. With proper planning, streamlining customer processes, and eradicating inconsistencies and errors, you can build strong customer support.

Poor service = bad feedback

The digital era has given customers a wider forum to discuss, and vent about varying experiences. With Facebook groups, yelp reviews to name a few, customers can be candid about their experience with the brand.

Keep Customers Happy

The concept of customer service is not new. The stakes are higher than ever in today’s transparent marketplace. Businesses need to restructure the customer experience to drive loyalty and advocacy. As customer care fuses itself in the digital era it has given room for competitors to have a vantage point.

When your brand incorporates outstanding customer service as part of its marketing strategy, you benefit from long-term results and distinguish your brand from your competition. Great customer service produces happy consumers who will continue to buy from you, and more importantly, refer others to your company.

People are 4x more likely to make a purchase when referred by a friend, and there’s an 18% boost in loyalty from a referred customer versus the ones acquired via a different method.

Bad customer service interactions with your company – whether in-person, on the phone, via live chat, or over email – are what your customers will remember vividly; 70% of buying experiences are based on how the customer feels they are being treated.

1. Moving from expense to growth engine

Outsourcing a virtual team to a large and ‘cheap’ call center is often no longer the right strategy. Customer service is a prominent part of the customer experience, and therefore deserves a fully-fledged role within the organization. It increasingly forms the foundation for growth: satisfied customers are returning and loyal ones. A customer base cannot grow if more clients leave than come.

2. Use modern technology

CRM from the cloud, intelligent chatbots, and big data analytics: a modern customer service agent has many tools for boosting services. Use these tools, or else your competitor will. Advanced tech solutions are simply essential for many of the points mentioned here.

3. Do a complete customer view

The most important aspect of proper services is a comprehensive customer profile. It has to have information on purchases, personal preferences, messages on social media. This helps give customers personalized service which is an automatic positive for the business.

Customer care in the digital era is sensitive as everyone has an opinion and a platform to express it. Visualize yourself as the customer in order to understand what they truly need. An unhinged perspective allows you to create systems that put the customer first, as they say, ‘Customer is king’.