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Three Ways to Improve Customer Experience in the Digital Age

Three Ways to Improve Customer Experience in the Digital Age

As the digital transformation continues its progress, technologies such as AI, machine learning, IoT, and blockchain are more than necessary to run a successful enterprise. However, in between developments, there’s one essential component that keeps businesses alive in the marketplace since ages ago, and that is customer experience (CX).

It’s tricky nowadays. Each of your customers has an individual buying journey and unique purchasing patterns, and interaction preferences. If you want to provide an impeccable service, you need to understand everything about your customers’ habits and goals to develop a plan that will make your product a perfect fit for their needs.

Today, it’s critical more than ever to upgrade and customize the interactions with your customers and earn their trust. Thankfully, in this article, we will advise you on three methods to improve customer experience in the digital age.

How the Modern Customer Thinks

four persons using their smartphones

The digital technology has transformed the way we live, it’s as simple as that! Smartphones, apps, machine learning, automation, smart devices, and so much more allows people to get something when they most need it, and in a manner that is most suitable for them. The tech development completely changed the consumers’ expectations, which led to a major shift in the buying process.

Now, there are more opportunities for companies. But, at the same time, they need to think about customers first and how they can improve their digital experience with the brand.

The shift takes place across all industries. The prospects are increasingly active on social networks, so cold calling slowly but surely is getting replaced with social media selling. Customers can now reach out directly to your accounts, or you can contact when with a DM, a tweet, or a comment.

Customer service reps are no longer limited only to a phone and a fax machine. Instead, they can now be proactive in the way they deal with customers while they’re using various channels to provide support. Social media, forums, reviews, and online communities are now an integral part of the branding environment. To adjust to the new reality, your enterprise must think digital-first regarding CX.

Related post: 6 Ways to Use Customer Experience as the Ultimate Marketing Tool

How Can Companies Compete for Customers

As a company that wants to win over customers in the digital age, you need to differentiate yourselves by providing prominent experience. You need to focus on staying in the customers’ minds even after they opt for your product/service. Besides selling a high-end product, If you want to win people over, as a brand, you need to go over and above to make people feel pleased about their purchase.

Show the customers that you value them. Personalize the experience as much as possible. Communication is the way to do it. Just because the transactions go digital, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t act like a human when communicating on devices. Each gesture and each additional value will be appreciated from your clients.

1. Listen to Your Customers

woman looking at the window listening with her headphones

Listening to your customers is essential for improving customer experience. Your customers and their problems are the reason why you’ve started your company. Not appreciating their feedback can backfire quickly for you.

You can use different tools and approaches to monitor what your customers are saying about your company, products, or services. Their feedback can help you improve your offering. In contrast, by not listening to your customers, you can lose their trust to the point when they leave you for one of your competitors.

Improving Your Marketing and Product Decisions

Listening is an excellent way for you to collect enough business-critical information.

By now, you’re probably aware that the best business decisions are backed by data and not assumptions. Customer feedback is one of the best ways to gather specific data that lets you figure out what the customers think about your brand.

Customers’ feedback also helps you improve your business and marketing decisions. By analyzing customer satisfaction, you can gauge whether you meet your customer expectations.

Customers Are the Best Auditors

No matter the tests, your customers will find a way to criticize your products and expose the potential loopholes in your services. This is why it’s a good idea to offer a sample product, test prototype, and an early access trial.

This lets your target customers test the product first before you offer it to the masses. When you listen to their feedback, you might discover startling details about your products that you couldn’t learn otherwise.

Be Empathetic

Being empathetic with your customers begins with effective listening. If people don’t believe you strive to comprehend their needs, they won’t be interested in your services anymore.

A satisfied customer is a retained customer. On the other hand, if you don’t listen to dissatisfied customers they’ll become offended and start looking in the direction of your rivals.

Listening helps you improve the experience for your customers and additionally, your brand will be perceived as empathetic.

Monitor Review Sites

Make sure that you monitor sites such as Yelp, Google My Business, Yahoo Local, and so on. Analyze every comment or feedback. Reply to comments that are directly related to your product. Be thankful for positive comments, and reward them when possible. With negative feedback, never fall under provocation. Try to provide a positive reply and figure out how you can resolve the problems fast to make the customer stay with your product.

Set up Google Alerts

Setting up Google Alerts is perhaps the easiest way to listen to your customers’ signals. By setting up an alert, each time a customer will mention your brand, you will get an email or notification. Also, you can set up alerts to stay informed of comments about your competitors. Again, you can also use the feedback for your rivals to improve your product/service with the feature that the competition doesn’t provide.

Poll and Surveys

Send your customers a survey every once in a while through instant messages on social media or an email after their purchase. It’s one of the best ways to get direct and honest feedback about your products/services.

Call Your Customers

Call your customers and connect with them on a personal level. With a simple call, you can directly uncover their experience with your company. People will always appreciate more when the CEO or the manager has called them straight away to listen to their opinion and honestly promise an improvement.

2. Personalize the Customer Experience

woman holding a yellow credit card while working on her laptop

When it comes to building relationships with customers, personalization is fundamental at every stage of the buying journey. The one-size-fits-all approach is long gone. Today, you can’t talk to your customers without a perfectly-tailored message.

Personalizing the customer experience is a wise move. 96% of marketers say that personalizing their customers’ experience improves their relationships with customers. According to Accenture, 75% of customers acknowledge want to buy from a company that recognizes them by name, knows their buying history, and recommends products for them.

Encourage Customers to Create User Profiles

In terms of personalization, one of the principal things you need to do is to allow your customers to create user profiles on your CMS. Once the profiles are created, you can follow the behaviors of your customers based on their profile activities.

Your customers expect you to track their habits as long as the data is used for enhancing their experience. More than half of consumers say they expect brands to know their needs upfront so they can receive appropriate suggestions.

Both you and your customers will benefit from this option. The personalized content on their profiles will improve their experience and ultimately drive more sales.

Segment Your Customers

When you’re collecting emails or creating ads on social media, segmentation is the key to effective customer experience. For example, with email marketing, you must have a segmented list of subscribers that you can send relevant content to.

Recent studies show that segmented emails have: 14.3% more opens, 101% more clicks, 4.7% fewer bounces, 9.4% fewer unsubscribes. More opens and clicks combined with fewer bounces and unsubscribes is a big advantage when it comes to CX and sales.

Implement Geotargeting practices

The location of your customers can be beneficial for improving their experience in a specific region. This is why the users pick their location or preferred language when they browse websites.

Bata choose a location

Image Source: Bata

By allowing the buyers to choose their language and location, you take the personalization one step further, and you’ll ensure that you deliver the right content at the right time for people that live in a certain region

Implement a Customer Loyalty Program

Better personalization means customer retention, and customer retention means repeated purchases. This is the reason why you need to implement an effective customer loyalty program.

Studies show 82% of consumers are more likely to buy from brands that provide loyalty programs. Customers that have bought more products from your brand have better conversion rates and generate more revenue per shopping session. They deserve a beneficial loyalty program. The most basic form of a customer loyalty program is to provide customers with a reward after a predetermined number of product purchases.

Set rewards based on customers’ spending. This will motivate them to spend even more money on your products/services. If you allow them to track their progress on their customer profiles or from their app, you can even enhance their shopping experience further.

3. Engage With Customers

customer engagement

Technology has provided us with more opportunities to interact with customers at every stage of the buying journey. The right technology can help you to connect with your customers, and identify and fix issues more efficiently.

Your Digital Presence Matters

Even though your customers’ interactions online usually motivated by the value of your content, you should never play down the importance of the technology behind the content.

Check if your website loads fast. See if it’s optimized for mobile devices and if it’s displayed appropriately on all browsers. Also, make sure that you have the right hosting and servers that support your website, check their efficiency, and their security as well.

Calls Can Still Be Relevant

Customers can always decide to reach out by phone before they opt for your services.

What would that call look like at your company? An automated message, outdated list of questions for the prospect, or an expert that is available for answers 24/7?

Again, it’s all about building relationships and loyalty for your brand. When a customer calls you, or vice versa, never assume that everything is perfect with only one call. Instead, go overboard and proactively ensure that the situation is the same as the customer says and that the solution/help is implemented properly.

Use Social Media

Today, prospective customers’ first interactions with a company either through digital review sites such as Yelp or comment and message on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Some people constantly complain about products on social media and actively look for help from their peers. If you read their comments carefully, every concern on your social media accounts is a chance to convert complainers into customer again. These engagements not only provide you with an opportunity to address the customer’s problem, increasing their satisfaction and loyalty, and show the public that you care.

Wrapping Up

In today’s fast-changing and connected world, as a company, you need to consider implementing a proper CX strategy as a part of the digital age, if you haven’t already.

Now, you have the opportunity to continuously engage with buyers, and meet their expectations through seamless interactions on your digital channels.

Customers expect their personalized experiences, they evaluate how you conduct conversations with them. According to that, they alter their behavior and expectations. People expect impeccable experiences regardless of channels that they’re in.

By focusing on the factors above, you will help your team to embrace the new digital landscape, surpass customer expectations and improve the overall CX in the process.

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