Each interaction you have with your customers in a digital interface is part of your digital customer experience. Together, those front-office interactions \u2014 and the back-office services that support them \u2014 are important to your company\u2019s overall customer experience, not only the digital portion.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s because today\u2019s customers expect your company to be as modern as they are. While it was once enough to deliver digital customer experiences through smartphones and websites, customers increasingly want new-age interfaces. Virtual reality\/augmented reality (VR\/AR), holograms and more will be your future customers\u2019 expectations \u2014 until they expect something else.<\/p>\n
But don\u2019t be misled. Investing in the latest technology does not guarantee great digital customer experiences. You need two other elements that are even harder to attain: understanding and empathy. That means knowing what your customers want, need and expect, plus putting yourself in your customers\u2019 shoes at every point on their journey.<\/strong><\/p>\n Delivering a great digital customer experience is a big job. Below are the six areas your organization must excel in to help customers know your brand, buy your products or services and come back for more.<\/p>\n If that sounds like a tall order, it is \u2014 and it all starts with understanding your customers’ needs to build understanding and empathy within your organization. <\/span>\u00a0To get started, we can break learning about your customers into three areas: research, visualization and analytics.<\/p>\n Today, it seems every time you go to the doctor, shop in a store or buy a new car, you receive a text or an email asking you to participate in a survey. The data gathered through surveys is quantitative data \u2014 numerical information companies can easily summarize and communicate.<\/p>\n However, quantitative research, such as the customer survey, has several drawbacks. First, it does not consider the full context of the customer\u2019s interaction. Second, it also cannot reveal the context in which the customer completed the survey, which can influence results. Most importantly, it does not paint the full, end-to-end story of the customer\u2019s journey you need.<\/strong><\/p>\n Qualitative research, on the other hand, is all about context. In-depth customer interviews<\/a>, for example, put the researcher face-to-face with the customer. This allows them to gain a nuanced and detailed level of customer understanding that helps you obtain one of the most important elements of all customer experiences: empathy.<\/p>\n Another type of qualitative research, customer observations<\/a>, allows you to watch customers as they experience your product or service in real time. By offering a non-intrusive method of gathering information, you can see them acting without influence or prompts to help you answer key questions, such as:<\/p>\n One challenge with qualitative methods is that they leave room for interpretation. Proper training of your researchers can help to overcome this challenge and yield the most meaningful results.<\/p>\n Another form of qualitative research, journey mapping<\/a>, helps you fulfill an otherwise overwhelming job \u2014 seeing and understanding the entire customer journey. As a well-known, proven method, journey mapping is a tool that all levels of your organization can buy into, but creating an accurate journey map is not easy.<\/strong><\/p>\n Even a seemingly simple transaction \u2014 say, buying a product \u2014 has many touch points. Maybe the transaction beings with a pop-up ad. It grabs the potential customer\u2019s attention, and they click on it. What happens after that touch point?<\/p>\n Imagine the customer arrives at your company\u2019s generic landing page, their next touch point. Hopefully, you have at least categorized your products so the customer can scan a list in the correct category and select what they are looking for \u2014 another touch point. If you have not categorized your products, hopefully, the customer can search your site and find what they are looking for. This may generate multiple touch points, not all of them positive!<\/p>\n Now they found the product. What does purchasing the product look like? Do they have to place it into a shopping cart and then \u201ccheck out\u201d and enter payment information, or do they have the option to buy it directly? Can your site \u201cremember\u201d the customer for their next purchase? Do you have the capability to recommend similar products or additional products the customer may be interested in? How simple is that process?<\/p>\n Identifying and tracking all these touch points is challenging, but researchers and designers skilled at observing customer behavior can identify the ones creating the most friction.<\/strong> Scrunched-up faces, sighs, curse words, head scratches \u2014 these are signs of friction and proof that not all digital touch points have equal weight.<\/p>\n The goal of your journey mapping exercise is to document a qualitative assessment of touch points, all of them culminating in a single outcome. Collectively, your journey map will make those touch points simpler, more relevant and more rewarding.<\/p>\n But within each outcome, certain touch points have greater purpose and impact than others. For example, you certainly want your \u201cPay Now\u201d button and touch point to launch an easy, streamlined process. Other touch points closer to that magic moment, such as viewing similar products, have a purpose of driving sales, but they do not have the same direct impact on revenue.<\/p>\n However, journey mapping to improve your digital customer experience requires more than tracking and analyzing touch points. You must go beyond the usual result of Post-It notes and diagrams by making journey mapping part of your strategy.<\/p>\n When used intentionally, journey maps don\u2019t simply identify friction in the digital customer experience \u2014 they allow you to avoid friction altogether as experiences and expectations evolve. In other words, they help you plan for future experiences as well.<\/strong><\/p>\n The hottest trend in customer experience research is advanced analytics of the data you gather from your customer interviews, observations, journey maps and other forms of qualitative and quantitative research.<\/p>\n Modern customer analytics tools use artificial intelligence and machine learning to quickly analyze your many valuable pieces of data.<\/strong> Automation<\/a> allows you to instantly notify your teams of problems they would not have identified as quickly \u2014 or at all \u2014 with manual methods. In short, investing in analytics tools is an investment in your company\u2019s future growth. See this Gartner report<\/a> for reviews of the best customer analytics tools.<\/p>\n One important outcome of your research is which digital channels customers use most commonly do business with you. While customers now have access to a staggering number of channels, they may ease your mind by saying they expect to complete transactions entirely from their smartphones. But that answer is not as simple as it seems.<\/p>\n Smartphones, like PCs and laptops before them, enable multiple channels, too. Companies can push information to them through phone calls, emails and SMS text messages. Or users can retrieve information themselves through websites, blogs, social media, live chats and more. Here\u2019s the bottom line: in the modern world, customers expect more control over transactions than ever before. <\/span>\n Expecting more control means expecting more choice, which means that \u201cpush\u201d and \u201cpull\u201d channels can become intermingled. For example, a customer might go to your website to place an order (channel 1), engage with a chatbot to get answers to questions (channel 2) and receive an email confirming the transaction (channel 3).<\/p>\n Then, say the customer loses internet service and has a problem with the product. They may place a traditional phone call (channel 4), where they either find what they\u2019re looking for through an automated call center (channel 5) or speak to a person (channel 6).<\/p>\n Imagine the customer\u2019s frustration if information disappears as they navigate the various channels. On their own, each one may be great \u2014 but if they don\u2019t work together, the customer may have to re-enter the order, identity, payment information and more.<\/p>\n Designing your digital channels to function exceptionally on their own is the hallmark of a \u201cmultichannel\u201d approach. As customers\u2019 expectations of control and choice continue to evolve, a more modern approach has emerged called \u201comnichannel.\u201d<\/p>\n However, instead of thinking of how to make each channel the best independently, you must now work toward making them work together to deliver great customer experiences.<\/strong> Each of your channels can be extremely efficient alone, but customers may lose data as they transfer from one to another \u2014 which happened six times in the example above.<\/p>\n Instead, you need an approach that minimizes the risk of frustrating or confusing customers as they encounter various interfaces and channels on their customer journey. In digital marketing terms, you need an omnichannel approach.<\/p>\n To truly succeed with a great digital customer experience, your research, visualization, analytics and channels must work together as part of a comprehensive digital customer experience strategy. Your strategy\u2019s goal? To put the customer at the center of every interaction.<\/p>\n Modern customers live in a modern world. They expect their experiences to be relevant to their needs and to engage them, even if those experiences deliver products in a traditional way. A defined digital customer experience strategy empowers you to play different roles, or archetypes, at each stage of your customer encounter.<\/strong> These roles include:<\/p>\n By assuming these roles, you let your customer know you care about them and their problems. Your use of modern technology demonstrates that you can keep up with their lives and needs, which become more digital every day. This is an essential part of building your brand for the future, whatever it brings.<\/strong><\/p>\nComponents of a Great Digital Customer Experience<\/h2>\n
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Research: Gathering Digital Customer Experience Data<\/h2>\n
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Visualization: Mapping the Digital Customer Experience Journey<\/h2>\n
Tracking Every Touch Point<\/h3>\n
Determining Digital Touchpoint Purpose and Impact<\/h3>\n
Journey Mapping as Strategy<\/h3>\n
Analytics: Interpreting Digital Customer Experience Data<\/h2>\n
Common Digital Customer Experience Channels and Mediums<\/h2>\n
Putting It All Together: Digital Customer Experience Strategy<\/h2>\n
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2022 Emerging Strategies and Trends<\/h2>\n