What Is Digital Customer Experience and How to Improve It?

Digital is the new black. Customers and brands all around the world have long understood that a well-developed digital customer experience strategy is the key to increasing the quality of brand communication and delivering an even better service to customers all around the globe. 

91% of customers are more likely to make a repeat purchase from a brand, and 86% are ready to pay more after they had a positive experience with it. And digital customer experience has become a part of it a long time ago. This presents us with a perfect opportunity to jump deep into what an efficient digital customer experience strategy is and what industries can utilize it to bring the best experience to their customers. 

What Is a Digital Customer Experience? 

A digital customer experience is a total sum of all interactions a customer has with a brand online.

It includes: 

• A company’s website
• Social media chats and chatbots
• Mobile apps
• Any other online communication tool that a business may utilize

To develop an efficient and working digital customer experience, a business needs to find a perfect balance between all channels of communication (better yet, develop an omnichannel communication strategy) and between automated support solutions and human support consultants. 

Digital Customer Experience vs. Customer Experience

If digital customer experience strategy only focuses on online interactions with customers — which most users prefer — then, a customer experience is the entire scope of consumer communication. It includes: 

• In-store shopping 
• SMS text messages
• Calls
• PR campaigns
• Communication with brand representatives, etc.

What is digital customer experience? A vital part of a customer journey that takes it to the next level. 

Best Practices for Improving Digital Customer Experience Strategy

Research Your Audience

84% of companies that work to improve their customer experience report an increase in revenue. But how can a business improve customer experience if it doesn’t know what its customers want? 

How can a business know what its customers want without having a deep knowledge of its customers in the first place? This is the first question every brand needs to ask itself before starting to improve its customer journey. 

65% of marketing professionals admit they never or rarely research their audience, which means they know nothing about its needs and wants. In turn, 63% of consumers think brands are selling them products or services they do not need. These customers are more likely to be unsatisfied with whatever brands offer them and become perfect candidates for churning without ever making a purchase. 

Deep research of a brand’s audience will help it drastically improve its digital customer experience because the changes will be based on consumers’ requirements. It will also have a direct impact on a brand’s image — a brand that listens is a brand that sells. 

Collect Customer Feedback

Only 4 percent of unsatisfied customers complain to a business. That is 1 in 26. The rest churns right away. This means a brand will never know what it can do to attract them or change their opinion. 

The most efficient digital customer experience strategy will always include the “Collect feedback from your customers” step because it is a great way to improve a company’s services without having to spend resources on research and reports — let customers tell you what they really think about your approach to them. 

There are several ways to collect customer feedback efficiently: 

1. Proactive approach — make sure a customer service and support team reaches out to customers and asks them about the service they were provided with. Here, it is important to understand the digital channels every customer prefers. This will help ensure the most effective and not-at-all-annoying communication. For example, in the US, 64% of customers prefer email and only 30% want brands to contact them over the phone. 
2. Email surveys — regular email surveys will not only help gather feedback on a regular basis, but will also ensure every shift in customers’ mood and preferences is tracked, and every issue can be resolved almost immediately
3. Social media polls — an invaluable part of any digital customer experience marketing, social media can be used for gathering customer feedback in a very concise and timely manner. For the poll to be successful, provide your users with clear options for an answer and with a possibility to type their own answer. 

After gathering as much feedback as possible, allocate it all in one place and analyze it as soon as possible. This way, your customers’ voice will be heard, and your digital customer experience will improve constantly. 

Automate Responses

86% of customer support agents say they are overwhelmed with tickets and inquiries and cannot handle their workload on a regular basis. The quality of their work and the overall digital customer experience strategy suffer as a result. They also say, automation can help reduce the pressure and improve customer experience as a result. 

AI, chatbots, and even response templates, if implemented correctly, can become an inseparable part of digital customer experience. The most important part of it is to give any customer a possibility to connect with a human support consultant at any given moment — this way, they get the best of two worlds. 

Gather Data

Gathering expensive data when building a digital customer experience strategy is a must. To gather as much data as possible, a business needs to ask itself: 

• What is the target audience? 
• What communication do they prefer? 
• What are their key expectations from the service? 
• How many support agents will be the most optimal to cover ticket inflow? 
• How many tickets need to be escalated to L2 and L3 teams? 
• How difficult are tickets? 
• How long does it take to resolve an average ticket? 

These are just a few of the questions that can help a business to not only get as much information about its customers and their expectations, but to develop the most effective digital customer experience. 

Once gathered, the data should be analyzed, appropriate conclusions should be drawn, and the necessary changes should be made into the digital customer experience. 

Important: do not forget to streamline the process, so that the data gathered is extensive and updated constantly. Just like feedback, being up-to-date is of utmost importance. 

Never Stop Developing Your Digital Customer Experience Strategies

Just a decade ago, we couldn’t imagine customer experience going almost fully digital. Now, we can buy clothes without ever stepping foot into the shop, order food without visiting any restaurants, and book a trip from the comfort of our couches. Any business that stopped developing around 2013 is probably not in the market anymore. Just like any business that stops developing its digital customer experience today will not survive until 2033. 

So, whatever steps a business takes to improve its customer journey, be it gathering information, developing new CRM solutions, automating as many processes as possible, or making changes based on customer feedback, it needs to do it non-stop. This is the only way to stay on top of the customer service industry and provide the best digital customer experience every day.

SupportYourApp Examples of Digital Customer Experience

When it comes to digital customer experience, the SupportYourApp team always utilizes the following approaches: 

Reachability 

We carefully watch the number of inflowing tickets and advise our clients on the possible scaling scenarios they may consider in the future. We also carefully analyze their customer communication and offer them the most appropriate and fitting communication tools and channels. This helps their customers reach us wherever and whenever they want or need to. 

Flexibility 

We are always ready to perfect our services and make the tweaks needed to satisfy every customer. One of our most popular solutions for businesses? Scaling support teams during the winter holidays season. This way, an increased inflow has no influence on the quality or the speed of answers, and we reduce the possibility of burnout in every member of our support teams. 

Adaptability

We speak our clients’ customers’ language — both literally and figuratively. We adapt the style of our communication for every customer, all the while relaying our clients’ values and ideas to them. Our support consultants simplify the question for customers who may not be tech-savvy, and we make them as detailed as possible for those who want to know every aspect of their ticket resolution. 

Security

No digital customer experience can be great without being completely secure. SupportYourApp is PCI DSS-, GDPR-, CCPA-, and HIPAA-compliant and ISO certified. We know how to handle and protect a large amount of all kinds of data, sensitive included. 

Tech-Savviness

We hand-pick every candidate and carefully check their knowledge and the level of tech-savviness against the technical requirements of every project. During onboarding, every new candidate goes through the initial training of working with Windows and macOS, which makes sure no one has any issues adapting to the technologies they might have been unfamiliar with before starting their cooperation with us. 

Awareness 

We conduct team training and development sessions on a regular basis. This way, everyone stays up to date not only on the Customer Support industry, but on the most recent developments in tech, crypto, e-commerce, AI, and so on. We are always aware of the newest tech trends and develop our skills and knowledge accordingly. 

Is Digital Customer Service the Future? 

And now we come to the main questions — is developing digital customer service strategies our future? Well, not exactly. 

It is our present. That is why it is important to take care of it right now. 

Want a professional support team to help develop your perfect digital customer experience approach? Contact us at [email protected], and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

Let’s start our digital journey today 💛

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