How to deliver a Delightful Digital Customer Experience in 2023-2024?

How important is your company’s online presence for you, especially when you have expanded digital touchpoints to deliver a contextual and cohesive digital customer experience?

From the consumer’s perspective, any digital journey starts or ends digitally. So, for your brand to be cut above the rest in this competitive edge, solid digital customer experience management becomes vital.

Digital customer experience covers all aspects related to the overall CX (Customer Experience) and UX (User Experience). Digital CX encourages businesses to be more proactive and helps attract new customers, satisfy current customers, engage prospective customers, and retain loyal customers.

However, are you done just by launching a digital platform for your customers to trade in? Let us see,

What is the importance of Digital Customer Experience for your Business?

An engaging, user-friendly, and pleasant digital journey can help your business bridge the gap between consumer expectations and consumer experiences. Customer-centric businesses always do good as compared to product-centric businesses.

To successfully retain prospective customers, it is important for brands to provide a positively impacting digital journey that is worth returning to. Let us dive into some statistics to get a clear perspective:

More than 75% of businesses worldwide believe that CX is the ultimate competitive differentiator in a customer’s digital journey.

65% of consumers are likely to turn into loyal customers if they enjoy a positively impacting digital journey.

Moreover, according to a report by Statista on Customer behaviour based on CX;

We know what you are thinking. Where to start? This blog is a comprehensive guide to delivering the ultimate digital customer experience along with some important trends to look forward to in 2023-2024. To start with,

What is Digital Customer Experience?

Digital CX is the interaction of a user with an organization, facilitated by digital technologies and tools. These interactions are hosted by web/mobile apps, websites, e-commerce sites, emails, or social media content via smart devices.

What is the difference between CX and digital CX?

Digital CX is the outcome of a customer’s overall journey on your digital platform. How they interacted with your digital platform, what they liked or disliked about your brand, and most importantly, what perspective they carry about your brand, at the end of their digital journey.

Whereas, CX is a wider term that includes customer experience from both online and offline interactions with your organization. CX is the outcome of the customer’s perspective after an encounter with both, the people and products of your company.

Now that you have a better understanding of digital customer experience, let us have a hands-on to,

The Digital Customer Experience Best Practices 2023-2024 :

1. Understand your audience :

Thoroughly studying the Buyer persona is vital, especially in a customer-centric approach. Firstly, focus on ‘What buyers love?’ and secondly ‘What do buyers expect from your brand?’ If you understand this, you can successfully bridge the pertaining demand-supply gap.

Moreover, the Buyers Persona help you easily understand your targeted customer segment, so that you can deliver perfectly tailored, highly personalized products.

To have a wider perspective, try to elevate the entire digital journey of customers taking care of all the small and big aspects from the initial stage. To illustrate, when a user visits your website or mobile app, try to build their Buyer Persona by figuring out basics like what are they searching for, what are their expectations, what inspires them to approach your website/app, and most importantly, which product/solution offered by your brand can convert them to a potential consumer.

Strategically mapping out the customer’s digital journey can help you identify the digital touchpoints that can help deliver the best CX.

2. Omni-channel CX is a good choice :

Let us first understand the difference between Omnichannel and multichannel approach.

Omnichannel v/s Multichannel

In a multi-channel model, all the data from different channels are available. However, as the channels are not interconnected, there is no data syncing, thereby imparting a disconnected customer experience.

Whereas in an omnichannel model, all the channels are inter-connected and the data available is well-synchronized. Hence it offers a smooth and consistent customer experience throughout.

The more channels your business supports, the more delighted your customers are. Especially when these channels are interconnected to establish intercommunication. Customers find the omnichannel approach delightful because:

• They no longer need to worry about the interfaces they are unfamiliar with
• To their comfort, they can select a medium to trade in
• As the channels are interconnected, interactions are easy every time.
• Experience is consistent and seamless across all the channels

3. Mobile-first approach always works :

More than 90% of the internet population worldwide uses a mobile phone to go online. Whether you have a website or a mobile app, emphasizing on the mobile-first approach is mandatory while designing the digital journey.

Know that you have many competitors in the market. Within minutes users switch from one site/app to another to check the online presence of different brands. Before making a purchase, users compare and judge how your brand stacks up against your competitors. So, if your app/website does not fit their expectations, they bounce back immediately.

Design a responsive website/app with a dynamic and highly interactive UI that renders seamlessly across all viewports (mobile, tablet, desktop) irrespective of the screen size. This will positively impact the UX making it easier to navigate through the media and content on your app/site.

4. Magic of Data Analytics :

With data analytics tools like Google Analytics or Apple Analytics, you can monitor, track, and analyse customer data during their entire digital journey. This data can help you identify all the stronger areas and the weaker areas so that you improve the overall digital CX.

With the data analytics tools, you get to identify all the friction points that are leading to bounce rates and site/app abandonment. Once you identify these areas, you can proactively take measures and make amendments.

Similarly, knowing what your customers love about your brand can help you retain potential customers and build a loyal customer base. Also, you can use these as digital touchpoints to attract, entice, and engage more customer leads.

Moreover, data analytics can help you optimize the content on your app/site, and devise personalized offers. Once you have better customer insight, interacting with your customers becomes smooth and easy. Data Analytics can play a big game changer while defining robust digital CX strategies.

5. Emphasize customer reviews and feedback :

You can’t call it a day by launching new digital CX strategies. The customer’s perspective on your brand is very much important for the success of any product you launch. For this, you must emphasize on timely interactions by reviewing customer feedback, especially negative ones.

You can conduct a survey or use an NPS (Net Promoter Score) to collect quantitative and qualitative information regarding the digital CX. By doing this, you get a clear idea about how customers are receiving and perceiving your content.

To understand your customers better, you can conduct a survey by asking questions like:

• How do you rate our brand on a scale of 0-10
• Would you like to recommend our brand to friends/family/colleagues?
• Which of our featured products/services do you love the most?
• Would you like to share more details for a hyper-personalized product/service?
• What are your suggestions that we can implement for improving your experience with our brand?

6. Conduct user testing :

User testing is also a precision test that promises accurate results. You can select one, two, or a group of individuals to try and test your product/services before you launch it in the market. The testers can then validate your product or give ideas for improvements.

This test is most popular in the digital world as a usability test. Businesses conduct an app/site usability test where users are requested to initiate, access through, and complete the entire digital journey. User feedback is used for modifications and improvements. This saves a lot of time and costs for the aftermath.

7. Futuristic Perspective :

2022 has rolled out. So are all your 2022 digital CX strategies. In the digital space where technologies update within a blink, you need to update, upgrade, and adapt to these advancements.

With technology advancements, new trends upsurge and change the perspective of customers. In case, if your customers adapt to these changing trends and your brand does not, it can prove to be a big drawback. So, have a futuristic perspective and keep a watch on emerging trends.

Talking of the emerging trends, let us see what is new with digital CX in 2023-2024.

The Latest Digital Customer Experience trends to look forward to in 2023-2024 :

1. Advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) :

Over 54% of CEOs across the globe perceive CX as a competitive differentiator. AI is shaping CX with its myriad of technologies like deep learning, NPL (Natural Language Processing), automatic speech recognition, task-oriented dialog, and contextual awareness.

More than half of the organizations worldwide are already implementing AI CX to access customer insights and deliver more natural human-like interactions.

Be it chatbots, virtual assistants, AR & VR, predictive analysis, personalization, or data security. AI is the driving force underlying all these technologies.

2. Increasing adoption of Chatbots :

The chatbot market is expected to garner USD 1.25 billion by 2025. Chatbots are delivering 24 by 7 of 365 days real-time customer support to address script-based basic queries.

Chatbots are reducing the load on customer support employees and drastically cutting down the response time. AI/ML enables access to customer insights which helps identify issues like shopping cart abandonment or bounce-back. Chatbots can be deployed to send promotional offers to fetch their attention and drive customer engagement.

3. Self-Service capabilities gaining momentum :

Chatbots have limitations as they can only address basic issues. Complex issues require human intervention. Making customers wait longer to answer their queries is a bad business ethic. To overcome this organizations are pressing more on technologies leveraging self-service capabilities.

This can be achieved by:

Informative guides : Customers can easily access FAQ guides or How-to guides and get quick solutions to their queries. This is a knowledge-based self-service capability deployed to make information-seeking fast and efficient.

Automated response : An example of an automated response is; when a customer files a return, the system shoots an automated email confirming the return with specifications. Automating the workflow reduces efforts, time, and cost occurred by human intervention.

4. Predictive Analysis taking over the digital space :

Through predictive analysis, companies are determining how customers will react to new business strategies. The use of predictive analysis is drastically increasing to understand customer behaviour and build Buyer Persona.

Predictive analysis is becoming the fundamental tool to highlight online presence in the digital space. It makes the digital journey more engaging and interactive. Companies are increasingly implementing predictive analysis in lead generation through advertisements and campaigns.

5. New High-dimension AR and VR tools :

Companies are elevating their CX by offering a virtual store-front experience through the latest AR and VR tools. To discuss one or two,

• In-store, by scanning a product customers can view the product details and reviews.
• The latest AR tools scan the body of a customer and give instantaneous body measurements. This tool is proving to be very helpful for fashion brands and boutiques.
• AR tools scan the face and hair of a customer and provide information about the skin type and hair type. This tool is proving very useful for beauty salons and cosmetic companies.
• The ‘try-as-you-buy’ experience is highly trending as many organizations are offering a try-on for hyper-personalization. This helps customers make quick decisions confidently.

6. Personalization & Optimization of CX :

The CX personalization and optimization technology market is expected to garner USD 11.6 billion by 2026, growing at a fantastic CAGR of 65%.

Companies are increasingly deploying hyper-personalization to generate new leads and increase engagement rates. A simple example of personalization is a customized email with the customer’s name or personalized recommendations based on search and purchase history.

Customers are readily sharing personal details if they trust the brand and if they are getting more personalized products/services. By automating personalization companies are enhancing the digital journey.

7. Improved data privacy and data security :

Protecting user-sensitive data becomes an organization’s primary responsibility. Data breaches and data threats can be major drawbacks that can let the loss of a loyal customer base. Customers willingly share their data, but once they get an idea of a data leak, they quickly retreat and abandon the site/app.

To make the digital journey of customers completely safe and secure and for intact protection of user-sensitive data, organizations are moving towards AI-powered data protection and security tools.

Popular Case-studies for Digital Customer Experience :

1. Disney’s Magic Bands :

Disney introduced a fun way to start the customer journey introducing the Disney Magic Bands. Customers do not have to carry physical tickets anymore. They receive an e-ticket in their mail which is exchanged for an electronic magic band when they enter Disney World. This strategy is based on the omnichannel digital customer experience management tool.

2. Ralph Lauren X Snapchat :

Ralph Lauren lovers can now try all its outfits virtually through their Snapchat Avatars. This does not end here. Customers can not only try outfits but also purchase and make payments through Snapchat. The virtual storefront hosted by this brilliant union is sure to deliver a fun delightful journey to elevate the customer experience.

3. Netflix :

Dedicatedly working on data analytics Netflix hits bull’s-eye every time for every customer. Netflix works on the statistics that a user engaging with its platform for more than 15 hours a week is likely to retain with a 75% probability rate. Working on the personalization & optimization digital CX model, Netflix offers the best recommendations, plus highly personalized and unique experiences.

4. Loreal’s AI products :

Loreal is driving excellent customer experience at home as well as in stores with its advanced AI products. Loreal’s AI scans a customer’s face and hair and recommends relevant products to suit their skin or hair type. Accurate personalization with AI/ML-driven data is helping customers choose the perfect product.

5. Warby Parker’s AR :

Warby Parker offers a wide range of uniquely designed eyewear products like eyeglasses, sunglasses, and contact lenses to up your style game. The Warby Parker app lets you virtually try its entire range of eyewear before making a purchase through its AR technology.

Conclusion

Buyers’ expectations are always increasing. To deliver a delightful and worth returning digital journey it is important that you offer the best product, services, and relationships that your customer desire.

For this, you need tools to deliver, plans to strategize a delightful digital CX, and partners to make this possible.

As an entrepreneur, I recommend you to choose a trusted and reliable partner who can help you accomplish your goals and help you deliver the best. You can contact me for a FREE consultation either with me or with my tech executives.