Customer Experience in The Digital Age
Customers have increasingly high service expectations of the platforms they use daily. What are these expectations, and how do brands meet them? In this digital day and age, what exactly does good CX mean?
Written by Victoria Kent, Senior Investment Specialist
This information does not take into account your personal objectives, financial situation or needs. You should consider if the relevant investment is appropriate having regard to your own objectives, financial situation and needs.
When my local barista remembers my name and coffee order, I get a warm fuzzy feeling. I feel seen, heard, and valued.
But a great customer experience doesn’t just make people feel good – it translates into tangible business results. A consistently positive and innovative customer experience will inevitably mean more sales, as customers come back time and time again. Just ask my local barista.
Customer experience, also known as CX, can also be thought of as member experience, guest experience, client experience, or patient experience depending on your company and sector. CX is especially important for new brands, who have to work harder to build their reputation and brand loyalty.
As one industry expert puts it:
"CX is the opposite of an investment in niceties and abstract gain. It is a direct investment in the organisation’s financial performance."
Customers have increasingly high service expectations of the platforms they use daily. What are these expectations, and how do brands meet them? In this digital day and age, what exactly does good CX mean?
Creating a cohesive customer journey across channels and devices
The COVID-19-induced surge in e-commerce activity highlighted the need for companies to create compelling omnichannel customer journeys.
Ten years of digital adoption was condensed into 100 days, leading to a disruption of customer loyalty as more customers shopped around across categories and switched across brands. Usually, to brands more value aligned to themselves.- Kevin Neher, McKinsey & Company
Recent research by Salesforce found "as customers shifted the channels they frequent and the experiences they favour, meeting customer expectations — let alone understanding them — became an even more challenging endeavour."
Part of this challenge is each channel plays a distinct and critical role in the customer journey.
Take brick-and-mortar for example; far from being obsolete like many once predicted, the in-store channel is proving to be a valuable complement to online. In-store benefits include immediate availability of the product, access to expert advice and an easier returns process.
Does this mean every company needs a brick-and-mortar presence? Not necessarily. Ultimately, it depends on who your customers are, how customers want to engage you and for what reasons. How do you get the answers to those questions? Data.
How to use data to create more relevant customer experiences
Marketing needs data, and lots of it, to be effective. In Saleforce’s survey of 8,200 marketing leaders worldwide, 78% of marketers said their customer engagement is data-driven.
On average, business-to-business (B2B) companies use 15 data points (as opposed to 12 for business-to-consumer companies). These data points include ‘known digital identities’ (e.g. email addresses), transactional data, declared interests/preferences, second-party data, inferred interests/preferences, offline identities (postal address).
Data empowers marketers to deliver the trusted, personalized engagement customers expect, but managing this data is becoming more complex. As with any analysis, the outputs are only as good as the inputs, so good quality data is essential. This means data hygiene, completeness and timeliness are important factors to consider.
And nothing says poor customer experience like a data breach. Data security is paramount, particularly in instances where sensitive personal information is stored. Moreover, there is a tightrope to be walked between personalisation and privacy – any use of data must be inherently in the customer’s best interest. Trust is hard to gain but so very easy to lose.
It's all about personalization
Today, 71 percent of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions—and 76 percent will switch if they don’t like their experience.
“It’s a new day for marketers, a time of tremendous transformation that requires us to reimagine how we connect with customers and personalize every interaction.” - Sarah Franklin, President & CMO, Salesforce
Embedded finance
Companies already have a lot of data about their customers. Embedded finance leverages this data and turns it into information – offering personalised financial products in contextually relevant situations. “Nudges” over big, bold banner marketing.
This way, companies can be proactive; anticipating needs and offering up solutions without customers having to search elsewhere, fill out forms or download yet another app.
It’s important to remember: context is key. By offering products at the most relevant point in a customer’s journey, a company can remove friction and dramatically increase product adoption.
Ultimately, this increases a customer's lifetime value and makes it just that bit harder for them to leave.
Customer experience is everyone's responsibility
Long thought to be only the marketing department’s job, it's now clear customer experience is an enterprise-wide effort. The 'omnichannel' customer journey is powered by cross-departmental communication – harmony across silos.
“[it] takes a whole village to deliver CX...[it’s] every single department’s role to deliver…marketers must map out stakeholders as well as the customer journey across all touchpoints.” - Barbara Stewart, Econsultancy consultant