3 Keys to a Premium Digital Customer Experience

Author: Rob Etchepare

A digital omnichannel customer experience (CX) is critical to fostering customer engagement, satisfaction, growth, and retention. Online CX strategies often consist of self-service sales and support touchpoints, such as connecting via virtual assistance and other search capabilities. This strategy, while cost effective, can feel disconnected from the customer and lack authenticity.  

To close these gaps and pair the cost-effectiveness of an online support capability with best-in-class service, here are 3 ways to enhance your digital support experience and form a deeper connection with your customers. 

• Diversify how my customers engage with me. 

• Personalize each user’s experience. 

• Humanize a digital engagement. 

Diversify 

Diversity via an omnichannel experience is not a new concept. Connecting with consumers through traditional phone, web, chat, and email mediums are commonplace in most organizations. However, how a customer connects and interacts with each channel continues to evolve as digitization proliferates our everyday interactions.  

Mobile devices, apps, and social media platforms have taken over the traditional “online” web or voice interactions and will continue to be integral to how customers choose to interact with your company.  

Customers will often start on one channel to do basic research on their phone and then switch to a web-based experience to finish the interaction or vice versa. User preferences will vary greatly; therefore, it is key to educate your customers on the value and uniqueness each channel presents and create platforms which orient content and capabilities to both a traditional online environment and a mobile application.  

1. Creating consistent structures (including page layouts and UI) across channels that will feel seamless to the end user and allow them to interact across platforms. 
2. Capturing information, data and interactions from one channel to be integrated by the other channels builds a seamless experience.  
3. Deploying support features across platforms. For example, click-to-chat support should be available via web, chat, mobile app, and even traditional IVRs by sending a text message to connect.  

Personalize

Customers want to be the focal point in an active support function and personalizing content for them builds elements of relatability and engagement that connect with our human desire to be recognized. Customizing content, details, and engagement through customer profile information and past interactions can build trust and draw the customer in while encouraging them to come back for their next engagement.  

1. Create customer journeys that are tailored to defined customer segments through data profiling and analytics.  
2. Maintain historical patterns of interactions for future use. 
3. Gather immediate feedback to improve the overall experience. While traditional surveys still have value, simple emoji-based feedback can be quick and direct. 

Humanize

“Am I talking to a real person?”  

Digital engagement by nature is built around self-help, virtual engagement, and most recently AI-enabled support. These experiences often feel scripted, disjointed, and at their worst, fake. Stepping away from a synchronous, read-and-response format is critical to humanizing the customer experience. Customers often know they are not talking to a live person via chat or an agent in a traditional IVR, however that shouldn’t stop us from humanizing the experience.  

1. Use AI to integrate emotional responses throughout the interaction. Empathy, enlightenment, and even humor are great ways to draw the customer into the exchange.  
2. Incorporate other media into the engagement. For example, video blogs and memes are a great way to connect with customers and how they absorb daily content.  
3. Create authenticity through relatable content, credentials, and similar peer reviews and feedback. 

Unifying Digital Customer Experience

So, how does this all come together? Imagine creating a unified click-to-chat capability that is accessible across all platforms. A virtual assistant gathers details about your profile and customizes the experience to your liking (e.g., a language preference, geography-based content, links to other resources, etc.). AI is used to humanize the interaction through conversational NLP algorithms and real-time sentiment analysis. Finally, closing the dialog with an emoji based quick survey of your experience.  

These examples are opportunities to reach through the digital void and pull customers into an experience that will be engaging and memorable. These techniques will improve customer satisfaction, raise Net Promoter (NPS) scores, reduce churn, and grow revenue by making the digital world come to life.  

Interested in learning more about optimizing your digital customer experience? Contact us today to have a chat with one of RevGen’s CX experts. 

Rob Etchepare is a Sr. Manager at RevGen Partners with 15+ years of experience in contact center management and business transformation.