Developing a robust digital customer experience strategy is no longer an option in 2024; it's mandatory. In the past, customer journeys were reasonably straightforward. You'd attract customers to a store or location with promotional materials, offer excellent service, and close deals.
Now, the customer journey occurs across various channels, many of which are "digital." Customers start their search for products online, learn about solutions through digital articles, videos, and reviews, and even access services through digital channels.
Around 60% of consumers prefer communicating with brands via email, while another 48% often opt for live chat. As technology evolves, offering more "digitized" channels for the customer journey, from chatbots to extended reality, the demand for "digital CX" will increase.
Here's how to build an effective digital customer experience strategy in 2024.
What is a Digital Customer Experience Strategy?
A digital customer experience strategy is a plan for how you'll interact with consumers using "digital" channels throughout their purchasing journey. Usually, this refers to online solutions, such as live chat and chatbots, messaging, social media, websites, and so on.
A digital customer experience strategy can include digitally connected environments, like IoT devices. In simple terms, wherever your customers engage with your brand through an internet connection, they interact with a "digital" experience.
Understanding the digital touchpoints your consumers engage with throughout their customer journey and how they affect their relationship with your brand is crucial to success. Studies show that 65% of customers say their experience with a company's website or app is very important when deciding whether to recommend a brand to someone else.
Additionally, 27% of customers say being unable to reach customer support and contact centers through their chosen channel creates a negative experience.
What makes creating a robust digital customer experience strategy complex in today's world is the fact that there are so many "touchpoints" to consider. It's not just your website, app, or online forms you need to consider anymore. It's everything from your custom generative AI bot to your video conferencing services and even metaverse-style environments.
The Importance of Digital Customer Experience Strategies
In today's world, if you're not considering the digital touchpoints your customers use to interact with your brand, you're missing a huge part of the average customer journey. Virtually every contact center solution available today prioritizes building an "omnichannel" customer experience.
You'll rarely find a CCaaS solution that doesn't at least support online messaging alongside voice and email-based communications. Many vendors are beginning to branch into new digital experiences with innovative self-service solutions, video conferencing, and more.
In this world, 74% of consumers expect companies to use technology to create better experiences for them throughout the customer journey. They expect to be able to access support and information on various channels. Plus, they want to move between channels seamlessly, accessing an "immersive" experience as they move from social media to chat to phone and beyond.
An excellent digital customer experience strategy can help you meet these evolving expectations. It ensures you can anticipate and map how customers move through different online channels, creating a cohesive, omnichannel experience.
The results can be phenomenal if you can deliver a truly "omnichannel" digital experience to customers. Studies show companies with the best omnichannel offerings see a 10% increase in average order value and year-over-year growth. Plus, they also benefit from 25% higher close rates.
How to Build a Digital Customer Experience Strategy in 2024
So, how do you design a digital customer experience strategy that works? Like any "CX Strategy," no one-size-fits-all approach is guaranteed to drive results. The success of your strategy depends on your ability to understand your audience, address their needs, and leverage the right technology. Here are some crucial steps to get you started.
Step 1: Know Your Audience
The ideal digital customer experience strategy varies from one audience to the next. While many consumers still use search engines to learn about companies and their products, Gen Zers rely on social media for research and, often, customer support.
To ensure you're effectively interacting with customers on all the proper channels, you must first map their journeys from the "awareness" stage to the "retention and advocacy" stage. The good news is various tools can help with this. Salesforce's marketing cloud features extensive customer journey mapping solutions with in-built analytics.
Many contact center solutions also feature tools to help you understand the customer journey and assign customer service and sales resources to the proper channels. You can also build on what you know about your audience by collecting insights through surveys and online forms.
Or you can use the analytics tools in your CRM, contact center, and marketing tools to track how often customers interact with your business on different channels.
Step 2: Invest in Omnichannel
As mentioned above, demand for truly immersive omnichannel experiences is increasing. 76% of consumers expect consistent, context-driven experiences across all channels. However, while many contact centers and communication tools enable access to different channels, few are omnichannel.