A Quick Intro to Digital Customer Management

Today’s is a consumer-driven world, as well as one that has moved towards digitalisation. If companies want to survive, they need to make the best use possible of digital assets in order to attract customers, increase sales and improve loyalty. Digitalisation has completely changed the way consumers interact with companies. In order to maximise on digital assets, companies need to focus on the digital customer experience and improve their digital customer management.

The Digital Customer Experience

These days, it is impossible to have a positive customer experience without digital transformation. The digital customer experience covers a broad range of experiences that extend beyond using a digital interface such as a desktop, tablet or smartphone. It includes researching a product online, finding a store’s closest location via smartphone, looking for customer support via tablet and more. Digital customer management must cover all aspects of the digital customer experience.

Interestingly, online customers tend to set a higher bar than retail customers who are more patient and are prepared to take into account other factors, such as other customers in a store. Online customers want an immediate response and have no patience for slowly loading pages or information that is not easy to find. Customers have no patience for a less-than-ideal digital experience and will take their business elsewhere if they see a fault.

Focusing on the Customer Experience

Considering how important the digital customer experience is, you can see why digital customer management is a growing area and now companies are starting to focus more on this area than ever before. There are certain goals that a business should concentrate on to improve their customers’ digital experience.

• Consistency leads to loyalty – Consumers treasure consistency. Consistency helps customers know what to expect and how to achieve what they want. This requires a consistent internal IT process with a dedicated system in place. Companies need to invest in dedicated software systems that will streamline and automate their customer-facing processes. This will also reduce errors, diminish inconsistencies and improve reliability.
• Visual consistency – Maintaining visual consistency across many products keeps customers loyal to a brand.
• Careful planning of digital initiatives – Companies may add new digital components, but if these do not specifically complement the customer’s experience or add benefit for the customer, these initiatives may do more harm than good. They can make the customer’s experience more complicated, instead of more positive and can end up driving customers away.
• Gathering information – Customers in a retail outlet often bring complaints to the staff; however, online customers rarely volunteer complaints unless asked directly. There is value in using software to gather opinions of customers in order to improve your product or service.

Digital Requires Investment

This is an exciting, growing area as companies see how the customer’s digital experience can improve their overall experience, not least their digital customer management. An app that manages all aspects of a customer’s account and saves them time in-store will offer significant benefit, while an app that requires time and is confusing will push customers away. In today’s world, the digital customer experience is vital for a company’s success.