4 tips to improve your digital customer experience

Just do what your customers expect
The new measures taken by our government to quickly reduce the ever-increasing numbers of Corona infections mean more working from home and less face-to-face contact with each other for the time being. Personally, I understand all the measures and I do my best to follow and monitor them within my family. From a business perspective, this means even more working from home and, above all, many online meetings via MS Teams. It means that we are actually going back in time a bit. To earlier this year.

Corona brought a lot of changes. Also for organizations. I have been very surprised by all those organizations that move away from this, especially in times of uncertainty and questions where customer experience should have the highest priority. In the blog below I would like to give 4 tips that I have seen work. This allows you to do what customers expect from you when it comes to customer experience.

Why do companies chase away their customers?

Earlier this year I was very surprised by all those organizations that immediately confronted website visitors on homepages with messages that they should not contact them because it was so busy. You are a customer, you are confronted with government measures. This results in uncertainty and questions. You search the website for the best way to ask your question, and then the company you have been a customer with for years says; Don't approach us, because we are too busy to worry about you. And if you are a bit unlucky, you will be asked to understand that. I don't understand that at all.

Please don't lose sight of your existing customers

In conversations I have myself, I notice that many organizations still focus on traditional KPIs. Often to the great frustration of people who actually work with customers and maintain customer contact or try to improve customer interaction. It is common knowledge that winning customers is approximately 6x more expensive than retaining customers. Can someone explain to me, for example, that if I want to become a customer of an internet provider I can get free super WiFi, but if I have been a customer of that same organization for ten years I have to pay for it?

Recognize your customer digitally

You will undoubtedly recognize this from your personal experiences. You are flooded every day with emails from email marketing campaigns just to become a customer or to buy more. Everything is beautifully digital and suitable for viewing on mobile devices and then going through it online. But as soon as you become a customer, it seems as if you enter a different world. Arranging things quickly yourself or getting 'live' contact with someone in an organization is a challenge. Especially if you expect this to be arranged in just a few minutes. I come across the craziest examples there. I don't understand why, for example, if I am in a ''My Environment'' with my insurer where a chat is offered, I get questions about who I am and whether I want to enter my customer number or address details. Why? Haven't I been logged in to ''My Environment'' for a long time? You know who I am, right? You withhold my premium every month.

Unfortunately, the so-called 'experience gap' still applies. Research showed a few years ago that 80% of CEOs think that they offer a superior experience with their organization, while only 8% of their customers agree with this. Despite all the digital transformations and experience initiatives in recent years, this unfortunately still applies. Simply because many organizations have first focused on everything related to acquisition. So customers win. And all KPIs are aimed at this. Just look at NPS as a KPI. Focused on the willingness to recommend this to others as an ambassador. In my opinion, this has nothing to do with customer satisfaction, but with the aim of increasing reach and making others customers.

Customers want a quick answer, especially online
Repeatedly asking for my details, while they are all known within an organization, is an unnecessary waste of time. And that's not the only thing that wastes valuable time. A Harvard Business Review shows that as many as 62% of customers have to repeatedly contact an organization to get a problem resolved.

4 Tips for planning good customer experiences

I know from experience that things can be much better than what we are currently confronted with on a daily basis as customers or consumers. Good customer experiences do not happen by chance, they are planned. I would like to share a few tips with you:

1. Focus more on customer retention and improving digital self-service. Replace NPS as a KPI with the CES (it was easy to use), the CSAT (I had a great experience) and the GCR (I reached my goal) as KPI in objectives related to customer contact and customer interaction. Forrester's CX Index score (Effectiveness, Ease, Emotion) is also a good, modern KPI that measures how successful organizations are with customer experience as a means for improved customer loyalty.
2. Research customer feedback to identify opportunities within customer journeys that customers are currently tripping over and where you believe should not occur. These are often the quick wins. Search for underlying causes and solutions and especially involve IT colleagues and (strategic) suppliers of customer-facing technology. I have had good experiences with open brainstorming sessions between company and supplier.
3. Start looking for ways to send proactive communications to customers. Not only via automated emails, because hardly anyone reads them, but also via SMS and online channels such as the app and the My Environment. Look at the possibility of using personalized videos, because they appeal to the imagination much better and encourage action much faster. . In addition to the process information that is often sent automatically to customers, you can often reassure and/or encourage customers with proactive communication.
4. Start thinking about the step after process automation and email marketing automation: data-driven journeys! These automated steps are always relevant to the customer and guide the customer through your process. By using personal data, but also by dealing very well with the context of the specific phase in a process or a communication channel. This will help you even better in managing customer experience and customer retention.

We are currently busy preparing our annual event The Future of Customer Interaction, which will take place completely online this year on November 19.

The program includes trends & developments in the field of (digital) customer experience, case studies, a panel discussion and various break-out sessions from various international guest speakers.

* The translations on this website are provided by G-Translate from Dutch