Delivering great customer experiences — if it isn’t already at the top of your boardroom agenda, it should be. According to Salesforce, 80% of customers indicate that their customer experience is a key factor in their purchasing decisions, and 91% say that they are more likely to make repeat purchases after a positive service experience. If that’s not convincing, we can look at it another way. Research by Bain & Company reveals that customers are four times more likely to purchase from a competitor if they’ve had a bad service experience. That’s right, this research shows that they’ll purchase from a competitor regardless of other factors like price or product.

Yet, according to the NTT Global Customer Experience Benchmarking Report, only 81% of organisations are realising that customer experience offers a key competitive edge, and a mere 58% consider the customer experience a primary differentiator. Perhaps these numbers aren’t as high as they ought to be, as we’ve fallen victim to the belief that digital customer experience matters less, or is easier to achieve. This is concerning, as this misconception is putting many once-flourishing businesses at risk. Just because the shopping experience now happens online doesn’t mean customers are not evaluating their purchasing experience. And with 80% of customer interactions expected to happen via digital channels by 2025, there’s never been a greater urgency for your business to evaluate what type of digital customer experience you’re providing.

What is a digital customer experience?

In short, a digital customer experience refers to the sum of online interactions between a customer and your brand.

Since customers today zig zag through multiple digital touchpoints, a customer may discover your brand on social media, visit your website, interact with your chatbot for simple enquiries, and possibly call into customer service for assistance on more complex matters. The most important thing is, every single one of these touchpoints matters.

As digital transformation accelerates, and the majority of customer experiences move online, it’s obvious that those businesses who pay attention to their digital communication channels will be able to deliver improved customer experiences and grow.

Three CX benefits of digital communication channels

CX benefit #1: on-demand support

It’s no secret that efficiency and convenience are high on the list of customer expectations of good service. To achieve this need for speed, businesses must make sure that their communications channels are diversified enough to make it easy and frictionless for their customers to contact them.

The challenge with this, however, is that when it comes to digital communication channels, different customers have different communication preferences. According to a recent report, millennial customers prefer live chat over any other communication channel due to its speed and efficiency, however, more than 50% still prefer to use the phone to reach out to service teams.

This shows that your business needs to quickly adapt to new social messaging and online buying habits, and provide omnichannel support — that way, your customers get the freedom to choose their preferred way of communicating with you.

CX benefit #2: connected experiences

The most important, and often the most challenging, aspect of cross-channel customer experience is consistency. With so many digital communication channels and company agents interacting with your customers, it’s difficult to ensure that the answers they receive remain the same, and the service quality they get remains high at all times. Achieving consistency requires connectivity between digital channels in order to remove inefficiencies and prevent frustrations caused by customers having to constantly re-explain their issues on each channel they use.

Operationally, the most effective way to provide a connected customer experience is to have a centralised platform from which to manage most, if not all, of your digital communications channels through a single workflow. This ensures continuity and gives your support staff visibility into individual customer journeys in order to achieve more tailored services. After all, there’s nothing more frustrating for a customer than receiving template responses or irrelevant answers that have nothing to do with their unique needs or circumstances.

CX benefit #3: better insight

Speed and consistency aside, the other key benefit of overhauling your digital communications channels is to collect feedback and insight into your customers' needs. With more customer insight, you can customise messages or marketing campaigns based on customer preferences, improve existing services based on the feedback received, and translate customer input into action.

It might sound easier said than done, but with cloud-based communications you can achieve more seamless and tailored online customer interactions by automating your marketing workflow with API integrations. This enables you to harness the power of AI to gain insight into customer preferences, which can help you develop more personalised experiences. More importantly, analysis of past customer interactions can help identify service gaps in your digital communications strategy and unearth opportunities for you to improve on CX. The result? A boost in customer satisfaction, which gives the potential for repeat sales and positive word-of-mouth — a win-win-win.

Fix your CX with holistic digital communication solutions from 8x8

Once upon a time, customers may have prized product and price above all else. But times have changed. Today’s modern, digitally savvy customer has much higher expectations when it comes to CX. Above all, they look out for, and value, proactive service, personalised interactions, and connected experiences. Which is why 8x8’s SMS, voice, chat apps, and video were designed to provide an easy way for businesses to create brand experiences that increase customer engagement and satisfaction across all communication channels — online and offline.

Ready to start improving your digital customer experience, so you can gain a competitive edge? Contact us to learn more about our suite of digital communication channels and see how you can improve customer insight, engagement, and satisfaction.