How can you maintain a positive customer digital experience?

It’s impossible to imagine a world without an online or digital experience. Whether you are looking to buy a product, source information, learn new skills or simply pass the time, online and digital experiences are quite often the first port of call for anyone who has access to a device. 

With so many options readily available, how can you successfully keep users engaged with your business and maintain a positive customer experience? 

Creating a meaningful digital engagement is important to all online experiences, and is often a challenge for companies working across channels or managing a large portfolio of products. 

We’ve previously shared tips on how to create a seamless digital experience, which covers the essential steps you need to take to ensure you deliver a high level of customer service, regardless of whether you are physically present or not. A holistic approach goes one step further, it looks at the affects on an emotional, cognitive and social level. 

One company can have many voices

A successful holistic experience across your brand is reliant on you and your teams having a detailed understanding of your company ‘voice’. Many companies will be made up of structures and technology solutions that were all designed for specific audiences, internal silos and have been created as and when they were needed. 

This often means that when trying to bring them together to form a single connected ecosystem, they don’t look, sound or feel the same and this creates a disjointed experience. In the early days online products were treated in much the same way as traditional media, interactions and insights were never considered in planning and it was easier to dictate what we thought, rather than what customers choose. 

Having a clear message of who you are, what you offer and how you want your company to be reflected is essential to creating a holistic experience for your user. 

Knowing what customers want

It’s easy for companies to think they know exactly who their customers are and exactly what they want. Do you have the data to prove it? Have you collated enough insight? Do you follow customer journeys through your existing products? 

Building user personas is not necessarily the right way to get the relevant information you need about your customers. It is much more effective to understand your users motivations and objections using a limbic map, that will allow you to make informed choices about the language and aesthetics you use. 

Whether it’s on a mobile device or accessible via web, through a social network or interactive screen in a store, we have the ability to create experiences that are immediate and can deliver real-time solutions for the user. 

Think holistic, not specific

You’ll find we often repeat this point, and it’s because it is one of the most common mistakes that companies make when trying to shift digital products and experiences online. Omnichannel strategies have been around for some time, however it’s easy to think that all this requires is making sure there is a way to connect all your avenues together. 

In order for you to create an outstanding customer experience, you need to think of all your channels holistically. Think of the bigger picture and how your customer journeys can interact across your ecosystem and then build your experiences around them as a whole. Consistency is key, how can you take your customer from one touchpoint to the next without breaking down that level of service they are expecting from you and your brand. 

As your customer travels along your various pathways through their journey don’t forget to consider what value are they gaining each step of the way:

• Is the experience appropriate to their immediate circumstance? 
• Does it respond intuitively to their needs? 
• Are you presenting the right content? 
• Is what you present to your customer relevant? 

It can be difficult to navigate bringing together the various channels of communication with customers, or indeed creating them if you are at the start of your journey. Maintaining experiences will also include managing and cleansing your platforms to keep irrelevant and unnecessary information away from your customers. 

What are you doing to ensure you deliver a holistic customer experience? 

To discover more on why a seamless digital experience matters and common mistakes that are easy to avoid, sign up to our latest webinar: Register here, limited spaces available

Creating a Seamless Digital Experience: Wednesday 20th October 

• An overview of the most common digital avenues available to you.
• What support is required to manage a vast range of digital products.
• How to manage expectations that help you deliver on your promises.
• Live examples of web usage vs app usage and what to prioritise for each platform.