CX digital strategy: Combining experiential benefit with economic benefit
The digital customer experience has become a strategic issue. Customers are making increasing use of digital tools to get in touch with brands, make purchases, compare, request assistance, etc. Companies must therefore adapt their relationships and keep in step with changes in customers’ preferences.
How do you go about digitising interactions? How do you make sure they’re successful? How do you control ROI?
3 main support focuses for successful deployment: experience feedback for major actors in the retail and e-commerce sectors
1- Focus on customers’ expectations
Interactions are no longer limited to the physical world. Digital technology plays more than a supporting role; these days it’s centre stage.
With diversification of channels, multiplication of contact points and complexification of customer journeys, the question arises as to which channel to prioritise at each step of the customer journey.
Increasingly well-informed, connected, autonomous and omnichannel, customers and consumers look for the medium that suits them best in order to obtain information or solutions.
In order to get the best out of an experience, people expect to be given a choice: 64% of customers used a new assistance channel in 2020 and 73% plan to continue along the same path (Zendesk, Customer Experience Trends Report, 2021)
Hence, each customer journey must be approached strategically and ultimately generate synergies between online and offline.
The first key step is to identify the customer relationship’s attachment points generated by so-called traditional contacts (telephone and face-to-face). The second step is to carry out a more in-depth study in order to map the subjects/typologies leading to contact on all channels (including existing digital channels) in order to identify irritants, opportunities and satisfactions.
Such mapping aims to highlight customer behaviour and enable alignment of feedback with business procedures and/or actions, and ultimately to understand which digital or traditional contact points are decisive.
Use Case :
In the context of developing a phygital strategy, collection from or return to a shop of an article ordered online, for example, generates numerous contacts connected with in-store problems (missing article, shop error, refusal to take the article back, etc.).
Mapping the journey enabled revision of the procedures and configuration of contact management in the CRM. In the space of 4 months, the total volume of telephone contacts fell by 6% and the NPS score increased by 5 points.
POC study by Armatis.
2- Provide Advisors with the resources and tools to manage digital interactions in optimal fashion and always be there at the right moment
Digitising interactions and conversations are also an assertion of the advisor’s importance as a key factor in a successful customer experience.
Mapping the journey and contact mediums and typologies also provides an opportunity to develop new channels such as hybrid chat, in order to automate so-called “low-stake” interactions.
Hybrid chatbots enable automation through their analyses and ability to respond to known simple requests. Advisors can concentrate on higher-value questions and exchanges. This technology provides customers with instantaneity and efficacy while enabling advisors to concentrate on their core expertise.
Use case :
In 6 months, deployment of a Hybrid Chatbot led to an 18% reduction in simple requests for orders to be followed up or articles to be returned handled by advisors. The bot itself was given a 4.5/5 satisfaction score by customers.
POC Study by Armatis.
Finally, it’s essential to correlate the customer journey with the advisor journey, by making tools available along with continuing training programmes in order to facilitate all employees’ interactions with customers.
Implementation of an effective customer and advisor focus system making use of Speech Analytics technology provides semantic and emotional analyses of voices and writings.
There are several benefits in this solution: increased customer knowledge in order to gain in relational and business efficacy, better comprehension of customers’ expectations and intentions, and the ability to design key customer-centric performance indicators.
83% of companies making use of Speech Analytics solutions obtain a positive ROI in less than a year.
Opusresearch Study
3- Monitor every customer interaction and analyse data in real time, so as to bridge the gap between expectations and the actual experience
How do you measure efforts with regard to customer experience successfully? When we know that, in 60% of cases, customers feel that they make more effort than companies do in order to solve their problems (IPSOS Study).
In order to assess customers’ experiences and develop a full picture of what they actually go through, it’s necessary to collect data from a range of sources (structured and unstructured data, solicited and unsolicited data), using direct and implicit methods to do so.
It’s an ongoing process, driven by new technological and operational advances that help reduce interactions resulting from avoidable irritants and provide a permanent vision enabling adaptation and improvement.
Indicators have become references: NPS, CSAT, CES, etc.
Must we only concentrate on the measurement method itself?
One of the keys is what the company or brand does to improve CX.
It enables provision of the best possible customer experience based on concrete data “direct from the source”, and not just based on what teams think is best for customers.
A search that enables provision of a tailor-made customer experience which gives customers the opportunity to measure the real value of the brand’s offer or service.
If you want to go further and discuss all this with an expert, here’s where to do so.
