Imagine you’re shopping online for new headphones. You find the perfect pair — great reviews, good price, and just what you were looking for. So, you place your order.
But a couple of days later, you get an email. There’s a delay with your order.
A company with a successful digital customer service strategy will promptly reach out to explain and apologize for the delay. It will even provide a direct customer service line for any further questions.
If the company doesn’t have a good strategy in place, it may just send you a vague, impersonal email with no explanation or compensation offer. That’s not a great experience for the customer.
A positive customer experience can make customers loyal, while a negative one can cause them to look elsewhere and try another brand. A good customer experience transforms a simple transaction into a lasting relationship with a brand.
In this guide, you’ll read about the definition, importance, advantages, drawbacks, and best practices of digital customer service so you can make your brand stand out and keep your customers happy.
What Is Digital Customer Service?
Digital customer service (DCS) is the support you give customers who interact with your product or business through online touchpoints.
This includes conversation through your main DCS channels, such as:
- Live chats or chatbots
- Messaging apps and push notifications — through SMS, WhatsApp, WeChat, and branded mobile apps
- Online communities or forums
- Contact or inquiry forms
- Social media platforms
- Video chats
- FAQs pages, knowledge bases, or help desks
But just having these channels isn’t enough to guarantee a great customer experience. To enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty, you need a DCS strategy.
This is your plan for helping and supporting your customers online. It’s about deciding the best ways to answer their questions, solve their problems, and make their online experience easy and pleasant.
It also involves choosing the right DCS channels and using them effectively to make your customers happy.
Why Is a Digital Customer Service Strategy Important?
When you have a good DCS strategy, customers are more likely to come back to your business. They know what to expect and can trust you to help them when they need it.
On the other hand, the lack of a well-designed strategy can hurt your sales — and your reputation.
According to Verint, 64% of customers stopped doing business with companies that offered poor service. In 2016, Accenture estimated U.S. businesses lost $1.6 trillion in sales because of this.
It’s also important to provide consistent, quality digital support because your customers expect a certain level of service.
According to the same Verint study, 56% of customers under the age of 45 prefer to contact a business through digital channels over calling on the phone.
And 72% of customers expect always-on, real-time support from businesses.
Benefits of a Digital Customer Experience
You’ve seen the importance of offering DCS to improve client satisfaction. Here’s how having a digital customer experience strategy can benefit your customers, enhance their engagement, and increase your sales.
On-demand availability
Thanks to DCS tools, you can provide customer service 24/7 so customers can get help whenever they need it.
Watch out: It’s common for businesses to default to chatbots when it comes to 24/7 service. However, customers believe chatbots to be the worst form of digital interaction:
To benefit the most from offering on-demand availability, complement your service with other self-service support, such as:
- Help desks
- Knowledge bases
- Video or on-page tutorials
- Emergency contacts
- Offshore customer service team
Personalized experience
DCS tools compile data from your customers every time they interact with your brand. So, when you need to help them out or address their specific concerns, you can tailor your responses and services based on their history and preferences.
The more personalized you can make your experience, the better the chances of increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Omnichannel support
Having a digital customer experience strategy makes it easier to offer omnichannel support.
This strategy makes your customer support more efficient because you have a single view of all customer interactions and can continue the conversation with your client on any channel.
Offering omnichannel support is also a way of showing your customers that you care about them and their time.
Here’s an example of how an omnichannel experience makes it easier for a customer to interact with your brand compared to a siloed, multichannel one:
Scenario: A customer, Emily, tried moving an appointment through email and is now writing to the WhatsApp number to get faster answers. She’s already shared her ID number, contact information, and name through email.
| Multichannel | Omnichannel |
|---|---|
| Agent: Sure, we can move your appointment. When is it scheduled for? Customer: March 12th Agent: At what time? Customer: 9:00 a.m. Agent: And you want to move it to a later date? Customer: No, as I mentioned through email, I want to move it to March 11th at the same time. Agent: Of course, can you give me your ID number? | Agent: Emily, of course we can move your appointment. Are you talking about the one with Dr. Adams on March 12? Customer: Yes Agent: OK, is this the right ID number XXXXX? Customer: Correct. Agent: I can see that you wanted this moved to an earlier date. How about March 11th at 9 a.m.? Customer: That works, thanks. Agent: Of course, have a great day. |
| Result: Frustrated customer, overwhelmed agent, long resolution time | Result: Happy customer, quicker response, shorter resolution time |
Scalability
DCS platforms can easily adjust to handle different volumes of customer interactions. So, you can scale your business up or down without damaging the quality of your service.
Offering digital support also allows you to globalize your business and reach new markets.
For instance, if you sell software for data analysis and business intelligence, you can sell licenses to anyone, regardless of location. A good DCS tool lets you explore different markets without having to figure out how to support them.
Data collection and analytics
Every action you take online leaves a data trail. Through data analytics, you can gain insight into your customers’ behavioral patterns, interests, preferences, and needs.
You can use those findings to improve customer service and tailor interactions to wow them at every stage of the customer lifecycle.
The more you can personalize your customers’ experience with you, the more likely they are to become repeat, loyal customers.
Cost efficiency
DCS platforms can be more cost effective compared to traditional methods like in-person service desks.
That’s because digital platforms often automate repetitive tasks, require fewer human resources, and can handle a higher volume of inquiries simultaneously. This reduces the need for a large workforce and extensive physical infrastructure, cutting down on operational costs.
Additionally, digital solutions such as chatbots and AI-driven support systems can operate 24/7 without the added expense of continuous staffing.
This efficiency not only saves money but also enhances response times, leading to improved customer satisfaction.
Drawbacks of a Digital Customer Experience Strategy
While digitizing your brand experience comes with many benefits, it also has some downfalls if implemented poorly. Here’s a list of the most common drawbacks of a digital customer experience.
Technical issues and reliability
Anything that’s connected to the Internet can eventually face glitches, downtime, and connectivity problems. Your DCS tool is no exception. So, your support agents may occasionally struggle to complete their tasks due to technical issues.
Some issues are easier to prevent than others. For instance, when you invest in a reputable customer experience system, it’s less likely to experience bugs or downtime — Nextiva strives for 99.999% uptime.
However, technical issues such as internet or power shortages are unpredictable and can lead to customer dissatisfaction.
Security and privacy concerns
If you store customer data, you need to communicate the way you’re handling it and the safety measures you have in place against potential security breaches. Using a system without the proper security measures can compromise your customers’ data or internal company information.
A cyberattack doesn’t only put your customers’ or business data at risk; it can also cost you a lot of money. Businesses spend an estimated $4.35 million on average to remediate a ransomware attack, on top of a damaged reputation.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t implement a DCS strategy or use DCS platforms. You just need to select a reputable provider with enterprise-grade security and encryption.
Generic responses
DCS tools can help you offer a more personalized experience. But they can sometimes also generate vague responses that don’t address specific customer needs, leading to customer dissatisfaction.
Picture this: A customer’s package hasn’t arrived on time.
They’re already upset because they don’t have their order. Whenever they try to contact you, they can only speak to a chatbot that’s repeating the same answers. This conversation can end up making customers even more annoyed because it doesn’t really get to the heart of their problem.
For example, here’s a common conversation with a poorly programmed chatbot:
This affects their current experience and can deter them from future interactions with the company.
The good news is that you can turn this around by training your chatbot better and always giving the option for customers to speak to a representative. You can also link out to a comprehensive FAQ webpage or knowledge base.
How to Improve Your Digital Customer Experience
As you can see, embracing digital transformation can bring you more benefits than drawbacks. To avoid the pitfalls and enjoy its advantages, here are five ways to improve your digital customer experience.
Add a human touch to automation
Going digital doesn’t mean delegating all support-related tasks to bots and automation. Of course, you need AI to process the data.
You also need to automate your processes to offer true omnichannel experiences. Doing it manually would be impossible for more than a few clients.
However, customers may get frustrated when they can’t talk to a human and the chatbot isn’t giving them the support they need. So, consider blending your automated responses with human interaction for better service.
For example, let’s say you have a live chat on your website for customers to track packages. Make sure they can either speak to a human or get the right contact information to make a complaint if the package gets lost.
Listen and observe customer interactions
One way to improve your customers’ online experience is by reviewing your support agents’ interactions and giving them feedback.
You can do this by asking them to share a feedback form with customers at the end of the conversation.
Review the answers often to gauge your customers’ experiences, make changes to your service, and assist them better.
It’s crucial to pay close attention to customer feedback and improve your offering whenever you can to show that you care about their opinion and satisfaction.
Focus on personalized customer journeys
When you tailor your responses, recommendations, and forms of communication to each individual customer and their preferences, you’ll make them more engaged with your brand.
For example, if you request a phone number and email, ask your customers their preferred way of communication. Then, make sure you respect their answers. So don’t call if they say they prefer to be contacted through email.
You can also personalize your communication and marketing campaigns to match the specific stage of the customer’s buying journey.
For example, if a customer has recently viewed several products on your website but hasn’t made a purchase, you can send them a targeted email with a special offer on those products. Or you can provide additional information that may help them in their decision-making process.
Act on customer intelligence
Use the customer data you collect to personalize their experiences further, identify areas of improvement in your service, and measure performance.
This proactive approach to using customer intelligence can lead to more personalized interactions, greater customer satisfaction, and ultimately, a stronger brand reputation.
Additionally, encourage your team members to adopt a data-first mindset. This means prioritizing customer feedback and analytics in decision-making processes.
So, if analysis reveals that customers prefer quicker response times, focus on streamlining your communication processes.
If call recordings show that many customers are asking about how to use a specific feature of your product, create detailed guides or video tutorials to help them understand it better.
The goal is to use these insights to make informed decisions that directly improve people’s experiences with your brand.
Shift to a proactive customer support model
To reduce the number of incoming queries from customers, use DCS tools for proactive service.
For example, instead of waiting for the client to ask questions about their package, alert them daily about the progress. You can even notify customers about delays and offer to help before they contact you.
Being proactive with your communication shows customers that you care about their satisfaction. This will help you mitigate the causes of churn and allow you to spot your most loyal customers, those who want to keep doing business with you or share positive reviews.
Enhance Your Customer Experience Strategy with Nextiva
Providing a positive digital customer experience can transform casual visitors into loyal customers and encourage them to spread the word about your business.
With increased loyalty comes higher retention rates, which can then translate to higher long-term revenue.
But having the right tools is crucial for implementing a successful digital customer experience strategy. To truly understand and meet customer needs, you need technology that effectively tracks and enhances their journey at every point.
Nextiva steps in to offer exactly that.
Our comprehensive CXM platform integrates all your customer interactions in one place, ensuring everyone gets the attention they deserve. With Nextiva, you’re equipped to lead the way in customer experience, staying ahead of the curve in meeting and surpassing customer expectations.
