The digitalization of the customer experience

Published on August 10, 2020  - Updated on December 01, 2023

The digitalization of the customer experience: a new way to engage your customers

Customer experience has always been at the heart of business strategy. This is a key differentiator from the competition.

This encompasses all of the interactions between a brand and the consumer, whether it is the purchase of the product, after-sales service, or even an advertisement.

It is this set of interactions that will give a negative or positive image of the brand to the customer, which is why it is so important in the marketing strategy.

The customer experience has for a long time been only physical via stores, relations with the seller etc ... However, since the arrival of digital, stores are increasingly abandoned by consumers in favor of e-commerce sites and especially by the youngest (67% of millennials prefer to buy online rather than in stores according to Big Commerce).

With the arrival of the digitalization of the customer experience, companies must adapt to these new technologies to better serve their customers.

This is why providing an optimal shopping experience for your online customers is a necessity and no longer just an asset.

What is a digital customer?

A customer will be considered digital when they interact with your brand online. This interaction can take several forms: the purchase of a product or the subscription of a service, of course, but it can also consist of contacting support, filling out a form, leaving a review ... There are many interactions and can take place on each digital channel (computer, tablet, phone).

These are an integral part of the digital customer experience and it is important for companies to emotionally connect customers to these interactions in order to make the experience unique, this is customer experience management.

How is digital transformation impacting the customer experience?

The arrival of new digital technologies has revolutionized the consumer experience. Indeed, nowadays, as soon as a blocking point arises during a purchase, our first instinct is very quickly to go to the website of the company in question and to fill out the contact form. But this can also be the case upstream, when researching pre-purchase information, by consulting customer reviews on different platforms such as Google Reviews or Trustpilot (hence the interest in carefully monitoring and analyzing returns. consumers on your brand).

The digital transformation has had a profound impact on customer and business relationships. Now the customer journey is no longer only physical but also digital, we speak of "phygital" journey, the customer experience becomes global.

How to optimize the online customer experience and why digitize your customer journey?

First of all, we can legitimately ask ourselves: is it really useful to digitalize the customer journey? Does it really make sense even if your business is linked to a physical point of sale?

Well, yes, it is important to have a digital customer journey because it optimizes the online user experience and facilitates the purchase decision. Indeed, it is very likely that before going to your store, your potential customers will visit your website to learn more about you. It is therefore essential to take care of this aspect of your business. The digital customer journey also provides valuable data about your customers' behaviors and preferences, which will allow you to better target your marketing and sales efforts. Finally, an effective digital customer journey can help retain your existing customers and attract new ones. So how do you go about it?

The first thing to do is to optimize your digital customer journey on your website or application to make the buying act as intuitive as possible, which is why the customer experience and the customer journey are intimately linked.

The performance of your website is a key aspect to optimize your digital customer journey and thus increase your conversions. It is important to understand the steps your customers go through to buy your products or use your services, and to simplify them as much as possible. Indeed, if the customer takes a long time or does not immediately understand how to proceed to the purchase of the product he wants, there is a very high chance that he will leave your site and go buy the product from your competitors.

Here are some tips to optimize the customer journey on your website:

Do a website performance analysis: Use website analytics tools like Hotjar to understand how users interact with your site through heatmaps. This will give you an idea of which pages are working well and which ones need improvement.

• Simplify your buying process: Make sure the buying process is as simple and quick as possible. Avoid unnecessary steps and long forms. Use clear call-to-action buttons to guide users through the process.

• A/B Test: Use A/B testing to test different versions of your site and find out which one works best. This can include testing colors on your call-to-action buttons, images, forms, content, etc.

• Improve your site's loading speed: Users are becoming less patient, so it's important to make sure your site loads quickly. Use tools like Page Speed Insights to analyze the speed of your site and optimize images and other elements to speed up loading time.

• Use meta tags: Meta tags are HTML tags that provide information about your site to search engines. Use meta tags to describe your site's content and to help search engines understand what it is about.

• Use relevant keywords: Keywords are important to improve your site's SEO. Use relevant keywords in your page title, meta description, content and image alt tags to improve your site's SEO.

By following these tips, you should be able to optimize the performance of your website which will make your customer journey much more enjoyable. It's important to continue to monitor your site's performance and test regularly to make sure you're on the right track.

Beyond the pure performance of your site, there are also some more practical aspects that can be implemented. For example, it can be interesting to answer your visitors' questions immediately and very easily via a chatbot for example. This is a feature that is not very expensive to implement. Moreover, it is quite possible to link this chatbot to your FAQ which will allow your potential customers to access it in a more playful way and without having to look for the answer to the question they are asking themselves to potentially keep them on your site longer.

This helps create a sense of empowerment for the client, which is greatly appreciated by them.

Personalization is also very important, everyone likes to feel unique. To be sure to meet their expectations, there is one step that should not be overlooked: knowing your customers precisely thanks to the data collected.

Indeed, without data collection, it will be very difficult to learn more about your customers and their expectations, and therefore it will be difficult to answer them.

Data analysis: optimizing the digital customer journey.

One of the great advantages of digitalization is that it makes it easier to analyze data and derive valuable insight into the customer experience.

In order to better understand your customers, several pieces of data will be important to take into account, such as purchasing behavior or engagement, or comments posted on your brand.

Then you have to analyze this data as well as possible, you can use CRM software like Hubspot, Salesforce, or Zoho for example. Regarding the comments posted on your brand, a solution like Q°emotion will allow you to group all these comments from each channel on a single platform in order to identify actionable insights and provoke the emotion you want to provide to your consumers.

For example, in this screenshot, we can see the points of enchantment experienced by customers represented by "warm" colors, in this example represented by the Quality of service and Ambience & Atmosphere. Conversely, irritants are represented by cold colors, here with Proactivity or Welcoming Attitude.

It is thanks to all of this data that you will be able to identify the expectations around your brand and offer a unique customer experience on your site and thus boost your sales.

On our platform, it is possible to represent the customer journey in a very simple way, step by step, which facilitates the identification of the blocking points in each of them and will help you prioritize the actions to be taken.

Do not neglect the physical experience.

On the other hand, if you also have physical stores, it is essential to understand that this digital transformation also concerns them. The customer experience won't be just physical or just digital, it has to be a mix of the two. This can, for example, take the form of an application that can be used in-store for a benefit or exclusivity for example, so the customer will feel considered and it will strengthen the image of your brand.

The shopping experience is improving not only thanks to the digitalization of the customer relationship but also thanks to good times in store.

We can take the example of Amazon which opened in the United States "Amazon Go" which is a cashless store.

Thanks to numerous cameras and sensors, the previously downloaded application will automatically fill the online customer's basket according to what he has taken from the shelves and it is when he goes through the gates that the payment will be made. automatically, which saves the customer a significant amount of time.

The digital transformation of the customer experience is undoubtedly a big challenge that has started in recent years and which will constantly evolve in the near future.

Adopting this digitalization will strengthen your brand image and allow you to boost your sales thanks to the satisfaction provided to your customers whatever the channel, you will thus reduce your attrition rate!