Over the years, customer experience has seen a gradual evolution, moving from static to dynamic experiences. What started as toll-free phone numbers, mail-in surveys, and customer insight groups has transformed into the world of social media, where anyone can share their opinion to a large audience. For some organizations, the emergence of new media has enabled deeper customer relationships and the freedom of public opinion, while others face immense scrutiny, accelerated by the next social media share.
As Americans celebrate the freedoms and independence this week, organizations should be looking at developing engaged digital experiences that create raving fans and customer loyalty. In this blog post, we explore some of the mindsets required to survive in an increasingly customer-centric world.
- Characteristic #1: Be Customer Obsessed: Politicians in the United States often address that their work is done due to the will of the people. After all, they only serve at the pleasure of the constituents who have elected them. Similarly, organizations also exist at the pleasure of consumers willing to purchase products and offer positive reviews. Organizations who obsess over customer satisfaction see greater positive visibility and positive market sentiment: According to HubSpot, customers are 71% more likely to purchase a product based on social media referrals.
- Characteristic #2: Go Omnichannel: You never know where you might find your next customer, and everyone spends time on different channels. According to survey data from BusinessInsider, retail consumers who engage with retailers on multiple channels spend 4% more in-store and are 23% more likely to visit in-store. While numbers differ between industries, this data indicates that there is a correlation between attention and the bottom line.
- Characteristic #3: Understand Your Buyer’s Journey: Depending on who you’ve listened to in the past several years, the buyer’s journey has changed. In this noticeable transition is the fact that customers leverage online research prior to calling sales. No matter what, the modern day digital experience now requires a steady online presence that helps your buyer in the decision making process before speaking to sales.
- Characteristic #4: Understand Your Buyer: Mastering the journey isn’t enough. You must also understand your buyer, their pain points, and target them effectively. Figure out the right content to create and develop your organization into an industry thought leader.
- Characteristic #5: Be Conversational: Finally, we all know the humor behind suggestion boxes in cartoons: Most of them have holes at the bottom and the boss never reads them. While this mindset worked with mail-in feedback cards and toll-free phone numbers, an ignored conversation on social networks has the potential to keep the public’s attention for weeks at a time. To guard against missed opportunities, invest in community managers and customer service agents who can help douse any dissatisfaction at the source.
In closing, these are several of the mindsets we recommend for organizations looking to achieve a sound digital experience strategy. As we’ve explored in our customer journey series, there are many ways to reach customers, and successful implementation nets positive outcomes.
Declare Your Digital Experience Independence
Are you ready to digitally transform your customer’s experiences? Reach out to us today at sales@perficient.com for a conversation and download our portals guide below for additional insights and best practices.
Learn more about our IBM practice here.
