We have come a long long way from the early digital days when brands were still finding their feet in the digital world and consumers were trying to figure out what does it mean to have a ‘digital experience’ let alone a seamless one.
And as we near 2020 (gosh time has flown in 2019!) any and all digital interaction between a brand and its customers has become a very vital part of the overall customer journey and customer experience.
Whilst multi million giants like Netflix, Amazon, Uber have set very high stakes in their customers getting a seamless digital experience and becoming ‘Experience Leaders’; the world now expects every brand online to provide a seamless brand-to-customer digital engagement.
But the biggest challenge every brand small, medium or large is currently facing –‘How to cut through the complexity’?
Most online brands are still in the phase of analysing complex data to measure and maximise conversions instead of actually understanding what their customers feel about the entire digital experience. Failing to do this has now started to hurt brands everywhere and in a recent survey almost 54% of Senior digital strategists feel they do not have a strong understanding of their customers’ behavioural movements across the many digital channels.
Arguably data can feel very daunting with its huge scale but when interpreted effectively, data can reflect unique behavioral insights that will help Digital CMOs make informed decisions to improve their customers’ digital journeys at every touch point.
Let’s break down this process of using invaluable digital data and how it can measure customer experience.
A- Behavioral Data can assist brands in gaining interesting customer perspectives–
gives you clues to your customer’s digital shopping behaviour- you can see how they navigate through your page, where they stay longer, what they click on and do not click on, what confuses them, what challenges them. And in this brands must instead of focussing on- How do we get the numbers up- ask the most relevant question in today’s scenario – How do we delight our customers better?
Brands can also use information like how many keystrokes/second a customer takes to fill out a form and this information prioritizes which leads to follow up. (for example- if it is between 5-7 keystrokes/second there is more of a 15% chance for the customer purchase as compared to anyone else.)
B- Building long lasting Customer segments-
Brands can now create personalised and unique customer experiences based on data and in-page behavior along with traditional demographics. Optimising the customer’s digital journey for example result in ‘site improvements’, ‘mobile speed’, ‘ease of checkout’, etc bring a visible uplift in ‘lead conversions’ for the brand. Mapping experiences enables brands to delight their customers based on the type of people/demographics they are when they enter the site.
Brands also get to understand the ‘intent’- for example- when customers want a phone and the brand is trying to sell a TV. It’s about selling the right products at the right time. Adapting your brand’s digital mapping to what the customer wants to achieve is the name of the game.
C- Dedicated Testing of digital assets like design and coding-
Incorporating diligent and dedicated A/B testing as part of the digital experience is what true brand leaders do. Using advanced visualisations (heatmaps and session replay), testing can actually give you actual customer behavior. Training everyone in your company at the digital frontline to understand this can help prioritise which customers and prospects to cal and when Matching hard data with creative visuals can guarantee that your team does not check out to the results of the tests.
Make this your mantra- ‘Solving your customers’ problems, will solve your business problems!’
D- Make Digital experiences Real Time!-
Every brand’s critical moment is its peak cycle of activity- sales, promotions, product launches and customer demand can be maximised during such times by enhancing digital experience real time.
Brands can actually examine customer behaviour at ‘checkout’ during peak activity phase to identify errors and issues in real time and the brand can then solve these issues during peak periods. For example -during an Xmas sales period or the Boxing Day or Black Friday scenarios, getting the site ready for the spike in traffic by analyzing and assessing, tracking incorrect URLs that break the site and prevent the customers from a seamless shopping experience, testing registration forms etc. are all issues that can be resolved quickly thanks to behavioral data.
E- Become the Customer- Step into their shoes at scale.
A brand/company’s ability to harness data, visualise the insights gained into customer behavior and then made consummale to both internal and external stakeholders can put them in a different digital league. Making these available across all internal departments can enhance their decision making, employee efficiency reaches a different level, sales teams become more adept and agile, inform creative development during future product launches, customer service teams gain a deeper understanding of the consumer’s lifecycle and this enables brands to scale delivery by uncovering what the customers see and experience what they experience. It’s not about meeting KPIs but providing answers that customers are asking for that stand the test of time.
There you have it
Futuristic brands know the value of this. Any brand that has a vision and understands the importance of digital technology coupled with a powerful combination of rich behavioral data, intuitive visualisations that are further enriched by human intelligence, can drive superior long lasting digital experiences making them an ‘Experience leader’ in their arena.
Are you going to lead this change? Are you a leader or a management consultant or a company that would like to know more on how to bring about a model that is capable of bringing this future to the present. If so get in touch with us. Our brand founder and author of this blog Chetan Jha is leading not just change but also innovation across the board through best practises that echo compassion understanding and reflection. To know more, email us: [email protected]