According to McKinsey, digital initiatives that exceed customer expectations increase retention and brand loyalty as much as 50%. Yet new research shows the question on many executive’s minds today is: How well is our customer digital experience serving our customers and representing our brand? How does your User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) serve your Customer Experience?
In a global survey of 1000 business executives from around the world, 98% agree that digital services and applications are critical to the future of their organisation. They understand embracing digital enables them to focus on the customer experience and achieve a competitive advantage.
Although 99% of business executives agree optimising digital performance is key to business performance, 95% say obstacles such as an inability to measure end-user digital experience is hampering their digital-first strategy.
To deliver the best digital experience possible to your customers, you need to ask:
Does our mobile application exceed customer expectations?
Does it meet our brand and customer experience objectives?
Evaluating a digital solution for customer benefits involves revisiting the original objectives. If the business case followed PMI principles to realise benefits, these should be well documented.
At this stage, you can ask:
Are the original customer benefits still relevant?
Or in the fast-paced digital world, have our competitors usurped us and shifted the market’s expectations?
Below, we explain four ways you can optimise your digital solution:
1. Embed your benefits and brand values within your digital solution
Example of benefits and values could be:
- Personalisation: We think each customer should feel as though they’re having a highly personalised experience. We want them to know we understand their needs and will marshal all our resources to help them with their current problem.
- Brand: We want to strengthen our brand with this app. Our company values should shine through in each screen. If our value proposition is “to become the most customer focused financial institution in Australia”, then we need to demonstrate this by applying the most advanced technological solutions to our customers’ everyday financial issues. For example, if an account is about to be overdrawn, we can let our customer know before we apply a penalty fee.
- Easy to do business with: We want to accelerate our customer’s transactions with us by automating routine tasks much as possible. For example, if our customer is applying for a home loan, and they bank with us, then we should calculate their ingoings and outgoings for them.
These big picture goals are the framework for building your digital solution.
2. Map your customer’s digital journey
Discovering and documenting how your key customers in your most important segments find and engage with your business is called customer journey mapping. When we look closely at this process and fine tune it, businesses can increase customer satisfaction, engagement and retention.
Customer journey mapping involves surveying your key customers and asking them about their experience with your company. Insights from customer-facing staff can augment this data.
Begin by identifying the fundamental stages a customer experiences on their digital journey with your company. These could be:
- Discovery of their need.
- Research of possible solutions.
- Customer support.
- After sales.
And then against these stages, map customer needs, wants, emotions, frustrations, questions to create a grid.
- Tasks. What is the user trying to achieve at this stage?
- Questions. What does the user want to know at this stage?
- Touchpoints. How does the user interact with the organisation at this point?
- Emotions. What is the user feeling at this stage in the process?
- Weaknesses. How does the organisation disappoint the customer at this stage?
- Influences. Who or what is shaping the user’s decision-making process at this stage?
- Opportunities. What can we do to improve the customer’s experience at each touchpoint?
Make a start with our CustomerJourneyMapTemplate. This process will provide you with action points to improve your customers’ experience with your company. There are now many ways that technology can minimise your customers’ frustrations, answer their questions and provide relevant information at every stage of their journey.
3. Improve your customer’s digital experience
Well directed, small focus groups of customers can collect qualitative data and provide valuable insights to improve digital solution usability.
Clarify what is working. Ask customers the following questions about their digital experience:
- What touches users emotionally? How does it do this?
- What features do users find frustrating or difficult to use? Why?
- What features do they most enjoy? Why?
- What problems does the app solve for its users? What doesn’t it solve? Why?
Avoid a sample size of one. When you are looking for actionable insights, look for trends in feedback by clustering similar answers. If 50 users have difficulty with a particular feature, this may indicate it would frustrate most people and is worth remedying.
Look at user behaviour patterns. Some features sound great, but do customers use them? Discover what your users do, not simply what they say.
4. Track data and metrics
In a world where data proliferates exponentially, knowing which numbers are meaningful to improving customer experience is a challenge. Yet when we understand which types of data reveal our customer’s pain points and moments of delight, it gives businesses an opportunity to improve their digital experience.
Here’s what to look for:
Which sessions stand out? This can be as simple as the number of times a session was viewed in the app.
How many support calls? Tracking and monitoring the number of app support calls is a good barometer of customer satisfaction.
What do customers think? Surveys and polls will give you direct feedback from the people who were experiencing your product firsthand. Their opinions can unlock more value within your digital solution.
The insights generated from completing these four steps will inform your next digital iteration.
At the core of digital transformation is a stellar customer experience. Companies that discover their customer’s journey and unlock value at every stage using the latest digital tools will gain a substantial lead over competitors who are yet to start. Although many companies are moving towards digitising their business model, managing and optimising digital experience is a challenge and will continue to be a focus. Placing the customer at the core of your business by discovering moments of frustration and striving to eliminate these using the latest advances in digital technology is key to engaging and retaining them in the long term.
To learn more about how Mobiddiction can help you optimise your customers’ experience, contact us for a complimentary consultation. Email contactus@mobiddiction.com.au or call 02 9262 1363.
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