Enhancing the Digital Customer Experience: The Role of IT in Driving Customer Engagement
In today’s fast-paced world, customers have high expectations for their buying experiences. From the initial product research to the final purchase decision, they expect a seamless journey tailored to their needs. However, engaging with customers across a complex web of channels can be challenging for businesses. Ensuring a cohesive experience across all touchpoints is even more difficult.
This article explores three key risks businesses face in the digital customer experience and offers technology-based mitigation strategies. We’ll also highlight the critical role of IT infrastructure in powering these solutions.
1. The Disjointed Customer Journey
When customers are interested in purchasing a product, they have numerous options for finding, researching, and buying it. Whether shopping for a child’s backpack or a company-wide software subscription, most customers begin their journey based on personal preference.
Some might search online and compare prices and reviews via search engines. Others might visit specific company websites or turn to AI for research. Social media is another popular avenue for watching unboxing videos or reading personal reviews.
Customers use various channels at different stages of their buying journey. For instance, they might Google a product to gather information, use AI to compare options, or visit company websites for pricing details. They might also chat with an agent to ask specific questions.
Many companies struggle to integrate these channels into a cohesive customer experience, resulting in disjointed interactions. Customers may receive conflicting information, inconsistent messaging, and experience interruptions between channels.
Solution: The Omnichannel Experience
Businesses must leverage every customer touchpoint and ensure continuity between channels. An omnichannel approach allows customers to move seamlessly from one channel to another without friction or contradiction.
An omnichannel experience starts with customer journey mapping. Businesses need a clear understanding of their customers and how they interact with the brand. Cloud-based customer journey mapping software can be integrated with every channel, providing real-time data to define potential customer journeys.
With this knowledge, companies can identify areas of friction and missed touchpoints, informing a strategy that predicts and responds to customer needs. Automation tools can smooth out the customer journey, ensuring a true omnichannel experience.
2. A Lack of Personalization
Online retail giants like Amazon have set the standard for customer personalization. Customers log in to their accounts and see a feed tailored to their tastes. These platforms resurface past purchases and use data to predict what customers might want next, creating a seemingly mind-reading experience.
Companies that fail to create a personalized buying journey risk losing sales. Customers don’t want to search manually; they want their desires served on a platter. Businesses that don’t leverage customer data to create personalized experiences are leaving money on the table.
Solution: Data Collection, Analysis, and Prediction
Retail giants achieve personalization through customer data. Companies need to collect data continuously from various sources, such as website visits, chats with agents, past purchases, social media interactions, and email engagement. This data must be analyzed and turned into actionable insights.
Companies should connect their omnichannel experience to systems that collect and analyze data in real-time. AI and machine learning can take this data further, using predictive analytics to preemptively communicate with customers, offering product recommendations, personalized discounts, and targeted marketing.
3. Internal Discontinuity
The customer experience is influenced by internal organizational dynamics. A personalized, omnichannel experience can be undermined by disconnected internal teams.
One common disconnect relates to data. Sales, marketing, and customer service teams often work in data silos, gathering their own customer data sets without meaningful connections.
When data silos exist, marketing might run targeted campaigns based on their data, while sales teams work off different data sets, creating conflicting goals. Customer service teams might be unaware of existing campaigns or customer data from the sales department, leading to inconsistent messaging and fragmented support.
Solution: Centralized Data and Collaboration Tools
A seamless customer experience starts internally. Sales, marketing, customer service, and leadership teams need to work from the same real-time, connected customer data.
CRM software, project management tools, and data analytics can be connected through cloud solutions. Powered by a high-performance network, every team can work off the same continually updated data sets. This helps marketing and sales teams set cohesive goals and run meaningful campaigns based on shared customer profiles. Customer service can reinforce the same promotions and messaging while receiving customer-specific insights to ensure a personalized experience.
High-Performance Networks and Managed IT Power Customer Experience
High-performance networks connect the technologies and infrastructure that power the digital customer experience. A core component of a high-performance network is fiber internet, which reduces latencies and allows for high throughput. When dealing with large data sets and implementing automation, fiber speeds are critical.
High-performance networks also enable cloud-based solutions, ensuring connectivity between systems, data sets, and teams. Everyone can work off the same real-time information.
Managed IT services ensure the optimal performance of customer-facing systems. These services allow for real-time monitoring, preventing system disruptions and enhancing security. Companies can focus on the customer rather than IT issues.
