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Providing Seamless Digital Experience Is Secret Behind Brand Loyalty

Nav Thethi

The Covid-19 pandemic and the increasing push for social distancing has given an unlikely fillip to digitization. This has meant that companies have had to ensure that customers get the best digital experience of their product. In simple terms, digital customer experience is the interactions that a customer has with the company through its digital mediums like website, apps and social media.

A McKinsey global survey of executives noted in 2020 how companies have "accelerated the digitization of customer and supply-chain interactions by three to four years" during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Every company wants to be remembered by customers, mainly for its product. But how can companies cultivate recall value in the digital world? 

One potent way is through enriching the digital experience for customers interacting with the company and its product. For enabling and constantly improving a company’s digital experience, feedback - both solicited and unsolicited -  plays a huge role. In addition, focusing on the digital touchpoints of customers will help track the bounce rate and apply action items to keep customers digitally engaged. 

However, one of the major factors, according to a recent Gartner study, hindering many companies from providing seamless experience to their customers is the “Customer Management Industrial Complex”. It’s a scenario where companies focus on operational efficiency and short-term profits but neglect short-term customer relationships.

The Gartner report recommended applying the 'total experience' strategy to provide the best digital experience to customers. Total experience, as per the report, includes Customer Experience (CX), User Experience (UX), Employee Experience (EX) and Multi Experience (MX).

Some statistics further highlight the need for providing the best digital experience to customers. As per a Microsoft report, 96% of consumers said that customer service is important for brand loyalty, while 73% of consumers in a PwC survey believed that a good digital experience influences their loyalty towards a brand. According to Dimension Data study, 81.6% of organizations agree that customer experience offers a competitive edge.

As per a 2016 report, about 90% of global executives who used data analytics reported an improvement in delivering a great customer experience. Data analytics, thus, can help companies to scale up their digital customer experience, identify the latest trends and chalk out consumer-focused strategies.

Moreover, digital consumer experience can help companies rake in vast amounts of money. An American Express report suggested that 70% of US citizens will do more business with a company that offers great service. In what is clearly good news for corporations, research by Temkin Group suggested that companies that earn over $1 Billion each year can earn an additional $700 Million in 3 years if they invest in consumer experience. 

There is a major churn underway in the digital customer experience segment too, with Artificial Intelligence leading the way. AI is reimagining the way customers interact with a brand. In fact, AI is increasingly being used to gauge consumer behavior towards brands. 

The increasing push for data privacy across the world hasn’t left the customer experience segment untouched. Customers are becoming more careful about how marketing uses their data. However, the key lies in providing value to customers in exchange for customer data, a report by Accenture noted. With mobile-driven internet usage contributing massively to internet traffic in emerging markets like India, companies are fine-tuning their digital customer experiences for smartphones.

Nav Thethi, Senior Manager, Web and Digital Experience at Hitachi Vantara, is an accomplished, customer obsessed, and marketing acumen for creating and designing unified digital experiences for large enterprises to engage with technology and business leaders by providing them with information for the purpose to advance their adoption of specific products and solutions offerings. Loaded with a variety of technology and business experience of over 20 years across mid-to-large organizations combined with prestigious professional affiliations, Nav is capable to drive best-in-class digital strategy for global businesses to engage with customers.

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