Elements of an Effective Digital Strategy
Since a digital customer service strategy is one facet of an overarching customer experience strategy, it’s critical to first determine the overall vision and strategy for the organization. This strategy should then dictate what digital and traditional channels should be used.
To make any digital customer service strategy a success, utilize individuals from IT and customer-facing teams to form an official committee that will be in charge of executing the digital component of the customer service strategy.
Do not forgo this step just to jump into actionable items, but rather, take the time to set aside a team that is responsible for not only setting overarching customer service goals and tactics, but also acquiring and implementing the technology needed to successfully bring that vision to life.
Once a committee is formed, there are three essential elements they must consider when crafting an excellent long-term strategy:
1. Understand Current Customer Journeys
Ultimately, every element of customer service needs to support the customer and make their experience better. This will require in-depth knowledge of how a typical customer interacts with the business.
Emphasis on Omnichannel Experiences
Customers interact with a number of different channels and touchpoints in their journey; this can include customer portals, public websites, apps, etc. These interactions cannot be siloed, but rather, must deliver consistent information across every channel in order to provide a unified experience to customers. For example, if a company policy is updated, it may need to be
updated across websites, messenger bots, live chat scripts, social media channels, call center scripts, and other available touchpoints; doing so efficiently and successfully will prove to be a powerful competitive advantage.
Assess the current channels being provided;
do they all provide an engaging experience for customers?
Are there channels that customers prefer to use that the business is not offering, or even are there channels that customers aren’t using?
Note that not every channel will make sense to include; leaders must determine whether the new channel is worth the time needed to integrate and manage.
Before considering any new channel, first evaluate to see if the customers requesting it are actually your core audience or if the channel will give you access to a new audience that is critical for your growth.
No matter what channels are used or being added, traditional or digital, strategize how all can work together to deliver an experience that will satisfy customer demands and establish a competitive advantage for the business.
2. Implement the Necessary Technology
With a more comprehensive understanding of typical customer behavior, assess and implement the technologies needed to execute the overall strategy.
Investments into these different technologies should not be made in isolation or simply to keep up with the latest trends, rather need to make sense for customers, within the context of the larger customer service strategy and business requirements.
There are many different emerging technology trends, but we will cover a few of the most important in this guide.
Self-Service
The first step to excellent digital customer experiences is self-service. Empowering customers to find the content and information they need themselves is not only how customers prefer to interact with businesses but also brings immediate benefits such as cost-savings and productivity gains by reducing the amount of calls into the customer support center.
Source: Gartner
Businesses should be working towards digital-first customer service, having a limited number of highly skilled service representatives that are able to tackle difficult situations, with the majority of customers being guided through self-service offerings.
Consider how to begin offering self-service channels; by implementing self-service into different channels, such as websites and customer portals, it will be more scalable to deliver consistent experiences throughout. An investment into self-service will be an investment into building a better long-term digital strategy.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
AI technologies will become more commonplace in enhancing existing applications and processes. Although many businesses want to seize the opportunity tou se AI to enhance customer service, many are struggling to discover the right use case for AI.
“By 2025, customer service o“rganizations that embed AI in their multichannel customer engagement platforms will elevate operation efficiency by 25%.”
Like investments for any technology, businesses need to first identify how AI should fit into the customer service journey or what specific pain point it should resolve. Some popular use cases for AI so far include leveraging the technology for more personalized self-service, virtual assistants, or automated case management routing and workflow assignment.
The Role of Digital Experience Platforms
As the number of technologies used and digital channels added increases, customer service technology stacks will start to contain disparate, overlapping systems leading to disjointed customer experiences.
To combat this risk, digital experience platforms (DXP) can facilitate the integration of existing services into a one, unified user-friendly platform. Within a DXP, systems and applications can be easily connected to provide consistent omnichannel experiences.
Additionally, DXPs are built to be flexible and extensible, so the platform not only can unite new systems and incorporate emerging technologies as they arise, but also can be extended for other future needs. For example, a robust DXP can build multiple customer-facing solutions, all on the same platform. Instead of separating every touchpoint onto different sites, businesses can build self-service customer portals, communication hubs, status update websites, and other solutions that can connect to third-party applications and legacy systems, all on one site.
This allows businesses to save resources by not only needing to manage fewer systems, but also reusing existing elements to build new sites and touchpoints much faster while also maintaining brand consistency, rather than having to start from scratch across a range of point solutions.
3. Measure Success
Equally critical to implementing a strategy is measuring its effectiveness. Track metrics such as:
How long it takes for customers to resolve their issues
The volume of calls to customer support
How many users log onto each of the digital channels provided
Cost-savings from adding digital channels
It’s also beneficial to have either customer support teams or a neutral third party reach out to customers to rate or review their experience. Make sure to incorporate a regular assessment of tactics and channels to implement improvements and build out an experience that will actually be beneficial for customers.
Putting Everything Together
Getting started on a digital-first customer service strategy may seem difficult and resource-intensive; however, the investment and commitment put into maturing a digital customer service strategy will be well worth the benefits of optimized business efficiencies, increased agility and scalability, and ultimately enhanced customer experiences.
Don’t feel overwhelmed by the task ahead; start by determining overall customer experience goals and understanding how customer service fits into that overarching strategy. From there, it will be more clear what different traditional and digital channels can be leveraged to fulfill that vision.
Then, adjust the strategy and tactics as more data is collected and customer satisfaction is measured.
