Top 14 Best Digital Customer Experience Strategies That Work

During this digital-first era many businesses have seen a massive spike in customer communication through digital channels such as contact forms, live chat, social media, and video. That's why incorporating digital customer experience strategies will improve the overall experience and journey customers will have when interacting with your brand.

In fact, transforming your CX digitally will help your business:

• Create an omnichannel experience
• Provide instant, real-time support
• Automate mundane tasks
• Convert more customers
• Optimize the customer journey

And much more...

Let's dive in.

What is a digital customer experience strategy?

A digital customer experience strategy helps identify and remove obstacles, supercharges digital customer engagement, and creates a smoother customer journey.

Related: The Complete Guide to Digital Customer Service

Digital customer experience strategies to implement

1. Understand your audience
2. Build connections through personalization
3. Provide omnichannel customer service
4. Create phygital experiences
5. Offer flexible channel options
6. Be available on multiple channels
7. Maximize AI
8. Make purchasing easy
9. Be ready to service
10. Streamline through automation
11. Optimize the user experience
12. Take a mobile-first approach
13. Use real-time analytics
14. Proactively gather customer feedback

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1. Understand your audience

Delivering a good customer experience starts with understanding your customers. And it’s important to recognize that customers have different needs at different times throughout their journey, too. 

Customer experience platforms provide a wealth of information from interaction and engagement data across the customer journey to give you the kind of bigger picture that helps inform your digital strategy. You can also drill down to a specific customer's history, preferences, and behavior to provide individualized service.

2. Build connections through personalization

Customers expect to be treated as individuals. In fact, 71 percent of customers are left feeling frustrated after an impersonal experience. And given that 72 percent of consumers only engage with personalized messaging, it pays to develop communication that connects with your customers at just the right moment and in the right way.

Tactics such as sending custom product recommendations based on what browsing behavior customers have demonstrated or questions they’ve asked on live chat can help make this happen.

3. Provide omnichannel customer service

Given the abundance of channels customers use — whether that’s mobile apps, social media, web, or email — serving customers seamlessly can be tough. With CX software that stores customer data and history, your team has access to the context to create consistent experiences for every customer across channels.

A unified view allows agents to create one seamless conversation, even if a customer starts an interaction through email and continues later via webchat.

That way, if a customer reaches out multiple times through different channels about the same issue, support agents can pick up right where they left off. And that’s a good thing, because customers don’t like repeating themselves, especially the 33 percent who list this specifically as a top service complaint.

4. Create phygital experiences

A whopping 91 percent of retail customers expect brands to provide both online and offline experiences. But now technology has enabled businesses to start pushing the boundaries of CX, muddying the line between digital and physical worlds.

Digital innovation helps companies develop these kinds of boundary-blurring experiences. For example, the Sephora Virtual Artist mobile app allows customers to browse products, try them on virtually, and even get tutorials on how to use them.

5. Offer flexible channel options

For individual customers, not all channels are created equal — 76 percent of customers prefer using different channels for different needs. Allowing customers to engage with you on their favorite channels helps them tailor their customer journey and makes it more convenient for them to connect with your business in the way they want.

Use digital customer experience platforms that integrate with other internal systems, such as your CRM, as part of your strategy. This helps ensure your team has contextual information available, no matter what channel meets their needs at the time.

6. Be available on multiple channels

With 73 percent of customers using multiple channels throughout their journey, making sure you’re available on these channels can really impact sales. But it’s also important you don’t overstretch your resources, and only make use of the channels you really need. Marketers reported the best response rates from using 4-6 channels in their campaigns, for example.

7. Maximize AI

Conversational AI bots allow your business to give customers immediate, personalized responses 24/7. Chatbots can connect with your internal systems to reference customer data and provide assistance and even personalized product recommendations based on customer demographics and preferences.

AI also tracks common questions and learns user intent and sentiment to improve the conversational experience over time.

8. Make purchasing easy

Customers value frictionless experiences. Make it as easy as possible for customers to buy your product or service online. With 77 percent of B2B buyers saying their purchase process was difficult, it’s important to ensure your check-out process in particular is smooth. Give customers secure payment options and offer support through live chat and cobrowsing to minimize drop-off.

9. Be ready to service

Make sure customers can get help when they need it — 59 percent of consumers want to be able to connect with a human instantly. Live chat software gives customers immediate access to live agents to assist with any issues — and can be embedded across multiple touchpoints to meet customers where they are. You can also provide helpful information through self-service resources like a knowledge base or FAQ pages so customers have access wherever and whenever they want it.

10. Streamline through automation

The automated systems you put in place should help resolve your customers’ issues faster by routing cases to the proper support. Try also automating responses to common questions using chatbots to reply to FAQs. Those same chatbots can handle routine tasks like tracking orders or booking appointments, too. Other ideas might involve one-click template responses inside your customer support system. 

However you include automation in your strategy, it pays — companies that use sales automation achieve 53 percent higher conversion rates and 3.1 percent higher annual revenue growth rate, according to Aberdeen Group, for example.

11. Optimize the user experience

Create digital experiences that are user-friendly and quick to load. Customers really crave simplicity — 78 percent of consumers want websites that are, above all, intuitive and easy to navigate. And it’s not just customers that stand to benefit — according to research by Stanford, having a user-friendly and well-designed website also helps build trust and credibility.

A solid user experience is key to improve customer experience when visitors are navigating through your online store.

12. Take a mobile-first approach

Over 6 billion people have a smartphone, and 65 percent of ecommerce traffic and 53 percent of sales are on mobile. So, it makes sense to put mobile at front and center of your digital customer experience strategy. With mobile interactions, the devil’s in the details — pay attention to everything from load time, text size, clickability, and navigation to ensure the experience is optimal.

13. Use real-time analytics

A data-based approach to digital experience strategy can help you respond to your customers' needs. Seeing customer interactions in real time is particularly useful as it can help you evaluate what’s working and decide on new tactics on the fly. And that’s incredibly important in a fast-paced world. 

With real-time analytics in your arsenal, you have access to insights around customer satisfaction, customer effort, and conversion and bounce rates, as well as the opportunity to adapt and personalize interactions as customers move along their journey.

14. Proactively gather customer feedback

Customer feedback is crucial in giving you that all-important customer perspective. They're the reason your business exists, after all. Try asking for feedback following specific interactions such as live chat, and take regular surveys every quarter or so. This can help you find pain points like navigation issues or obstacles to conversion. It’s also an opportunity to show customer care by acting on feedback or responding to less-than-positive experiences.

CX strategies to stay ahead of the crowd

The modern marketplace is ultra-competitive. And it’s only through providing a standout digital customer experience that your company will be able to elevate itself above the rest.  

When setting out your digital customer experience strategy, always keep your customers’ needs at heart. That way, you ensure that you can empathize and craft digital customer experience strategies that truly resonates.

Which digital CX strategies did your business implement? Did was miss any strategies that aren't on this list?

Let us know in the comments.

Katrina Santa Ana 

Guest Author

Katrina is a New York-based content and technical writer specializing in customer experience, marketing automation, and knowledge management topics and technologies that help businesses scale.