The Lazy Business’ Guide to Digital Customer Experience

You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology, not the other way round.

This quote was Steve Jobs’ credo and it helped him create one of the world’s most loved and valuable brands.

Nowadays, a great portion of the customer journey takes place online, which means that you should double down on providing superb digital customer experience and do it consistently.

A survey in which participated 15,000 consumers found that 1 in 3 people would leave the brand they love after a single bad experience.

Here’s how to improve your digital customer experience and prevent your customers from churning.

Improve Your Website

All the elements of your website play an important role in offering a good user experience, and it directly translates into an outstanding digital customer experience.

Improving your website navigation should be at the top of your priority list when we’re talking about what your prospects expect in the first place.

It’s pretty logical – when your prospects land on your website they want to find what they’re looking for without having to endlessly click back and forth they’ll be more likely explore it.

Help them find easily find their way – linking your logo to your home page is a simple trick that will allow your visitors to always go back to the start of their search.

Using internal links will make your content more relevant, as well as boost your rankings. It’s a good idea to place relevant links to your other blog posts within your content and provide your prospects with an opportunity to learn more about the topic they’re interested in.

Use fonts (and sizes) that will be easy on the eyes and provide better readability.

Protect Their Data

After numerous data breaches and leaks, it’s understandable that your customers want to know that their sensitive information is protected from malicious hackers.

For example, the Marriott hack exposed the personal data of 500 million customers and is among the biggest breaches in history. What’s even worse is that this massive leak lasted for four years and that the hospitality giant was totally oblivious to what was going on.

In the wake of GDPR, it’s more important than ever to convince your prospects that it’s perfectly safe for them to share their email addresses and credit card numbers with you.

If you sell your products or services online, it’s a good idea to implement trust badges throughout your website, especially on the checkout page as that will vouch for the safety of transactions.

That way your customers will feel more comfortable about making a purchase on your website.

Streamline Communication

Your customers expect you to keep the lines of communication open. All the time. Throughout their customer journey.

In other words, you need to make it possible and easy for them to reach out to you whenever they want some information or help.

This means that your customer support has to be top notch given that 82% of people expect an immediate response on their marketing or sales question.

The trouble is that not many businesses can afford to have 24/7 support.

Chatbots can come in handy as they’re available all the time and in all time zones, and they can provide some of the most common answers to your customers’ questions and help them troubleshoot their issues.

Apart from that, you should also think about building a custom app which will allow your customers to get in touch with you, browse your offers, receive different notifications and announcements, and generally speaking connect with your business on a more personal level and customize their interactions with it.

Nurture Your Customers Even After They Buy

The customer journey doesn’t end with a purchase – if you want to build loyalty with your prospects you need to nurture them even after they buy from you.

First of all, it’s essential to send them a “thank you” email in which you’ll express your gratitude for picking you over your competitors.

As many people suffer from buyer’s remorse, it’s a good idea to prevent this feeling of regret over buying a product or service, by including social proof, that is, positive comments and reviews from your existing customers in this email.

The idea that other people are happy with your product or service and that they don’t think that making this purchase was a mistake can help your new customers understand the value and benefits of the product or service they’ve just bought.

Such an approach will improve your customer retention rate in the long run.

These four simple steps can make all the difference when it comes to improving your digital customer experience, and apart from the fact that you can easily implement them, you’ll be thrilled to hear that they won’t cost you a fortune.