25.10.2021

What is digital customer experience?

Back in the days, when there was no internet or smartphones, you could see many people reading a newspaper while traveling by a tube train or bus. This was three decades ago.

Life now has changed and you find that most people, wherever they are, are glued to their smartphone screens. They could be reading the news, applying for a job, or researching a product or service.

In short, most experiences today are digital.

And that’s the reason why businesses who optimize digital experiences, get ahead of those who don’t.

In this article, let’s learn about the basics of a digital experience and how businesses can offer consistent online experiences to customers and stakeholders.

What is digital experience?

A digital experience is how a customer or a stakeholder feels when interacting with a brand on digital channels. When I say digital channels, I mean all digital touchpoints, including your brand’s website, social media pages, mobile app, live chat, email, and so on.

A digital experience uses technology to offer a brand experience to customers, employees, and company stakeholders. Whether they’re buying a product from your website or filling up an onboarding form on your mobile app, it’s a digital experience.

Why should you care if your brand’s digital experience is average, good, or great? Let’s learn more about it.

What is the importance of digital experience?

Newton’s second law of motion explores the cause and effect relationship between force and motion.

And how’s that relevant today?

Newton’s cause-effect theory, published over 300 years ago, proves the importance of digital experience in today’s times. I’m not kidding. Let’s understand how:

Why is digital experience essential?

Given the large-scale penetration of digital technology in our lives, most customer and stakeholder experiences are digital. The importance of digital channels has increased manifold because of the fast-changing nature of consumer behavior during and after the pandemic. That’s why the Covid-19 pandemic posed new upskilling challenges for marketers.

43 percent of the marketers said they needed to quickly upskill themselves in digital experience during the pandemic. – Sitecore

Digital experiences decide whether a customer will stay with your brand or not.

Or whether an employee or stakeholder will be happy associating with your brand or not. Here’s the simple equation:

An excellent digital experience = loyal customers + happy employees and stakeholders.

Customers and stakeholders want to access services and information as quickly and efficiently as possible
They want every brand interaction to be tailored to their requirements and current challenges

Now you know why Newton’s cause and effect law works in this digital age too! And you know why digital experiences are so critical for the long-run success of your brand.

Let’s now learn more about digital experiences with the help of a few examples:

Digital experience examples

Here are some common examples of digital experience:

Offering holistic omnichannel customer service to customers, what does it mean? It means whether a customer or a stakeholder posts a query through email or on Twitter, there’s someone there for a resolution.
Automating query resolution with the help of chatbots. AI-based chatbots can allow a better digital experience by reducing the service turnaround times manifold.
Creating hyper-personalized experiences by understanding the service and informational needs of customers and stakeholders. Brands offer such personalized experiences by collecting vital data about their audience’s online activity and behavioural preferences.
A digital experience could take the form of a quiz or an assessment or a video tutorial that’s accessible through a company’s mobile application.

The idea of a digital experience is to make it relevant for each user and engage them through personalized interactions. So, in the next section, let’s decipher how you can delight users through exceptional digital experiences.

How to improve your brand’s digital experience for customers and stakeholders?

“Quality is not an act, it is a habit.” – Aristotle

What makes a digital experience great?

An impressive digital experience is about offering the right products, services, and information to prospects, customers, and stakeholders consistently at the right time and across the relevant digital platforms.

Map the customer and stakeholder journey to learn about their content needs on different digital platforms.
Audit each platform to track the quality of experience you’re providing to each potential visitor.
All internal and external communication should be on-brand. As a CMO, your goal should be to ensure that every piece of communication aligns with your brand’s core values.
Work on soliciting regular feedback from customers, employees, and company stakeholders about their brand interactions. Make a list of channels where the digital experience is not up to predefined standards and put efforts into improving them.

How can you lay a foundation for consistent brand communication across business functions and teams?

Make sure the sales team is using the latest product photos and logos in webinars and presentations.
Give sales partners, and distributors access to the updated version of the sales presentation.
Provide all your agency partners access to the latest branded content assets and logo files.
Ensure that all functional heads in your organization have access to branded content assets whenever they need them.

All of that may seem like a lot of work. Perhaps not.

The path towards creating consistent, on-brand digital experiences

As a CMO, managing all the above may put you in a difficult situation.

During the pandemic 35 % of marketers found it challenging to communicate with customers consistently across channels. – Sitecore

You may feel like there is always unending work on your platter. Constant emails pouring from different departments and company partners can make you go breathless. Don’t worry; it happens to every marketer in every continent.

But honestly, how do you ensure that all digital experiences are on-brand without going mad? Here is my advice:

Create a single source of truth for your brand — a resource centre that stores all the branded content assets and brand guidelines in a single location accessible to all teams and stakeholders.

Successful brands already know it

A content portal provides marketers a ready-to-use platform that works as a single source of brand truth.

Not sure if this is something for you?

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