Top 7 Innovations in Online Customer Experience
Digital technologies today evolve faster than we can adapt. If you consider this to be a huge hassle for your business, take a breather to think from the POV of your customers. They are constantly coming across new technologies that they cannot easily comprehend. The result? Businesses taking this as an opportunity to reshape their customer experiences with tools that smoothen their customer journeys.
But why is it important to effectively manage customer experiences in the first place? As Jeff Bezos perfectly articulated;
If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friend
Jeff Bezos
So, what is great customer experience defined as? One that effectively understands varying user personalities, segregates their digital behaviours and grasps the motives behind their interactions in the online world.
Let’s delve into the mix and check out the hottest innovations in online customer experience that should already be on your radar:
1. Co-Browsing
Co-browsing is one of the latest customer support technologies that is redefining how you walk your online customers through their digital journeys. Companies such as Acquire are making it possible for their clients to extend real-time support to their customers.
Co-browsing helps support agents to see and interact with their customer’s screen in real-time, while also eliminating the need to download any additional tools. They can interact with customer screens to browse any website on the Internet.
The best part about Acquire’s co-browsing is that it works seamlessly on mobile devices. Hence, customers can reach you on the go and their issues can be easily resolved in a single session, warranting minimal effort on their end.
2. Internet of Things (IoT)
By the year 2020, the world is projected to have 200 billion smart objects, which translates to 26 objects for every human being. Introduce IoT into the scenario and it becomes a goldmine of customer data. One can only imagine the far-reaching implications in customer experience.
IoT allows companies to go beyond traditional models and double down on customer needs even before they arise. Sensors can work round the clock to collect performance data and fix issues accordingly. For instance, Tesla once identified charger plugs in its cars to be potential fire hazards and resolved the issue without calling them to the dealership.
Such capabilities not only delight customers but can also make you win their trust for life.
3. AI Agents
So, why not leverage it already?
AI has only gotten more intelligent as years have passed, to the point that it can power chatbots to have human-like conversations today. Imagine chatbots that can replace up to 60% of the conversations that your agents have. Not only this, they can even automatically update databases based on their interaction with the customers, taking care of background processes.
Such futuristic AI agents can even make sense of the copious amounts of customer data you have today, leveraging it at the right time and place. Based on the results of such an analysis, they can tweak the user experience of each customer to make it more personalized.
This can drive conversions through the roof and leave your customers wanting for more. For example, the AI arm of an e-commerce website can spot a returning customer and utilize his/her past shopping experience to suggest products that he/she is more likely to buy.
4. Voice-of-Customer (VoC) programs
Voice of Customer is a concept that describes the experience of the customer with your brand. It focuses on their needs, expectations, product understanding, and the like. This makes VoC programs a natural entity in the customer experience space. They make use of closed-loop processes and survey consumers personally to understand what would improve their experiences.
Different VoC programs can give priority to varying aspects of customer experience. For instance, a program can measure customer experience by asking how the interaction with the employee made the customer feel.
On the other hand, another might ask customers to rate the overall shopping experience. Your choice of a relevant tool depends on the business problems that you are trying to solve.
5. Verifiable Genuine Reviews
With so many fake reviews floating around the internet, it was only a matter of when (and not if) this caught up. Inc reports that as many as 84% of the customers trust online reviews as much as they trust their friends.
To top this, about 91% of them read online reviews either occasionally or regularly. It is impossible to put more emphasis on how important genuine reviews are to boost customer experience.
Consumers today can easily verify whether a review is genuine or not. E-commerce giants such as Amazon, Flipkart, and Alibaba are actively leveraging this by allowing only verified and actual buyers to post reviews. Even the search giant Google is leveraging them today to unearth only the genuine ones from a pool of user reviews.
6. Digital Customer Experience Delivery Platforms
Yeah, it is a mouthful. Let’s call it a DCED platform.
This is a software that is used to create and manage structured content. Their sole goal is to support omnichannel marketing efforts. This means that marketers are armed with the ability to view marketing, sales, and service metrics from a single viewpoint.
Hence, such a platform can be used to integrate customer experiences across varying channels, managing customer relationships more effectively. Channels here can include email, chat, social media, phone, and even chatbots. How is it possible to integrate so many channels? By using APIs to aggregate customer information that is spread across the board.
7. Digital Assistants
No, this is not even close to chatbots. You need to think way beyond that. If you caught Google CEO Sundar Pichai delivering a keynote on the upcoming version of Google Assistant in 2018, you know what we are talking about.
Digital assistants such as Siri, Cortana, and Google Assistant will be soon packed with capabilities that we can only imagine today. Be ready to witness a digitalized version of the sales agent which will be able to talk to customers on the phone, note their woes, and address their queries.
It will even be able to upsell, cross-sell, or issue refunds. This will probably be the biggest customer experience innovation yet.
Conclusion
So, if you are aiming to make the digital experiences of your customers a breeze, consider leveraging these technologies to improve their experiences. Not only will this help you to lower customer service costs, but it will also boost their lifetime values!
- Top 7 Innovations in Online Customer Experience - April 18, 2019
- Dealing with Poor Customer Reviews – Sam Makad - July 11, 2018
