9 Ways to Improve Your Digital Customer Experience in 2024
32% of your customers who love your brand will walk away from it after just one bad digital experience. This makes it crucial that you improve digital customer experiences.
But it's hard to keep up with changing customer needs in the digital world. That's why we made a list of 9 proven strategies to improve digital customer experiences and match them with customer expectations and your business goals.
Let's get started.
9 Proven Strategies To Improve Digital Customer Experience
Review your overall customer experience goals and budget and start with 1 or 2 strategies that suit them.
1. Build A Personalized & Consistent Customer Experience Across All Communication Channels
80% of your customers prefer personalized digital experiences, and 73% use different digital channels and platforms to communicate and shop.
Offer them a personalized and consistent customer experience on your ad, web, SMS, and email communications.
This digital customer experience strategy increases customer retention, customer loyalty, average order value (AOV), and overall conversions.
Do the following to enjoy all these benefits:
- Use omnichannel chatbots like Glassix to streamline live communications across all platforms and easily integrate your existing business strategies and systems. Our platform uses Conversational AI that anticipates customers' needs and quickly responds with recommendations and useful information.
- Create short but action-specific onboarding tours. Run the user through the important parts of your website so they know where to look for what.
- Use customer journey mapping with UXPressia or Miro to identify important touchpoints and understand your customer's behavior, preferences, and pain points.
- Develop an omnichannel strategy to personalize your communication for each customer journey stage. For example, use informative emails with case studies for the awareness stage and sales-driven messages for those in the consideration stage.
- Adapt your content to fit each channel's tone, style, and format. For example, your emails can be longer and more detailed, but your tweets should be short and snappy.
2. Design Automated Communication Flows For Different Customer Journey Stages
91% of your customers will choose you over your competitors if you send them relevant offers and recommendations.
So offer them consistent, tailored customer experiences wherever customers engage with your brand—whether it's your social media channels, email, or website.
You have to send the right message to the right person at the right time and keep your audience engaged.
Here’s how you can do this while also freeing up your time:
- Segment your customers with Klaviyo or ActiveCampaign and automate emails and SMS messages with Glassix based on key behaviors, like abandoned carts, product views, or post-purchase engagement.
- Set up drip campaigns using Mailchimp or HubSpot to nurture leads through the customer journey. Deliver relevant, timely content. For example, send a welcome email followed by educational content to a customer who signs up for your newsletter.
- Automate post-purchase communications with Shopify Flow or Gorgias and automatically send thank-you emails, review requests, or product recommendations to engage your customers after a purchase.
- Trigger reminders and follow-ups when customers abandon their carts or haven't visited your website in a while. Automated flows guarantee they receive a reminder email or SMS with a limited-time offer to nudge them back.
- Send automated SMS workflows from your mobile using DialMyCalls. This makes it easy to communicate with large customer segments and specific groups directly from your phone. The simplified bulk texting will let you engage with your target audience in a timely manner.
3. Leverage Gamification To Engage Customers At Various Customer Journey Points
47% of your customers will engage with your brand if you use gamification as your digital customer experience strategy.
This is because customers love to interact with brands in fun ways. Gamification adds that element of fun to your customer experience, motivating them to engage with your brand.
If customer interactions with your brand are more fun and rewarding, they will encourage your audience to remain loyal.
Here’s what you can do to achieve this:
- Create a loyalty program with Smile.io or a similar tool to reward your loyal customers with points for completing specific actions. These can include making purchases, referring friends, or leaving reviews.
- Add progress bars at checkout, like Amazon's free shipping threshold, to show your customers how close they are to unlocking a reward. This will motivate them to complete their purchase.
- Launch seasonal or time-limited challenges to make customers happy. For example, launch the "12 Days of Christmas" contest to give your customers a chance to earn rewards for completing daily tasks like social media shares or product reviews.
- Use gamified email campaigns. Send interactive emails with quizzes or small games that offer discounts or special offers when your customers complete them.
4. Improve Your Website's Speed & Usability For Better Customer Experience
53% of your mobile visitors will leave your website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.
So, it is important to build a fast and easy-to-use website that offers a positive customer experience and retains clients.
Make sure your website speed is not frustrating visitors and increasing drop-offs.
Here’s what to do:
- Compress images and use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) like Cloudflare to improve your site's load speed.
- Check your page load speed using Google's PageSpeed Insights. This will give you specific suggestions to make impactful changes. For example, it may tell you to reduce JavaScript or enable browser caching.
- Optimize your mobile with responsive design tools to make sure your website performs well on any screen. Use Webflow or Google's Mobile-Friendly Test for this.
- Add clear CTAs to make it easier for your visitors to navigate your site. Make key information accessible with 2-3 clicks. Use Crazy Egg to analyze how your visitors navigate your site and decide where you can improve its usability.
5. Streamline Your Purchase Process With Simplified Payments
70% of your potential buyers will abandon their carts, especially if you have a complicated and confusing checkout process.
You can reduce this cart abandonment rate and customer churn and boost conversions by making your checkout process simple and quick.
Here's what you can do to make the payment process simple yet secure:
- Offer multiple payment options, like Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal. Use Stripe or a similar platform to integrate these payment methods and give your buyers a seamless checkout experience.
- Enable one-click checkout for returning customers. This speeds up the process and reduces the friction of entering payment and shipping information multiple times.
- Secure your checkout with SSL encryption & two-factor authentication. Use Shopify Payments, WooCommerce, or a similar platform that offers built-in security features that protect customer data and build trust.
- Send your visitors abandoned cart reminders with Klaviyo, Shopify Flow, or a similar automation tool that can send your customers gentle reminders with offers or discounts. This encourages them to complete their purchase.
6. Use Conversational AI & GenAI For Better Customer Satisfaction & Higher Efficiency
96% of businesses believe they can increase customer interactions with Generative AI.
This, combined with conversational AI and machine learning, helps you deliver faster, more accurate customer support. They improve customer satisfaction and reduce your team's workload.
Here's how you can use them to give your customers the fast and accurate responses that they expect:
- Use AI chatbots like Glassix to handle FAQs, appointment scheduling, or order tracking. Our chatbot can respond to common customer questions instantly, reduce wait times, and improve the overall customer experience.
- Implement AI-driven ticketing systems like Zendesk to prioritize and route customer queries based on urgency. This will make sure you help customers with critical issues first.
- Analyze AI-generated data to find patterns in interactions. AI insights help refine chatbot scripts, FAQs, and overall communication strategies.
- Use GenAI for personalized product recommendations. For example, beauty and wellness businesses that offer treatments like chemical peels and heavily rely on higher customer satisfaction through hyper-personalized services can use Dynamic Yield to suggest relevant services to customers based on their skincare needs.
7. Create A Feedback Loop To Collect Customer Data Across All Platforms
46% of your customers want to feel seen and heard with personalized experiences and communication across multiple channels and digital touchpoints.
You can understand your customer's needs and adjust your digital customer experience strategies to match them if you build a continuous feedback loop.
You should align your goals with the digital customer expectations and quickly address any issues and common challenges they face.
Here’s how to do that:
- Use Glassix chatbots to collect in-app feedback. Prompt your customers for feedback at the end of conversations to make sure you capture their customer experience in real-time.
- Use post-purchase surveys and exit-intent pop-ups to collect feedback from your customers immediately after transactions or when they're about to abandon your site. Use Typeform or SurveyMonkey to implement this digital customer experience strategy.
- Conduct polls or surveys on social media. Use feedback forms on Facebook or Instagram polls to collect digital customer insights on their preferences.
- Use GA4 to track user behavior and look for patterns like bounce rates or cart abandonment to adjust your strategies.
8. Encourage User-Generated Content With Contests & Giveaways
93% of your customers rely on user-generated content (UGC) for their purchase decisions.
If you want to build trust and increase organic promotion for your brand online, focus on generating more UGC.
Here's how to encourage more of it and create a buzz for your brand:
- Host a product photo contest where your customers will share their great digital customer experiences with your brand on social media using a unique hashtag. Offer prizes like discounts or free products to reward them for their participation.
- Use a testimonial software to run feedback campaigns. Offer discounts or small rewards for customers who leave reviews or share testimonials.
- Partner with influencers or micro-influencers. Collaborate with customers with some social following to share your brand in exchange for products or perks.
- Feature UGC on your website or social media accounts. Highlight customer content to build community and increase engagement. Use Yotpo or a similar tool to manage and display your customer feedback and photos on your site.
- Outsource digital marketing services to agencies that specialize in content creation and UGC strategies. This helps you scale your campaigns efficiently and make sure you increase UGC's impact. Use the Genius guide on the top 21 digital marketing outsourcing services for expert insights into top agencies that can boost your UGC efforts.
9. Adapt To Changing Customer Behavior, Needs, & Preferences With Advanced Data Analytics
You will be 500% more likely to be profitable every year if you use data-driven marketing.
Advanced customer data analytics will create a great digital customer experience and help you stay ahead of the changing customer needs and behaviors with actionable insights.
Here's how you can leverage advanced analytics to stay relevant with the evolving customer preferences:
- Track customer behavior and spot trends in real-time with GA4 or Mixpanel. Organize pages that have a high bounce rate or low engagement.
- Segment your audience with data-driven insights using HubSpot or something similar. This will help you personalize campaigns based on behavior, purchase history, and customer lifecycle stage. This is especially useful for mortgage brokerage businesses like Eden Emerald Mortgages, who must personalize their outreach based on potential buyers' interests and financial situations to improve the chances of conversions.
- Use predictive analytics to analyze purchase behavior. Forecast future trends based on past customer actions with Looker or Kissmetrics.
- Run A/B tests on emails, landing pages, and ads to find what resonates most with your audience. Use Optimizely to test various elements, like product descriptions, images, and CTAs, to make data-backed decisions.
4 Steps To Create The Perfect Digital Customer Experience Strategy
Pay close attention to the action points, see if they match your goals, and fill any gaps you find with the following.
Step 1: Pull Customer Data From Various Entry Points
This will help you track customer interactions, identify pain points, solve problems, and determine which digital customer and digital experience strategy drives the most engagement and satisfaction.
Here's what you need to do:
- Use chatbots like the Glassix chatbot to learn about your customer's pain points, the information they're searching for on your website, and which products or services interest them the most. Or, you can prompt them to fill out a quick survey about their digital customer experience.
- Gather feedback via web, email, and SMS interactions. For example, you can place a pop-up feedback form on the order completion page to prompt customers to share their experience placing an order.
- Conduct polls and simple surveys using your social media accounts to find out your customers' interests, lifestyles, expectations, and the current digital customer experience.
- Use Google Analytics 4 to learn your audience demographics, Google Ad performance, lead sources, and website traffic.
- Schedule one-on-one or group interviews to build a personal connection with your customers and gather feedback they hesitate to share online.
Here is how you can build an AI chatbot in Glassix:
Build an FAQ chatbot in Glassix in less than 1 minute!
Step 2: Look For Patterns In Customer Behavior
This will help you make data-driven decisions and deliver experiences that improve customer satisfaction and experience.
Here's what to do:
- Track customer journeys and spot behavior patterns with Glassix, Hotjar, or any other analytics tool. For example, find out if your customers drop off at checkout or if they're spending too much time searching for products.
- Segment customers based on their behavior. For example, you can target customers who abandon their carts with follow-up emails or offer personalized product recommendations to frequent buyers.
- Identify recurring issues and resolve them quickly. If certain products or pages cause friction, address the problem immediately with UX/UI improvements or targeted offers.
Step 3: Streamline & Enhance Key Customer Touchpoints
After identifying key touchpoints that impact the entire customer journey and experience, work on streamlining and continually improving them.
Here's what you must do:
- Optimize your website's navigation so your customers can find what they're looking for in a few clicks. Use Crazy Egg or a similar tool to analyze how users navigate your site. Build industry-specific storefronts to get more expertise on your page designs. For example, if you are in the web to print space, your can work with Design’N’Buy for your storefront. They know the right elements to include for conversion-ready homepages.
- Design intuitive interface to get users excited interacting with your brand.
- Simplify the checkout process with one-click payment options and multiple payment methods like Google Pay or PayPal.
- Improve the usability of your mobile apps and websites with usability testing software like Google's Mobile-Friendly Test to make sure your website looks and works great on all devices.
Step 4: Turn Customer Feedback Into Actionable Improvements
Feedback plays a crucial role in your roadmap to continuous improvement, but it's only useful if you take action on it.
Here's what you should do:
- Collect and analyze feedback with CSAT surveys or NPS to find specific areas where your business falls short. Use SurveyMonkey or Delighted to gather and analyze your customer feedback.
- Implement changes based on the feedback. For example, if your customers complain about slow customer response times, add an AI-driven live chat option for quicker responses.
- Inform your customers about any changes you make. Let them know you heard their feedback and made actionable improvements. This will build customer loyalty and trust.
Conclusion
Review your current digital customer experience strategies and check if they meet your customer's expectations or fall short. Focus on 1 or 2 strategies we discussed that will impact customer satisfaction and retention most.
With features like omnichannel communication, conversational AI, and automated customer flows, Glassix can help you build a personalized and seamless digital experience across all platforms. It centralizes all interactions so you can easily spot pain points, streamline your communication, and improve your overall customer satisfaction.
Start your free trial today to find out how it works and whether it fits your business goals.