Digital Customer Services

Saimaa University of Applied Sciences

Business Administration Lappeenranta

International Business

Personal selling and customer service

Ekaterina Makarova 1400670

Digital Customer Experience

Report 2016

1. Table of contents

1        Introduction        3

2        Digital customer experience        3

2.1        Defining the digital customer experience        3

2.2        The digital customer – it’s all of us        4

2.3        Channels for digital communications        4

3        Three steps to improve Digital Customer Experience        5

4        Example of digital customer experience        6

5        Conclusion        6

6        References        7

1. Introduction

Digital technologies are disrupting business models and changing customers’ expectations. Digital customer experiences are being driven partly by technology and by the evolution of customer behavior. Customers expect more. They want you to deliver customer experiences that are tailored to their needs. They want you to know when they have a problem, and they want you to deliver a solution, straight away.

Companies that can effectively engage digital customers at every touch point in the customer experience lifestyle will be the ones that saw ahead of the crowd and find a competitive advantage.

Digital technologies are changing customer expectations as more and more companies move towards implementing CRM tools and focus on the customer experience, your customer’s behaviors will change. They will start to expect you to deliver a better experience across all touch points: social, mobile, email and real life.

1.  Digital customer experience

1. Defining the digital customer experience

Just as customer experience is a very broad field that essentially looks at the sum of all experiences and the overall customer lifecycle, digital customer experience overlaps a broad range of activities.

The only way to look at it, remembering that the customer does not care about the difference between digital and non-digital, is seeing the digital customer experience as an end-to-end given as well. It is the sum of all customer experiences a customer has with your brand, company, services, offering etc. across all possible digital touch points and contact moments.

1.  The digital customer – it’s all of us

Of particular interest is the ‘digital customer’ as such. Simply defined as the customer who really uses digital channels a lot for all kinds of purposes, this digital customer is changing as well. Just as the customer does not really think about the digital customer experience, he does not care whether he’s a digital customer or not.

However, he sure cares about “digital” channels, tools and of course experiences. The availability of digital channels to interact with brands, seek customer service and so on has even become a key decision factor to do business with an organization. In addition, that – for us – is probably the most essential reason to look at the digital customer experience and at the “digital customer”.

1. Channels for digital communications

For digital channels, which focus on communication with a potential customer, referred:

1. Internet and devices, which provide access to it (computers, tablets, smartphones).
2. Local networks. Internal computer networks of companies (Extranet) are self-contained information systems. There is integration of local area networks to the Internet.
3. Mobile devices.
4. Digital television is gradually integrates with Internet applications. Already, you can use the TV to go to your page to Facebook, see the video on YouTube or read the latest news.
5. Interactive screens, POS terminals (digital media).

1. Three steps to improve Digital Customer Experience

It goes without saying that there are a lot of methods of improving digital customer experience, but we would like to talk about three main steps. Before doing any improvements it is important to identify and answer for some questions, they can be: “What are the journeys your customers take?”, “How is it possible to analyze these journeys?”, “What ways can improve them?” and many other questions which can help to see full picture of work.

...