Boost your digital customer experience
Executive summary
Standing out in the crowd will never be an easy exercise. But when you operate in a heavily commoditised industry, you might feel like the cards are stacked against you.
After all, if the differences between your products and your competitors’ are inherently small – how will you stand out?
At November Five, we have years of hands-on experience with organisations and challenges just like yours. So in our first publication, we will show you how to improve your customer experience, more specifically through your digital customer care platform.
Your digital customer experience today forms the basis for acquisition and retention. And your digital customer care platform is one of the most important drivers of that experience.
Why? Because an amazing service model is much harder to copy than a product lineup and will make your brand stand out. Our research and experience both show that the right choices in customer experience will reduce your cost to serve, create added value, and increase customer loyalty. This means that an investment in a mature digital customer care platform will eventually lead to a higher revenue.
If done right, these initiatives will yield a strong return on investment in your brand’s perception, your internal efficiency, and your profitability.
Much has been said about the rise of commoditised industries, but let’s set a clear definition before we go any further:
If there are almost no relevant, inherent differences between your products and those of your competitors, you’re selling a commodity.
Of course, that is the short story. Commoditisation is a complicated market phenomenon that’s affecting an increasing number of industries, driven primarily by a heavily increased competition within a market.
It’s easy to see how this increased competition comes to be. The rise of digital technology has made it easier than ever for new players to enter an industry — even players from outside that industry. And at the same time, commoditised industries’ big players were slow to adopt digital innovations, as they’re weighed down by their own legacy.
This increased competition and digital struggle has led many companies to go down a logical path: if you can no longer compete on product, you compete on price. However, for many, this race to the bottom has not delivered the best possible results, and it has led to a decrease in customer loyalty.
These are the main problems associated with commoditisation: a race to the bottom eroding innovation, and an over-focus on price leading to desensitised customers.
However, this does not mean you have to throw in the towel. Commoditisation does not mean you need to become the cheapest. You can still be known as better than your competitors — but you’ll no longer differentiate on a product level.
Instead, your customer experience will set you apart from the crowd.
In our paper, we’ll give you the blueprint of how your company can achieve this, specifically through your digital customer care platform.
Over the past years, we’ve worked with many organisations just like yours as an end-to-end partner. We offer a seamless workflow, from the first strategic ideas through execution to maintenance and support.
WE UNDERSTAND YOUR PROBLEMS
Strategic change doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and shouldn’t be a revolution. We believe in creating a roadmap of incremental evolution, based on a thorough understanding of your current state of affairs. It’s important to know every detail, both of your strategy and your technical setup, before diving into improving customer experience. Doing in-depth assessments and assigning responsibilities early will keep you from letting your own operations dictate the end results.
When strategy, design, development and performance work together, you’ll get the best possible user experience.
We sincerely believe in finding the right structural partners for this process. A good partner can give you an outsider’s perspective on your operations. This will allow them to assist you in identifying your limitations, defining new strategies and create and implement solutions that you are not able to do in-house.
Our paper will give you a first idea of our pragmatic, hands-on way of working.
We delivered nine tangible, actionable recommendations related to digital customer experience, diving deep into every aspect — business strategy, technological requirements, design guidelines, and more.
Next, we’ll outline the three overarching categories, as an introduction to the full monty.
1. BUILD YOUR DIGITAL CUSTOMER CARE PLATFORM AROUND CUSTOMER INTENTS
A modern user journey is divided into several intent-driven micro-moments, which has fundamentally changed the flow of a user’s journey through your (digital) platforms. Customers will turn to your platform for three main intents: solving problems, frictionlessly performing tasks, and making decisions.
2. GAIN AND RETAIN CUSTOMERS WITH CAST-IRON ONBOARDING
Once the overall structure of your platform has been prioritised and structured, it’s time to take the next step: getting customers to use your platform — and keep them coming back.
3. DON’T TREAT DIGITAL CUSTOMER CARE AS A STANDALONE SOLUTION
Your digital customer care platform doesn’t operate in a vacuum — it’s never the only touchpoint for your customers!
A great customer experience has to be unified and consistent across every single touchpoint, online and offline.
Are you ready to take the step towards better digital customer care?
Download the complete paper here
