How To Use Technology To Improve The Customer Experience

Using Technology To Improve The Customer Experience

Customer experience is something that still gets short shrift in the business world.

Companies concentrate so strongly on their marketing efforts and the details of their fundamental value propositions (the quality of the products they offer, and the price points they can make profitable) that they don’t really think about what it’s like to buy from them.

This is a huge mistake, obviously.

Relevant leads aren’t easy to acquire, so it’s vital to put in the work to convert as many of them as possible and turn them into loyal long-term customers.

There are various ways to achieve this. In this post, though, we’re going to focus on what can be achieved using technology.

How can tech advancements enhance your customer experience?

3 Examples of using technology to improve the customer experience

Here are some key suggestions:

1. Implement a website chatbot

Chatbots have come a long way in recent years.

They used to be frivolous novelties that were perfect for laughing at, but the advancement of natural language processing and cloud computing has changed things entirely.

These days, it’s possible (and surprisingly easy) to have a commercially-viable chatbot that can answer common questions and even take action.

Think about how shopping has changed in that time.

The rise of mobile browsing and buying has been remarkable, ensuring that we can place orders at any time and from any location.

The former is particularly significant.

If we feel like shopping at 3 in the morning, we can do it with no need to wait for brick-and-mortar stores to open — but this makes it tough to get answers.

A chatbot can stay available on a 24/7 basis, dealing with basic complaints, pointing visitors to the right destinations, and generally being useful.

This is great for you (for obvious reasons), but also great for your customers — no one likes waiting to get answers.

Sure, chatbots can’t deal with all queries, but you just need to set up an escalation process for that: combine chatbot tech with efficient customer support outsourcing and you can have a potent 24/7 solution.

2. Provide downloadable guides

Let’s say you follow the previous suggestion and set up a chatbot on your website (capably supported by an outsourced customer service system).

Will that inevitably lead to excellent customer experiences?

Well, not necessarily, and there are two notable reasons for this: firstly, people will inevitably miss the live chat option (or prefer to avoid it — not everyone finds it a useful option), and secondly, it’s only useful for people who have internet access.

Since you might not be sure what I mean by the latter, think about this scenario.

Someone who has just purchased an item from your store wants some assistance with using it, but they just have their phone with them and their data signal is inconsistent.

They could try using your live chat, but it would likely disconnect during the conversation, plus they might need to keep reopening it to field further queries.

The alternative is to offer downloadable resources on your site, most likely as PDFs that function well on desktop and mobile devices alike (but not necessarily).

Such resources can include pieces of sales material (for example, the docking station resources offered in StarTech’s guide) or simple user guides for the relevant products (for example, Zendesk provides comprehensive guides to help customers better make the most of its customer service software)

Apple has an on-site iPhone User Guide with instructions for grabbing a downloadable version).

3. Dig deep into your analytics

The incredible proliferation of data in today’s world can be intimidating, but it presents a spectacular opportunity to improve almost every facet of your online operation.

Assuming you have enhanced Google Analytics set up on your site, you can get quite granular with tracking performance. Something that holds a lot of promise is looking at each step of your conversion process to see where people drop out — which part is driving people away?

If you also set up a feedback pipeline through doing things like adding prominent feedback forms and setting up automated survey emails, you can combine your analytics data with the feedback to build a comprehensive understanding of what’s going on.

If several customers say that they find some of your pages confusing but don’t elaborate on which ones, you can try to figure things out based on their order histories and your on-page metrics.

The more information you can glean, and the better you can understand your feedback, the more active you can be in improving your website and making it more enjoyable for your customers.

Overall, this is the most important way you can use technology to your benefit.

Customer experience is a matter of enormous importance, and you need to be investing it using all means at your disposal.

Technology brings a lot to the table, but we’ve set out a few key ways in which it can bolster CX: by enhancing your support, granting easy access to valuable resources, and providing insightful analytics.

Recommended further reading: How to reduce costs using self-service channels

Find a list of all the technology suppliers with products and services to improve your customer experience on the free CX Directory >>>