Forbes: Achieving Customer Loyalty Requires An Investment In Digital

Chief Information Officer atTELUS International, a global customer experience provider powered by next-gen digital solutions.

As customer expectations evolve in step with our increasingly digital world, it's becoming clear that the key driver of a positive brand experience is not the product.

Rather, customers are more likely to speak poorly of a brand after a negative customer experience than after having a bad product experience, according to a 2022 survey by TELUS International. That finding held true across all age groups surveyed, from Gen-Z to Boomers.

It's a sentiment that is only becoming more pronounced as customers continue to build confidence in buying and interacting with brands online. Brands that offer positive customer-centric experiences are setting the bar for CX, using technology to enable great customer journeys, drive loyalty and create space for feedback from their community. This also has significant implications on their bottom line, as McKinsey reports that "improving CX increases sales revenues by two to seven percent and profitability by one to 2%."

The Role Of Digital CX Solutions

Great CX requires a perfect blend of automation, digital tools and channels, data and human resources. Many brands have already invested in automation solutions to both streamline internal processes and boost CX, such as chatbots and self-serve channels. These tools are expected to grow in popularity in the years to come, with Forrester predicting that automation-related services and software will fetch $25 billion in three years' time.

That matches up with customer expectations. Our company's survey noted that 65% of customers expect automation in some form versus having to interact with a human. It's an expectation built on simplicity and expediency. After all, not all queries, such as password resets or the tracking of shipped items, require conversations with a help desk, and what's more, automation offers 24/7 support.

With numerous benefits, more and more executives are implementing and leveraging automation to better utilize their customer service teams, enabling them to oversee tasks that demand more skill and creativity-namely, more complicated or sophisticated CX queries.

How Data-Driven CX Enhances The Customer Journey

To customers, stellar CX is frictionless and seamless, regardless of the channel. It's about the brand anticipating what they want. From a brand's perspective, delivering on those expectations is a path to developing loyalty-and staying true to that path depends on truly knowing your customers.

Customer data is essential to understanding not only your market, but how your company can deliver efficient and personalized experiences that customers can't get elsewhere. The good news is that there has never been more customer data available to brands. The challenge for brands is knowing what data is actually needed, understanding how to use it and leveraging it effectively in order to drive great customer experiences.

Data analytics can help brands identify fundamental elements of the customer journey. For instance, they can tell you a customer's preferred channels for their various needs. Perhaps they like chatbots and intelligent FAQs for easy-to-resolve questions but also appreciate the ability to access a live agent if they have a specific question or concern.

However, vast amounts of unstructured data are not easy to interpret. In truth, capturing data and transforming it into useful insights can be costly, time-consuming and resource-intensive. As such, brands must ensure they are using the right tools and diverse teams for collecting and analyzing data, meeting trust and safety protocols and engaging in the kind of transparency that meets customer expectations and aligns with regulatory requirements.

Using Tech To Create Safe Spaces For Your Digital Spaces

Online communities are also a key place where loyalty is fostered. According to our survey, 75% of consumers said they're likely to leave a review, post on social media or create some other form of user-generated content (UGC) if they have a positive customer experience. Paying close attention to the spaces where your customers engage-and using them as opportunities to address concerns and recognize them for leaving a great review-is a smart move.

In order for social media to be an effective channel to engage customers, it needs to be safe. Inappropriate content can negatively impact a brand's reputation and perceived trustworthiness. In fact, we uncovered that 40% of respondents will disengage from a brand's community after as little as one exposure to toxic or fake content, and 45% say they will lose all trust in a brand.

Tech-assisted human content moderation can help enhance the customer experience while protecting your brand's reputation. While AI can serve as the first line of defense to identifying toxic UGC, it still requires new datasets, collected and sorted by humans, to continuously improve. In this regard, tech and human moderators work hand-in-hand to help safeguard online communities from the most egregious content.

Identifying Pain Points And Staying Ahead Of Customer Expectations

A good place to start when implementing digital technologies is to create a customer journey roadmap that can identify CX challenges and inefficiencies-the sorts of things that rob customers of their time and patience, or which require significant brand investment to resolve.

Brands also need to consider the impacts of ongoing advancements to existing channels, such as the emergence of social commerce-a form of e-commerce where customers purchase directly through social media and net new platforms like the metaverse. In fact, according to Insider Intelligence, social commerce is set to outpace traditional e-commerce, with U.S. retail social commerce sales reaching nearly $80 billion by 2025. McKinsey reports that the metaverse has the potential to generate up to $5 trillion in value by 2030.

Going forward, customers will show increased loyalty to brands that create great, personalized experiences and turn away from those that fail to live up to their high standards. And meeting these standards is going to become more and more complex, requiring increased investment in new technologies and a commitment to hiring and upskilling employees to keep up with evolving customer expectations.

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