14 Reasons Why Digital CX is a Competitive Advantage

If you’re not already investing in digital CX (Customer Experience)—you’re behind.

Increasingly sophisticated consumers—combined with a global digital marketplace—have changed customer expectations about how brands operate and the value they need to provide to earn customer loyalty.

Organizations that leverage digital tools to provide seamless, on-demand, and tailored experiences reap the benefits of greater profitability, revenue, and brand loyalty.

“According to the 2019 State of Service Report from Salesforce, 80% of customers now consider their experience with a company to be as important as its products.”

– Salesforce, 2019 State of Service Report

Despite these benefits, organizations are slow to adopt customer-centric digital strategies. This is due—in large part—to the fact that digital CX requires a shift in skill-sets and a long-term mindset. Providing streamlined and cohesive digital interactions requires a commitment to holistic change as well as making investments into new digital systems and workflows.

Still, this trend is here to stay. Without a focus on customers and a cohesive digital strategy to engage with them, companies won’t survive.

Research by Econsultancy found that 50% of organizations have little to no understanding about their customer journey.

– Econsultancy

What is Customer Experience?

Despite being so critical to business success, there are still many organizations that don’t know or don’t focus on customer experience.

So what is it exactly?

Customer Experience is how customers perceive your brand. It is based on the cumulative impression that is built after each interaction with your organization.

It is the combined measure of all “touches” a customer has with a company’s services, products, ads, campaigns, representatives, and support systems. Every interaction leaves an imprint. Touchpoints need to be effortless and provide for customer needs with personalized messaging and content that build stronger relationships.

Customer brand perceptions are gathered through surveying customers, measuring their experience, and gathering feedback.

What is Digital Cx?

The Digital Customer Experience (or “Digital CX”) refers to how your customers perceive your brand through the digital interactions you provide.

This includes all experiences, content, service, or product that they interact with over a digital medium are all considered part of your business’s Digital CX. Websites, social media, knowledge bases, virtual education, e-commerce, reviews, chat, and the systems you use to manage customer operations are all part of your digital footprint and the experience you provide customers.

As consumers and decision-makers become more digitally native—Digital CX is becoming the primary brand differentiator.

For a more comprehensive discussion, see What is Digital Customer Experience (CX)?

What is Digital CX Strategy?

As organizations look to tap into the advantages of customer experience–more customers, greater revenue, and higher profits–their greatest return on investment will be via the digital mediums that modern customers are flocking to.

A Digital CX strategy is your organization’s vision and comprehensive plan for creating the ideal digital customer experience.

It’s a holistic view of the entire digital landscape, including every aspect of the customer journey and the departments that participate. It includes a roadmap of features, project timelines, implementation plans, skills training, and operations required to deliver best-in-class digital experiences.

A great Digital CX strategy will also look to gain internal efficiencies through these systems and tools via process optimization, automation, enhanced communication and accurate qualitative data capture. These efficiencies will free up teams and resources to provide further customer value through highly-personalized and timely support and experience.

14 Statistics on the Value of Digital CX

For those of you still uncertain about undertaking a Digital CX transformation—here is some powerful motivation to take the plunge.

1. Customer Experience is as Important as an Organization’s Product or Service

A 2020 Walker study found that customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator. (source)

2. Customer Experience is the Customer Battleground

“As customer expectations continue to climb, it becomes more challenging for brands to set themselves apart from the competition. Markets are increasingly crowded, and both price and product are being steadily overtaken by customer experience as the number one brand differentiator.” (source)

3. Customer Experience Builds Customer Loyalty

“64% of customers believe customer experience is more important than price when deciding to make a purchase with a brand.” (source)

4. Premiums for Customer Experience

“Consumers are willing to spend 17% more with companies that deliver excellent service.” (source)

5. Convenience is King

“59% of customers are willing to go to Amazon when companies can’t match its shipping speed and cost.” (source)

6. Time is Precious to Modern Customers

Survey participants said getting their issue resolved in a single interaction is the most important aspect of a good service experience. (source)

7. Customers Want Immediate Access

“At every stage of the customer lifecycle, a majority rated an immediate response from businesses as “important” or “very important” — 82% when they had marketing or sales-related inquiries, and 90% when a customer support issue came up.” (source)

8. A Digital World is Driving Instant Demands

“A study found that a ten-second wait for a page to load can make 50% of consumers give up and leave. Researchers at Microsoft even found that a website begins losing traffic to competitors when it takes 250 milliseconds longer to load.” (source)

9. Customer Can and Will Leave Over Bad Experiences

“An overwhelming 95% of respondents cite customer service as important in their choice of and loyalty to a brand. And 61% of our respondents have switched brands due to poor customer service, with nearly half having done so in the past 12 months.” (source)

10. Businesses Are Disconnected With the Experiences They Provide

“52% of customers say companies are generally impersonal, despite 73% of them expecting them to understand their needs and expectations.” (source)

11. Customer Want to Self Serve

“89% of millennials use a search engine to find answers before making a call to get customer service.” (source)

12. Live Chat is Preferred Over Voice

“92% of consumers are satisfied with live chat, making it the highest-rated engagement channel.” (source)

13. Customers Want Seamless Interactions

“Meanwhile, 64% of customers use different devices to start and complete transactions” (source)

14. Leading Brands Are Leveraging AI to Help Their Teams Support Customers

“A Salesforce ‘State of Service’ research report found that artificial intelligence (AI) adoption by service teams is expected to grow by a whopping 143% within 18 months.” (source)

Key Takeaways

The evidence is overwhelming and consumers have spoken. Survey after survey across multiple industries, regions, and consumers all point to customer experience being a major brand differentiator.

Modern consumers are demanding that organizations provide experiences that are instant, effortless, tailored, and over digital mediums.

Modern customer-centric digital solutions can help you provide these experiences, as well as collect in-depth customer data that enables you to anticipate trends and quickly evolve strategies.

Through the power of digital systems you can create seamless experiences that drive brand loyalty while empowering internal teams and operations.

For more insights on how to craft customer-centric digital strategies see: How Customer Obsession Empowers Your Digital Strategy

SequoiaCX can help you build and implement holistic digital customer experiences that differentiate your brand.