Retaining Digital Customers
(6 minutes)
As the world makes a post-pandemic recovery, some companies may find that they are losing digital customers acquired during lockdown to a slow return to physical shopping. Early research shows that customers are less likely to return to online shopping in the numbers they did during lockdown. Many consumers have reached high levels of digital penetration across many industries but digital channel acceleration appears to have levelled off across the US and EU with many customers saying they are likely to use digital channels less frequently once life returns to normal. How can companies then ensure they retain digital customers? Here is a brief look.
Holding On
Some sectors and industries are expected to hold on digital customers better than some others. Those industries that saw the biggest gains in digital adoption are also likely to be the most vulnerable to loss of digital customers. Newly established digital channels, immature digitalisation levels, sub-par user experience, and the opening up of borderless digital support is likely to impact consumer choices and expectations of high service standards. Banking, insurance, and some aspects of healthcare, education, and grocery will retain digital customers but others who prioritise specialist interpersonal customer interaction such as travel, hospitality, entertainment, grocery retail etc. will see more customers returning to face-to-face interactions. Digital adoption has grown but levelled off in Europe and US but rapid digital adoption rates have been seen in India, Mexico, and Brazil among others.
In respect of the actual digital interaction and experience, McKinsey suggests over 56% of customers want better, more refined UX / UI design to facilitate better online experience. Other requirements include a greater need for online privacy and security, providing end-to-end service availability, better prices and offers, improving after-sales services, and creating more ‘phygital’ interactions which combine hybrid forms of customer assistance. Phygital experiences blend physical and digital interactions through multiple platforms and touchpoints.
Fundamentally, consumer expectations around essential quality of business interactions have not changed much. Customers are still concerned about data security, cyber resilience, secure payment systems and the expectation of being compensated for errors while demanding and expecting better online customer experience in the form of improved UX / UI, up to date and relevant information, accessibility and better service. Consumer expectations around end-to-end services are also on the rise as they get used to better, bolder digital experiences from across a range of sectors, industries, and processes from around the globe which raise their expectation levels.
Traditional methods of gathering customer insights such as surveys and Customer Experience measurement systems are not seen as efficient going forward. Outdated CX systems are limited in insights and knowledge, reactive, provide sparse understanding of root causes of performance issues and throw little light on ROI decisions.
Designing great customer experiences online require a data-driven approach and predictive system that allows for mapping and tracking customer behaviour across multiple interactions, transactions and operations, including unique identifiers for customers, product lines, and other critical business inputs.
One opportunity for improvement is for industries to do cross-sector benchmarking so they can learn from best practices in improved CX / UX and CX measurements. Here lies the potential for greater retention of digital customers.
