Focus on the digital Customer

Curating a customer centric digital approach that aims to maintain a human feeling for the consumer.

When dealing with customers it is of peak importance to see the world from their perspectives. When crafting new offerings and envisioning the journey to procuring and enjoying set offerings, organizations need to remember the most important people to an organization are 100% external, the consumers. The organization should ensure the key focus of new digital upgrades is the consumer. This can be done through making online experiences more real, new innovations, building a community, and fostering trust. Generating new forms of non-tangible value (emotions, loyalty, nostalgia etc.) will be vital in digital spaces, with the end goal of heightening their experiences.

4 ways to enhance digital consumer experience.

Finsys has identified four core focal points for the enhancement of customer experiences and relationships with organizations through digital tools.

1. Make online experiences more real

Real world trends have perpetuated the necessity and consumer expectation that digital interactions with companies should be easy and provide the same level of value. However, the expectations around the forms of value exacted are different. Namely, digital consumers expect to replace in person intimacy with convince. With the trend for digital consumption increasing, digital channels will be needed to grow business and stay relevant going forward.

The keys to success include striking a balance and understanding your consumers.

Firstly, striking a balance between online and in person channels is vital for creating a homogeneous experience. Consumers will interact with your brand in different times and ways for different reasons, eg. Online to get an overview and in person to reaffirm ideas. Brands should expect that the first point of contact will differ between people and a first initial reaction will be vital for converting consumers.

Truly understanding your customer will be pivotal for helping fix their problems and finding new value generating opportunities. It becomes possible to gain detailed and actionable plans using tools such as ethnographic research, journey mapping and behavioural analytics. Enabling an organization to define what value is to their customers and find ways to replicate, replace or enhance it with online tools.

“To create the most flexible and efficient design process, human centric design is needed to best understand the inner workings of your consumers.”

2. Innovate

Organizations that stop innovating slip from success get left behind and forgotten if they can’t stay new, fresh, and relevant. Staying at the top requires organizations to become snappy no matter their size to compete with even the nimblest of start-ups that aim to usurp them. Ideas need to be fast emerging, there must be an internal focus on quality, creating experiences, providing more value, and a willingness to jump or adapt to new trends. Getting left behind is no longer a slow process, whilst vast resources can stem the bleeding for a time, only the most culturally agile and nimble companies will set themselves up for future successes. Creating an innovative atmosphere requires the inhouse culture to be tailored towards generating new ideas, creating insights, and wanting to be quick and nibble. Becoming agile as a business and adopt agile thinking takes the full commitment of the organization and the people within. Leading back to the core fundamental to become more innovative being creating a culture that inspires innovations.

3. Develop a sense of community

Building a community is the act of assembling like minded individuals that share interests, traits, cultural elements, and outlooks. This makes it easier to tailor offerings for them and provide what can feel like more personal experiences. Additionally, communities are easier to market too online as they already have a connection, sense of loyalty, and feeling of trust with the organization. Making a community builds empathy, emotional connections, a sense of nostalgia, belonging, and positive association that extend beyond the core value of the offering.

Communities are grown, developed, and achieved through social media and real-world efforts. The primary step is to identify the organizations main consumer segment. Next is to locate what connects them. Lastly the trick is to then make them feel connected to each other and the organization in new ways. This takes the form of taping into positive emotions and associations that are linked to all groups.

“Higher levels of community create more empathy, emotional connectivity, and altruism. “

4. Building trust

The creation and curation of trust is dependent on four key pillars as defined by Finsys; transparency; security and privacy; reliability and credibility; and proximity and intimacy.

Transparency: Clear communication between an organization and its consumers forms the perception that an open dialogue on a level playing field exists, reinforces any trust developed.

Security and Privacy: Respecting consumers data and privet information is vital to maintaining trust. Once this is lost or violated in a digital medium it is almost impossible to get back.

Reliability: Having a consistent service and ensuring digital tools stability, (eg. Website not going down, bugs, glitches, and other web issues), can reduce online trust and feelings of security.

Intimacy: Creating intimacy is vital for creating trust through connecting with individuals to forge more valuable experiences that can go beyond the value purely offered by the product.