A digital customer experience is an exchange of data for goods and services. Customers are generally comfortable sharing their personal data if they consider the exchange to be a fair value. Regulations (like GDPR and PDS-2 in Europe) are evolving towards more individual control of personal data and requires customer consent. As a result, customers will ask themselves more and more the following question: “What’s the experience I want from this company, for me to trust them with my personal data?”
So, why would a customer trust one brand more than another? Because with them, that customer feels respected and valued. In their research around the “Customer Experience Index,” Forrester proved that the making customers feel valued and respected (not just satisfied) was the most essential contributing factor in building a customer’s trust, loyalty and advocacy for a company.
For a customer, what does it mean to feel respected in a digital customer experience?
- It’s respecting their stated and unstated preferences
- It’s respecting when is, and when is not a good moment to contact them
- It’s respecting when not to recommend things (for example, because they just bought the product)
- It’s respecting their privacy by respecting their data
And, for a customer, when do they feel valued in a digital customer experience?
- When they are remembered by their name, preferences and history
- When their time is not filled with plugging in data twice, or asked to fill out irrelevant information
- When they are recommended something else they might need or like, before they even thought of it
- When their experience is convenient, and they can complete a transaction via their channel of choice – all the way until the end!
As you can see, these experiences are very similar to what would make a customer feel respected and valued in the real world. Of course, in the real world, a company can make sure that their personnel go the extra mile in addressing any customer needs while in the proximity of their physical store.
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