Digital Customer Experience

Digital Customer Experience

How Smartphones can positively impact the retail automotive experience

Widespread connectivity has turned us all into digital consumers. Nowhere is this more relevant than in the automotive retail & finance space. The digital consumer switches between mobile and online channels, digital consumers expect a seamless, personal and engaging experience, wherever and however they shop. Companies are racing to catch up. Traditional businesses still have too many disparate channels, too many silos of customer information and too little integration of customer-facing processes. But customers expect everything to be joined up, and that the company will have easy access to their history and preferences. It’s very clear what customers want: they want transactions to be easy, the vendor to be available on demand and their personal data to be secure.

 

Mapping out the customer journey

The first step is to define the customer journey. What is important, and what are the key interactions? The second step is to understand customer behaviours and expectations. Traditional market segmentations such as demographics or lifestyle are no longer particularly helpful.

Broadly speaking customers fall into two distinct categories

  • Imaginative
  • Practical

You are now ready to choose the right technology mix from three areas:

  1. Omni-channel breaks down the barriers between channels and information silos
  2. Automation and self-service allow customers more independence
  3. Proactive contact uses data analytics to create proactive and personal interactions

The final stage is to analyse customer interactions, and check that your digital customer experience is delivering  the results you want. You’ll be using metrics that evaluate the customer experience and show you where it  can be even better. Doing all this at speed and at scale is a challenge. Few CIOs will want to build the digital infrastructure that enables a great customer experience from scratch. There will always be a role for experienced partners, especially when it comes to integrating innovative solutions with existing enterprise systems and delivering for customers without compromising security.

Customer experience is an essential component of doing business in today’s fast paced environment

In an age when customer experience is increasingly a key factor for choosing between brands, it is good to see car brands and their financiers are displaying high levels of confidence in the digital customer experience. Customers are becoming ever more willing to self-serve and mobile platforms are fast surging ahead of laptop and or desktop connectivity. But we must not forget the importance of  marrying the customers digital experience with the face 2 face experience in-dealer. This is especially relevant in the acquisition of a car as often many decisions and steps in the journey can be fairly complicated. Customers want a mix of automation and face to face to contact with a real person who can help. Above all, customers want it to be easy. Globally, consumers say they buy more from organisations that make the customer journey easier for them.

A practical approach to building an effective digital customer experience

In order to move ahead with digital transformation, companies need to develop a structured approach that brings their business requirements and technology together, the most important step is to look objectively at your customer experience strategy, and only then identify the technology that can simultaneously improve that experience. This approach will help you work out where you are now and how to progress along the digital pathway to deliver the seamless, hassle free experience that customers want. The first step is to define existing customer journeys, then understand why customers are behaving as they do. With this knowledge, you can begin to choose the right technology mix and, in the long run, monitor and analyse customer interactions so that you can continually refine and enhance the overall experience.

 

Appvantage your digital customer experience partner

For more information about creating the perfect digital customer journey for your business email us at info@appvantage.asia or call our Singapore HQ +65 6611 8738