What is Digital Customer Service? Definition, Benefits, and Tips

Companies always wish to keep up with growing competition and stay ahead of the curve, by trying to increase customer satisfaction with their innovative ideas and tools. With increasing expectations, the company needs to work upon its technical skills to maintain consistent performance to deliver the expected outcome. If you are asking what is customer service, in this article, we will discuss new ways to increase customer satisfaction, increase the revenue and efficiency of a company through Digital Customer Service.

What is Digital Customer Service?

Digital Customer Service is defined as the relationship between the customer and a brand via digital channels like the desktop, smartphones, tablets, or other digitised devices. Online customer service helps with a quick message delivery to customers and fast action on part of the company. It reduces time, cost, and energy but increases effectiveness, satisfaction, and efficiency.

Why is Digital Customer Service important?

According to a survey by McKinsey and Company, it was noted that through Digital Customer Service, the satisfaction of customers can be increased by 33% and this will also reduce costs by 25-35%. It provides quick service in less time. Companies should understand the importance of customer service as it changes people's daily habits and also saves time. Digital Customer Service provides a comparison, different prices, reviews, all at one place (internet) that makes customers more vigilant and informative.

The importance of customer service can be seen in the shopping trends of an average person. In today's era, people use devices to browse, read reviews, for shopping, questions, answers, study material, research, etc. and end up buying something. These websites also provide address queries, complaints regarding the product, etc. It supports the needs of an average consumer and increases the satisfaction and trust manifold.

Benefits/Importance of Digital Customer Service

What is customer service? The advantages or benefits of Digital Customer Service are listed as follows:

1. Interaction with customers via digital channels

The Digital Customer Service provides omni channel interaction with customers daily. The customer service digitalisation allows the users to log in to the website and save the history data for future recommendations. It allows the company to offer the customer what he is interested in and what he is most likely to buy. This systematic process can help save the customer some time and the company to increase customer satisfaction.

2. Time-efficient

The automation of manual customer service can help the company save time and increase productivity, which proves the importance of customer service. It also helps to save the company's resources in the long run and reduce the cost of the operation. The company can use the surplus cost and invest it in innovation projects or ongoing projects. Digital Customer Service provides a way for a company to not only satisfy the customer’s needs but also maintain the pace with market trends and stay ahead of the competition.

3. Improve Customer service

Digital Customer Service helps to drastically improve customer service and experience. The outdated and manual customer service frustrates the user by submission of personal data forms, face-to-face verification, and appointments, etc. it wastes the time of both the company and customer. However, with the help of digitalisation, the customer experience has evolved and takes less time comparatively. Clients can maintain and update the account and information as per their schedule and time availability. The eSignature also helps in saving time for the customer.

4. Competitive advantage

Digital Customer Service is known as an innovative force that takes the conventional approach a leap ahead. The various digital channels allow a company to compare the customer's feedback with various applications. This gives a kick-start to companies adopting the Digital Customer Service in the market over others that are slow to do so.

5. No rules and regulations

Traditional customer service has an error rate of more than 70% due to poor maintenance of forms, ledgers, and other human mistakes. New regulations only make the system more complex. However, the case with Digital Customer Service is the opposite. It ensures a smooth flow of customer service and experience. It avoids the overlapping of information and track sheets of the data. The customer also doesn't have to provide the information repeatedly. This system of online customer service allows the business to focus their time on increasing customer satisfaction and less time with checking the regulations.

Tips to Improve Digital Customer Service

Technological improvements have taken over the world in a variety of ways and it has become very difficult to select the right technology for the business to increase customer satisfaction and experience. Here are the five significant tips that can help a business to improve customer service with the help of technology:

1. Online database

Every company needs to store the data online for future purposes to take the customer experience to the next level. When the company provides access to data to customers, it makes it easier for them to understand the issues and requirements instantly instead of calling the company directly.

2. Automation Process

The automation of customer service helps to boost the overall performance of the company and the experience of the customer. The automation provides 24/7 availability to the customer. It has a faster response rate as compared to manual phone calls. Online customer service provides an automated chat-box to solve the general issues for the customer immediately. The follow-up process takes less time and is efficient.

3. Customer Relationship Management

Customer Relationship Management immensely helps to Improve Digital Customer Service by analysing the customer's behaviour and interaction. It provides a combination of strategies, practices, and technologies. The goal of CRM is to increase the customer's satisfaction and increase the revenue cost, solely dedicated to this purpose.

4. Targeting the right audience

Online businesses have access to more data than before with the help of digitalisation. They can track the customer's response, targets and analyse the data gathered for the research. It helps to select the target audience and give them exactly what they look for. This helps to increase the company's sales, revenue, and also customer experience.

5. Custom-tailored Content

The signs of personalisation increase the customer's satisfaction and chances to buy the product. eCommerce websites allow the customers to buy the related products they had previously searched for, making them personalised for that user.

Also read:

1) What is Digital Marketing? Scope, Opportunities & more
2) Digitalisation - The next step in the evolution of Digital India
3) How Small Businesses Afford Digital Marketing?
4) Which affordable digital marketing course is best for a startup and small business owners?
5) OkCredit: All you need to know about OkCredit & how it works.

FAQs

Q. What are the top three CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems?

Ans. The top three Customer Relationship Management systems are listed as follows:

• Freshworks CRM 8.5
• Salesforce.com 8.3
• HubSpot CRM 8.3

Q. What makes customer experience important?

Ans. The customer experience depends on the satisfaction of the product or service delivered by them. To make the online customer service experience worthwhile, companies are focusing on providing them with the best product or service possible with the help of technology. It is all about end-to-end service between the company and the customer.

Q. What are the three “D’s” of the customer experience?

Ans. The three D’s of the customer experience are:

• Design
• Delivery
• Development

The design, delivery, and capability development are the significant components that help in increasing the customer experience and satisfaction. They reinforce each other to deliver the best design in terms of development which is important for the growth of the company.

Q. Should a company include the best and worst surveys with the customer experience?

Ans. The best and worst surveys help the company to understand the customer better in terms of preferences and requirements. It allows determining when and how to use the surveys. Timing of the best and worst surveys is important to satisfy the customer. Many companies include these kinds of surveys to provide a better online customer service experience and increase efficiency.

Q. Is the customer onboarding a part of the customer experience?

Ans. Customer onboarding establishes a foundation of long-term relationships between the customer and the company. Customers expect a consistent or seamless experience in every possible way and customer onboarding is the first step to reach that destination for the company.