The gap between the digital economy and the traditional economy is rapidly shrinking, and projections indicate that roughly half of the US GDP would come from digital business by 2023. However, we see signs that the digital economy has already eclipsed the traditional – you see businesses of all kinds investing into better digital experiences for their online customers.
Over the course of the pandemic, small businesses of all kinds quickly moved online and advanced their existing digital marketing to keep sales up. A positive customer experience improves customer retention, customer satisfaction, builds brand advocates, and can increase cross-selling and up-selling.
SMB’s don’t need to aspire to provide an Amazon-level experience, but it’s a great example of what is possible by delivering an exceptional experience to customers. As a small business owner, you may not have the time or resources to invest too heavily, but the importance of elevating your digital customer experience could not be more important right now.
In this report, it was discovered that 53% of top performers – companies with the strongest revenue growth – consider the quality of their customer experience as their top strategic priority for the next three years. When questioned, businesses said unequivocally that deep, personalized connections support the resilience and agility needed to weather volatility and plan for growth in better times.
So, how can you improve your digital customer experience as a small business owner? According to the SAP report mentioned above, offering exceptional products and services, competitive pricing, and fast, convenient delivery is the most efficient ways to deliver a superior experience to your customers. Individually, they are all helpful, but when combined they make the secret sauce that SMB’s need to survive in today’s transforming economy.
Companies that embrace digital transformation are best positioned to provide rich, meaningful experiences with their ecosystems. Here are a few ways that your business can begin to prepare for a digital economy that rewards superior customer experiences.
1. Understand the three I’s of the digital economy:
a. Information: You must have some sort of data capture system in place. Do you know how long the average customer stays on your site? Or what age groups are reacting best to your strategies? If not, you need to create a way to find this information.
b. Insight: Using customer data, you have access to stories that no person could ever articulate. Broad trends are easy to decipher, but the best insights come from your data, which hides beneath the surface. Your assumptions and gut feelings about how your customers feel do not reflect reality. You might think your site is intuitive, but you’ll never know until you have data to back up your assertion.
c. Iteration: Putting insights into practice is what the best players in the digital economy are doing right now. The best businesses are constantly making updates and tweaking their services. Each new product put online provides further information for the business to distill into insight.
2. You need to understand what your customers value, and how their values are changing. You must discover what customers are buying, talking about, and abandoning altogether. Then you must find what is being embraced next. Review insights based on demographics such as age, location, income, family status, and interests.
3. For many SMB’s, providing a digital experience means replacing older tech and manual procedures with digital processes and automation. Setting up a more seamless experience will improve sales. We have many robust digital tools that SMB’s can implement easily, without a lot of IT knowledge required.
4. Leveraging automated assistants and chatbots can be helpful for small businesses. By arming automated assistants with important information like web and email addresses, hours of operation, and any new policies and procedures, you can ensure important information is reaching customers in a timely way. Triaging work this way can save you from hiring one more employee, saving time and money by investing in digital technology.
5. Using a single, unified tool for communication on your own team will help your business to improve the customer experience on the other end. One-touch conference calls mean you can get everyone in the same place without fumbling with dial-ins and get valuable digital video time with customers. Real-time messaging through applications like Slack or Microsoft Teams allows for seamless communication.
6. When possible, keep your customer experience as personal as possible. Personalization boosts loyalty, and in time, revenue. Through a better understanding of each customer, rather than just all customers, personalization can provide unique benefits that some of your competitors won’t match. Consider the SMB that knows you by name, asks about your family. You choose the SMB to receive a superior experience.
7. Take things step by step, but remain agile. Focusing on customer experience can feel daunting at times. Learn from your successes and failures, but don’t be afraid to try new things. Delivering the best customer experience is a never-ending journey. You will have to make a lot of adjustments to get it right, but if you don’t try, your business may not make it very far.
As the economy continues to turn digital, it’s important to be ready to pivot in new directions when necessary. Digital competition will only grow stiffer in the future, making it essential that your business has a good technology foundation and a commitment to innovate.
Determining the best path forward for your small business is never easy. Contact PlaymakersX today – we’re your one-stop source for all of your digital marketing needs.