Wednesday, January 24, 2018

"Follow the Leader", Featuring Erica Marois


How can digital content be used to enhance customer experience?

According to Wikipedia, digital content (also known as digital media), is stored on digital or analog storage in specific formats. Forms of digital content include information that is digitally broadcast, streamed, or contained in computer files.

So, what does digital content have to do with customer service? While marketing teams most often “own” a brand’s digital content, customer service needs to have a stake, too. We already know that customer experience is now the #1 competitive differentiator, but I believe brands that work across departments to deliver useful digital content will have the greatest opportunity to retain existing customers and attract new ones in 2018.

The possibilities are endless, but here are three ways to use digital content to enhance the customer experience:

  1. Social media Whether you offer formal social media customer care or not, you can use social platforms to educate your customers. For example, Dore Juvenile, winner of the ICMI Global Contact Center Award for Best Social Media Customer Care, uses Facebook live videos to teach their customers how to properly install car seats. (And if Facebook’s not your thing, YouTube works!) Think about your products and services. How could you use social media to share quick tips and tricks that would improve the customer experience, and potentially reduce related call volume?
  2. Blogging The contact center communicates with customers all day long—via phone, email, chat, etc. The data from those interactions is invaluable and can easily translate to powerful online content. Analyze the top three or four questions your contact center receives each month, and then work with marketing to answer those questions in a blog post. (Make sure the post is easy to search and find, and make sure it’s in brand voice. Disjointed customer experiences are sooo 2012.)
  3. Email Yes, I said email. No, email’s not dead. The key to effective email messaging: be concise and add value. Here a few ways you could use email to improve the customer experience:

o   Birthday cards with a special gift or discount code

o   Shipping notifications & updates (Be proactive! Don’t make customers wonder or force them to call you for an update)

o   Education: send a quick tip each Tuesday (Help your customers help themselves!)

Again, the key to success here is consistency. If your email voice doesn’t match your website voice, or the voice your agents use when communicating with customers, the experience will confuse your customers.

How do YOU use digital content to enhance the customer experience? I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments!



Erica Marois is the Content Manager at UBM plc. With a background in marketing, public relations, and social media, she brings more than eight years of community management experience to ICMI.

As ICMI's Content Manager, she oversees ICMI’s contributor network, designing ICMI’s community outreach programs at our events, managing ICMI’s weekly Twitter chat (#ICMIchat) and other social media strategies. Erica also serves as the product manager for ICMI’s Global Contact Center Awards.

Follow the leader: LinkedIn | Twitter





No comments:

Post a Comment