Digital customer service best practices

Three digital customer service best practices to ensure CX success.

If your business hasn't already embraced digital customer service, it's time. Digital support allows your customers to engage with you on their own terms - terms which usually include convenience, speed, and ease of use. And if you already offer digital channels, it's always good to review digital customer service best practices to get new ideas for improving your operations and customer experience. There are always improvements to be made. Why not borrow ideas that make sense?

To get you started, here are 3 digital customer service best practices, based on experience and backed by data:

Optimize for mobile

Over half of internet traffic is from mobile phones, so chances are that your customers will be accessing your digital support channels via their phones. Your company website is one of the most common resources your customers will turn to when trying to self-serve. Display, load times, and search capabilities are all factors that impact the mobile experience. Optimize, or face some serious consequences - 57% of internet users won't recommend a business if their website doesn't work well on their mobile phones. Optimize for mobile and you'll be following a digital customer service best practice.

Protect customer data

With data privacy and security at the forefront of all consumers’ minds, protecting customer data is a critical digital customer service best practice. Communicating private data over the internet introduces an extra element of complexity in the battle against hackers. A Salesforce study found that 73% of consumers indicate that being able to trust companies they do business with is more important than it was a year ago, and to 78% of them, that includes security. Having a strong data security plan is a "must have" when you offer digital support.

Provide an omnichannel experience

No digital customer service best practices list would be complete without mentioning unified omnichannel. Assuming you offer or plan to offer more than one support channel (including phone), they should all be integrated in a unified omnichannel fashion so that you can offer customers seamless experiences as they move across channels. This is a well-beaten drum, but it bears more beating because there's much more work to be done to get to omnichannel bliss. Our consumer and business benchmark studies revealed that 91% of consumers expect omnichannel experiences, yet only 24% of businesses rate themselves as excellent at omnichannel. The beat goes on!