Exclusive: Brands fall short of customer engagement and interaction, warns digital ad guru
In today’s increasingly digital-led way of life, retailers, service providers and other businesses are digitalising more of their operations and dealing with customers across a range of channels, whether it’s via a website, mobile app, email and other messaging formats, social media, or even the old-fashioned phone call.
But according to Daniel Homoki-Farkas, UK managing director of London-based digital innovation agency Supercharge, many companies and brands still aren’t paying enough attention to their customers’ user experience when they interact with them via these digital channels.
“Too many companies and brands are still making it too hard for their customers to engage and interact with them digitally,” Homoki-Farkas told City PM today.
“They still have in place complex user interfaces and fragmented customer journeys that are clunky, slow, and difficult for their customers to navigate,” he said.
His call to action comes as the latest study from global technology research firm Omdia shows that, as the shift among companies to digital accelerates this year, improving customer engagement and strengthening digital channels is a key focus this year for companies across the UK looking to bounce back from the pandemic-induced slowdown.
Tailored experience
Businesses also identify hyper-personalisation with omnichannel customer interaction as an important goal.
The study found that a third of businesses surveyed said that customer experience and engagement is their top business priority in 2021.
Driving innovation ranked second at 31 per cent, and digitalisation of operations and processes ranked third, at 30 per cent.
Businesses keep their various customer-facing channels in separate, disconnected silos that don’t communicate with and don’t update one another.
Daniel Homoki-Farkas
As a result, “the user experience for customers can be disjointed, repetitive and frustrating,” Homoki-Farkas said.
“These companies need to radically overhaul their approach to the customer experience management in a way that both unifies and streamlines the entire process,” he added.
“Their focus must be to deliver digital interactions that are frictionless, intuitive, and cool: and which are consistent across all of their customer-facing channels.”
By taking the time to properly enhance and unite their customers’ digital experience, brands and companies can achieve significantly improved customer loyalty and retention, Homoki-Farkas concluded.