Effective Strategies for Humanizing Your Customers’ Digital Experiences (Guest Blog)

Modern businesses have a lot of options available to them when it comes to creating online experiences for their customers. However, while AI-enabled support solutions and automated order tracking systems are efficient, they’re missing the human element that helps to keep brand interactions from feeling lifeless or cold.

Although many customers appreciate the added efficiency that digital solutions provide, they’re often looking for more than an automatic, scripted response if something goes wrong. They want to see genuine authenticity in the brands they engage with and that their needs are valued.

Thankfully, there are several strategies businesses can follow to leverage digital technologies while still humanizing their brand.

The Importance of the Human Element in Customer Experiences

While speed and efficiency are both important parts of creating a great customer experience, they’re not the only things that matter. However, this can be hard for some businesses to understand, considering there are plenty of examples of major brands like Amazon that have built their business on fully digital experiences.

While it’s true that some businesses are still able to achieve success without focusing on human interactions, these are exceptions and not the rule. While purely digital models can work for businesses with very little competition, most organizations need to look for ways to differentiate themselves from other brands. Putting more focus on real, human interactions is a great way to do this.

Maintain a Customer-Centric Focus

It can be easy for businesses to fall into the trap of thinking that customers are fine with their digital experiences. This can happen when businesses use overly generic satisfaction gauges on customer feedback surveys. It’s important to look deeper than a simple “happy” or “unhappy” customer status and look for ways to learn more details about their experiences.

Even if a customer can resolve their problem, it’s important to consider how efficient the process was or if there were other ways the business could improve its processes. This is hard to achieve by sticking strictly to digital tools. Maintaining a customer-centric focus means investing the time and resources necessary to get this information directly from your customers.

Create Purposeful Brand Experiences

To create a brand experience your customers are likely to remember, you want to try to personalize their engagements wherever possible. But this doesn’t just mean using your customers’ names in email marketing campaigns or when connecting with them across different digital channels.

In order to personalize your marketing messaging, you need to research and extract important customer insights. This includes looking through browsing and purchasing habits, leveraging past customer interactions, and evaluating recent reviews or brand feedback. All of these data points allow you to create highly personal and purposeful brand experiences that keep customers coming back to your company. 

Be Conversational In Your Messaging

More and more people want to support brands that actually put a face and personality to their logo. With so many brand options for people to choose from, these are the factors that can make all the difference.

One way to incorporate more personality into your brand messaging is by being more conversational in your approach. Although many businesses may need to have certain scripts for customer service representatives to follow, these should only be guidelines, while allowing agents to add their own unique tone and voice into their responses.

This doesn’t have to just be something you do when providing customer support, however. For example, when marketing your brand on Instagram, YouTube, or other social channels, use this opportunity to try to connect with users on a more personal, less formal level. This can show in the type of videos you create and the way you respond to comments. 

Show Empathy

Another major issue with fully digital experiences is that they don’t make it easy to express empathy when customers have issues they need addressed. Unfortunately, though, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find businesses willing to facilitate in-person feedback (good or bad) as the need arises. This digital-first approach can unintentionally alienate certain customers who may not have access to or the capabilities to use digital feedback tools.

It’s essential to keep this in mind and actively seek ways to provide customers with the option to speak with a real person when they require additional support. This not only provides your business with an opportunity to hear from “all” your customers, but it also shows that you want everyone to have an equal share in helping your business to improve.

Use Automation Responsibly

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to automate different parts of your business. In fact, automated tools and solutions give your business the ability to focus on more critical customer initiatives and provide them with various support solutions outside of core business hours.

The key here is to use automation responsibly and not let it take over every element of your business. You also want to make sure you’re not just using automations for any reason. For example, if you have a product recommendation solution built into your e-commerce platform, make sure it’s actually suggesting products your customers are likely to want or need. 

Stay Authentic in Everything You Do

You should never forget that customers are always smarter than you may think. It’s important to never put business in the situation of being less than truthful in your messaging or pushing products or services that don’t add any real value. Customers have a knack for weeding out quality brands and those only looking for more ways to boost their revenue streams.

A big part of being authentic day-to-day is by considering the type of content you publish – both on your website and across your social media channels. Try to avoid making your content unrelatable or overly polished. Make it easy for customers to connect to your messaging by weaving your brand’s story into each interaction, using language that feels natural and easy to understand. This helps to add more credibility to your brand and build customer trust.

Don’t Neglect Humanizing Your Brand

Digitizing your customer experiences can be a great way to help your business scale. However, it’s important to never lose sight of the importance of humanizing your brand and giving your customers real, authentic interaction that many modern-day tools lack. By following the strategies discussed, you’ll be able to strike the right balance, allowing you to leverage new business technologies while maintaining the human element.

Author Bio

Chris Bretschger, Managing Partner at Bastion Agency, is a seasoned marketer with over 20 years of experience in integrated marketing. He has developed brand strategies, managed media campaigns, and built analytics tools for clients like Mazda, Adidas, Jenny Craig, and Kia. When not leading Bastion, Chris enjoys superyacht regatta racing on the open seas.