For many the “experience” in digital experience is the customer experience. While the “digital” part is easy to figure out, the “customer” part is still a bit unclear. That’s because digital experience strategy isn’t an IT-driven initiative; it’s a customer-needs driven initiative. There’s a huge difference between simply using digital technology and actually leveraging it to improve customer experiences and better address customer needs.
What’s your digital experience strategy? Most firms still don’t treat the design, creation and execution of digital customer experiences as strategic, but rather as a special category of marketing-led tactical projects. To take digital experience to the next level requires business and technology leaders to collaborate on a digital experience strategy that follows three rules.
Rule 1. Design dopamine digital experiences.
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Dopamine is a chemical in the brain, a neurotransmitter responsible for motivation and reward. If you like something, your brain releases dopamine, making you want more. It might seem extreme to suggest that application development professionals need to understand brain chemistry. But total customer power means that ho-hum experiences are not good enough. Firms must deliver dopamine experiences that customers love … that they crave.
Customers look forward to the opportunity to use your app to accomplish their goals when the appropriate context arises. For example, someone shopping for a new television may anticipate using his or her banking app to check balances and get instant financing.
Your app should be so useful and usable that customers are completely immersed in their experience. That doesn’t mean that they necessarily spend huge amounts of time using it, but when they need it, they are all in. Video games are an obvious example that may offer customers a flow state experience that makes them cut everything else off.
Achieving customer goals is a prerequisite to achieving customer satisfaction, but it is not enough. Customers must also feel positive emotions that are appropriate for the context they are in. The positive emotions could range from ecstasy to relief. It is not just about achieving goals; it is also about how easy and how fun it was to achieve them.
Design dopamine experiences that make customers feel that way, and they will want to come back for more.
Rule 2. Be everywhere.
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It is not enough to design dopamine digital experiences. You must also deliver those experiences whenever and wherever your customers want or need them. That means developing applications for whatever digital channels, or “touchpoints,” are appropriate for your customers, whether on the Web, in smart phones, tablets or kiosks, or embedded in cars, appliances or even clothing. Regardless of any uncertainty about which mobile application development platform to use, we must not hesitate to design and develop mobile apps to deliver experiences whenever and wherever customers want them.
Rule 3. Stay fresh.
Source: recruiterrepublic.com
Human brains can be fickle and easily bored so don’t count on being able to trigger the same dopamine response from the same experience indefinitely. What customers find exciting one day becomes the new standard tomorrow. If your competitors get there before you do, you may lose your customers to them. Therefore, not only must you design dopamine digital experiences, but you also have to keep refreshing those experiences on a regular basis. But how?
Being first means constant innovation. Continuous creativity is essential. Focus on designing dopamine experiences for customers, by adding features or changing the design of existing apps or even creating new apps. App innovation stems from having deep knowledge of both technology and customers.
A wait-and-see or copycat strategy is no longer sufficient if you want to deliver dopamine customer experiences whenever and wherever customers want them. Innovation can no longer just be something you aspire to you actually have to do it, with continuous creativity. Get faster to be first.
Get your digital strategy right and turn your company into a digital disruptor.