Learn About Digital Engagement

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Explain what digital engagement is.
  
• Describe key benefits of digital customer service.
  
• Identify the differences between digital service and digital transformation.
  

What Is Digital Engagement?

Ursa Major Solar’s business continues to grow. The company can’t keep enough solar panels in stock to sell to all its customers—and potential customers—who keep trying to contact them. But contacting Ursa Major Solar is difficult. At least that’s what Sita Nagappan-Alvarez, the CEO of Ursa Major Solar, keeps hearing. After a large deal closed with a residential builder, the client said, “If I could’ve reached you or learned about your business sooner, I would’ve bought twice as many panels...”

Salesforce Research states, "On average, business buyers engage with companies across 10 channels, while consumers typically use eight. How customers decide which channel to use depends on where they are and what they’re doing. 71% of customers prefer different channels depending on context." This means that customers expect to reach you on the channels of their choice, whether that’s on a mobile device using their favorite messaging app like WhatsApp, or on a website using web chat. Gone are the days when an email or phone call is enough. To keep customers and potential customers happy, you must engage with them in the digital realm.

Enter, digital engagement. It’s a term that describes how companies engage with customers across all digital touchpoints, while providing a consistent customer experience. Typically, a customer’s journey includes marketing, selling, and servicing in a way that lets them switch between multiple channels without interrupting a positive experience.

A typical digital customer journey for Ursa Major Solar might look like this:

1. A new campaign to promote solar panels on the web or on multiple social media channels (Marketing Cloud Engagement).
   
2. Leads and opportunities from the campaign are captured and every stage of the deal is tracked and analyzed until the sale of the solar panel is complete (Sales Cloud & Commerce Cloud).
   
3. After the solar panel is purchased, customers receive service reminders as texts on their mobile devices, review service agreements from a website, and reach out to support via chatbots, web chat, and more (Service Cloud).
   

Each part of the journey—no matter where the customer is at—is optimized with automation and artificial intelligence (AI) to make sure that a positive experience is delivered consistently.

Digital Transformation

Sita knows that emerging technology is transforming customers’ expectations. Customers ask virtual assistants to play their morning playlist, use applications to order their favorite foods, call for a ride, or navigate traffic. The reason these experiences are sticky is that emerging technologies like AI are embedded into these apps to power customer experiences. To stay competitive, companies need to incorporate digital technologies into their customer experiences.

Customers expect to interact with businesses the same way they do in their personal lives—on mobile devices, with SMS messaging, and more. If customers aren’t receiving the experiences they expect, they can easily take their business elsewhere. The rise of social media and review websites give customers more of a voice. In the past, customers might have shared a bad experience with friends and family, but with social media, they can broadcast bad experiences with the world.

Digital transformation—converting ink-on-paper records to digital formats—encourages businesses to reconsider how to deliver customer experiences, and question traditional ideas of teams and departments. That doesn’t mean support agents need to run marketing campaigns, but it can mean knocking down walls between departments. A customer journey can encompass marketing, selling, and servicing, tied together by a digital platform that captures customer information, creates personalized experiences, and routes questions from customers or potential customers to the right support agents.

Benefits of Digital Service

Sita knows that digital transformation has reshaped how companies approach customer service. The old model was to wait for customers to find you, whether in person or by calling a toll-free number. But the rise of digital communication has changed service much like it’s changed advertising, media, and news.

The practice of providing excellent service hasn’t changed. But the process of answering a question, looking up relevant data, and offering a solution has become much more efficient with mobile devices and multiple communication channels. Sita can see that embracing automation and AI will help build better relationships with new and existing customers.

Sita knows that she must move Ursa Major Solar into the realm of digital service. But where to start? Enter Service Cloud.

Resources

• Blog Post: Inside the Sixth Edition of the State of Service Report