How to Be Where Your Customers Are – In the Digital Flesh

How to Be Where Your Customers Are – In the Digital Flesh:

There is no doubt that if you have a company website you have definitely seen it evolve over the last decade. It started out simply as a digital version of the fancy full color brochures your marketing department paid bucks to have printed up. This was the classic Static Brochure website.

Then, along came technologies that allowed your website to display information that came out of a database. This was pretty sweet because your website had the changing dynamic feel to it. And your website visitors started to return more often to see what had changed and what was new.

After the tech bubble came website technologies referred to as “Web 2.0” or user-generated content platforms. This basically meant that anyone could add content to your website without you having to do anything; features like product ratings, product reviews, comments, etc. Again, pretty awesome because this meant that your website was changing and bringing in more visitors to see what was new.

And today just about every major business website has social buttons (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, etc.) that allow you to share content that you find interesting with those who follow you or are in your social networks. All great stuff because the more you create new content that others want to share, the easier it is to get found on the web.

So what’s next? What happens after a prospect or visitor finds your website? What’s the next evolutionary step in website technology? It’s called Customer Engagement.

The next evolutionary step in website technology enables you to humanize your customer’s website experience. How many times have you been browsing a company’s website and had a question? Was there someone there to answer it for you? Was the only option to root around and find the 800 number, generic email address or a contact us form? More importantly, did you actually use one of those options or did you simply leave the website frustrated?

Let me give you an example. I love the Nordstrom in-store shopping experience. They stock wonderful, high-quality products and deliver incredible personal service from knowledgeable team members. They even give me a personal business card and walk around to the side of the check-out counter and hand me my bag with a smile. Do I get that when I visit Nordstrom.com? Nope. But I should and I could. The products are generally the same, but what is lacking is the differentiated service experience that has made Nordstrom an iconic brand offline world. In the online word, unfortunately, it’s status quo for Nordstrom (not much different than visiting Target.com or any other commodity retailer).

Incredible Customer Engagement tools now exist that can be installed on your website to provide your website visitors with this kind of differentiated experience – in the digital flesh. One example of a company doing this is the software giant Intuit. Through the “Connect with Us” option on their website footer, Intuit’s Health Debit Card Group can engage prospective customers and in real-time answer any questions.