Why Your Digital Platform Needs ‘Real’ Human Customer Experience

Not so long ago, I was a complete rookie to the blogging world. When I started to benchmark hosting sites, I felt lost.

You know the feeling when you have to choose between many options but you don’t have all the knowledge and understanding to make a sound decision?

Horrible. But I had no choice. I needed to select a reseller hosting site to start my blogging adventure. With mixed feelings, I went for one of the reasonably big players. After paying the fees, when I pressed “Publish” to put my blog online, an error page showed up on the screen. Interesting things always happen after paying the fees.

Great. GREAT. GREATGREATGREATGREATGREAT.

I could see where this was all going: I would have to go through the FAQ; write to the provider without any answer or -even worse- get an automated response that would not solve my issue.

What happened next taught me a great lesson in Customer Experience

In a nutshell, while I was pestering at my choice of provider and trying to find who to contact:

• Without writing any email to the provider to notify my problem, I received a message saying that Miroslav was working on my problem (who is Miroslav?)
• In a movement of deep skepticism, I started a live chat conversation with Victoria who confirmed that there was a real person named Miroslav who was actually working on my problem
• While I was chatting, Miroslav wrote me a personal note announcing the resolution time (he could solve my problem in a couple of hours)
• 15 minutes later, my blog was online and I received yet another personal email from Miroslav thanking me for trusting their company (I would have voted for him at the Presidential elections if I had the chance at this exact moment).

Looking back at my experience, I could compare it to the many frustrating occasions where digital platforms damaged my experience instead of enhancing it.

And here is what I learned:

Digital platforms are not an option anymore and this is good news.

Gone are the days without CRM systems, automated emails, SMS campaigns, social media campaigns, surveys, in brief all of those means that allow us to reach many people in a click.

Digital is part of the way we do business and live, and this is great news. As long as human beings are not absent of this equation.

Digital platforms are magic… provided they enhance human connections.

In my experience with my hosting provider and without realizing it immediately, I enjoyed the fact that the platform was making my connection with Victoria and Miroslav easy and fast.

The telephone could not have done the same job: I live in Dubai and the contact center could have been anywhere in the world, making a conversation an unpleasant and not practical task. Through the digital platform, I was in touch with two people at the same time through chat and mail and they solved my problem in 15 minutes.

Thinking about it, it felt good because the messages we exchanged were real: there were typos, acronyms, nice words. It was real. I was exchanging with human beings through my screen.

The magic of Digital works when humans are at the center of the conversation.

When sending any automated answer, campaign, or survey to your Customers, make sure real human beings will follow-up. Let them use their own words (in the limits of what is acceptable of course), let the tone be genuine: your Customer Experience will be impacted positively and your performance will improve like you have no idea.

As for me, when I received the survey about my experience with Miroslav and Victoria, I happily put 5 stars everywhere, and even decided to write an article about it. I also wrote them a personal message to thank them for their support.

Before I forget, this story was a little while ago.

I am still with my hosting provider. Because beyond their technical competency (that all their competitors have), they deliver amazing customer experiences through their digital platform.

Well done SiteGround.com.