How can brands offer both customized and personalized experience with QA efforts?

Digitization has made a transformational impact on existing business and revenue models. Since it has pervaded the personal and professional lives of customers, businesses ought to offer a customized and personalized experience to derive customer satisfaction and loyalty. The evolution of digital products and services, be it in the B2B or B2C segments, has heated up competition in the online medium. Consequently, businesses must adopt suitable strategies to enhance the end user experience and remain competitive. The focus on end user experience can reach its logical end should a robust quality assurance exercise is adopted. In fact, digital quality assurance and testing may be considered alongside the use of real time analytics and latest trends in design to deliver outcomes such as customer satisfaction, advocacy, and loyalty.

Achieving brand loyalty in today’s competitive online environment where customers have a vast array of products and services to choose from, businesses must willy-nilly ensure end user delight. Dealing with such issues is of utmost importance, for these can impact a company’s product line, brand equity, besides customer loyalty and advocacy. Thus, software quality assurance in terms of testing the customer experience (CX) must form an integral part of the SDLC and beyond. Remember, your end customers have become increasingly demanding and are spoilt for choice when it comes to accessing top notch products/services. Any below par quality is an absolute NO for them as they brace for seamless, robust, fast, and secure solutions at cost effective rates.

Reasons why customized and personalized experience is important

Generates customer trust: Why do brands such as Apple, Samsung, Nike, Omega or Google boast of a high brand loyalty? The answer lies in their ability to forge customer trust through quality. Gaining the confidence of your customers can yield better dividends such as letting them accept an increase in the cost of your product or services. Generally, raising prices can be a red flag for businesses, for it can drive customers to their competitors. However, should customers be convinced of the quality of products/services, they are likely to stay with the brand even when there is an upward revision of prices. In order to achieve the same, besides ensuring a high quality of products/services using quality assurance, businesses should establish a personal connect with customers. This can be done through personalized newsletters, emails, and reward programs etc.

Promotes word of mouth (& social media) recommendations: It has been observed that more number of customers are swayed by recommendations from family and friends compared to the advertisements as far as purchasing a product or accessing a service is concerned. And this word of mouth publicity can only happen when customers are convinced of the quality of product/service. Leveraging digital assurance to improve customer experience can lead a brand receive positive reviews, recommendations, and possible sharing on social media. Businesses, on their part, can delve on the quality aspect of their products or services during promotional campaigns including responding swiftly to complaints, if any.

Provides an omnichannel experience: Achieving a seamless customer experience depends on a slew of factors such as -

• Level of customization and persona-based strategies
• Omnichannel interactions across multiple digital touchpoints

Businesses should undertake a continuous customer experience QA testing across demographics and locations. This is required to align the quality of product/service to the evolving end user expectations. The QA experts should understand the difference between customer experience and user experience and set up strategies to achieve both. The user experience is about mapping an individual’s interaction with a product rather than mapping the entire customer lifecycle as in customer experience.

Achieving personalized experience through AI

In the competitive digital milieu, a personalized customer experience can drive conversions. The best way to achieve the same is by engaging Artificial Intelligence (AI) led tools. Chatbots have become the most user friendly and personalized AI led tool to solve customer queries, keep track of information, and let users interact with the company 24x7. Apart from reducing the cost of operations, chatbots can improve the quality of customer experience significantly. AI led machine learning algorithms can analyze customer interactions on chatbots and anticipate customer needs. The AI tools can help deliver better personalized experience ensuring CX.

Conclusion

With omnichannel interactions becoming the norm, businesses aim to garner customer loyalty by delivering a robust, secure, and customized personalized experience. To ensure the same, the quality of products or services should be kept on a tight leash by following a robust quality assurance process.

Diya works for Cigniti Technologies, Global Leaders in Independent Software Testing Services Company to be appraised at Cmmi-Svc v1.3, Maturity Level 5, and is also Iso 9001:2015 & Iso 27001:2013 certified.