The past two years have fundamentally transformed customer engagement and the customer service journey across many industries. Contact centers learned how to work from home, customers remembered how QR codes work, and most importantly, digital experiences became table stakes for businesses deploying premier CX.
According to Twilio research, companies that invested in digital customer engagement over the past two years saw an incredible70% top-line revenue increaseon average. Digital customer engagement is necessary in today’s digital world. Digital customer engagement increases revenues, is the industry standard today, and shows no signs of slowing down in the future.
“Companies that invested in digital customer engagement over the past two years saw an incredible 70% top-line revenue increase on average.”
Digital Engagement Boosts Revenues
Modern consumers demand digital, self-service experiences for the routine, simple interactions that make up the majority of customer service inquiries. According toresearch from Qualtrics,“90% of consumers say they expect brands and organizations to offer an online portal for self-service.” Meeting digital self-service expectations helps retain customers — especially in the face of fickle modern consumers willing to switch brands after just one negative experience. Customer retention means increased customer lifetime value (CLV) and increased revenues.
Investment in digital customer engagement is therefore central to brands’ revenue growth this year and beyond. According toresearch from Twilio,“companies said their investment in digital customer engagement increased revenue by 70% on average, and 7% of companies said that revenues tripled.”
Revenue impact from investments in digital customer engagement in 2021
State of Customer Service Report 2022(via Twilio)
Digital Engagement Solutions Have Become Widespread
The COVID-19 pandemic rapidly accelerated the adoption of digital engagement across every industry. Businesses suddenly had pressing needs to go digital and consumers jumped at the chance to use all the new solutions.Research showshalf of all consumers have increased their digital engagement with businesses since the start of the pandemic. That engagement will only continue to grow as more and more companies deploy digital engagement solutions. Channels like email, SMS messaging, video chat (one way and two way), and other digital solutions are seeing continued growth in both inbound and outbound volumes.
The widespread adoption and use of digital engagement tools shows just how important shifting to digital as fast as possible is to companies still lagging behind. Digital engagement solutions are creating new paths for customer engagement, but the best solutions do so while maintaining a connection to live human agents for complex customer service inquiries, or the outlier customers who still avoid digital interactions.
Demand For Digital Is Never Going Back
The shift to digital customer engagement across industries shows now sign of reverting to past preferences. For one, companies have continued accelerating their digital transformation strategies as the pandemic has continued. According to Twilio, a staggering78% of B2C companieshave accelerated their digital transformation timelines by 1-10 years. They’ve also seen digital interactions from consumers triple in the past 3 years, from just north of 50 trillion in 2019 to over 150 trillion in 2021.
Customers have really capitalized on the expansion of digital engagement solutions. According toTelus International,most Americans will keep taking a digital approach to their interactions with businesses going forward, and in some industries by an overwhelming margin — 71% in retail, 77% in health and wellness, and 92% in banking.
“Most Americans will keep taking a digital approach to their interactions with businesses going forward, and in some industries by an overwhelming margin — 71% in retail, 77% in health and wellness, and 92% in banking.”
The COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally transformed the way we all go about our lives. Digital engagement and self-service solutions helped billions of people survive disease, lockdowns, and social distancing. Customer engagement was no different. As the pandemic unfolded, businesses in every sector accelerated their digital transformation plans and consumers jumped headfirst into digital adoption. Now, digital engagement and self-service solutions are a high priority requirement for any businesses looking to retain customers and increase revenue. Digital engagement has become ubiquitous in today’s customer service landscape and there are no signs of demand for digital slowing down.
