What Has Been Your Best Digital Experience?

Last month was a busy awards and events time for the team at Douglas Jackson and I personally had the great pleasure of being invited to judge at the Digital Experience Awards, at the impressive Grand Connaught Rooms, London.  There were some fantastic individual presentations, business plans, innovative creations, and stories, not only within each judging category, but also throughout the day, as I also had the opportunity to network and meet with many of the entrants, Subject Matter Experts, Digital Leaders and Consultants. Thoughts and opinions were shared, with many questions asked; what were the true motives of implementing a digital strategy? Exactly how innovative was each company’s creation? Were the award winners worthy? Who might have done things better? What would we like to see across industries in regards to making the digital customer experience easier and more pleasant?

The Digital Experience category I had the opportunity to judge was ‘Best Insight & Feedback’, where the Nationwide’s ‘Homebuyers Companion’ app was a worthy winner. A full list of the Digital Experience Awards Winners can be found by clicking here.  Before my life as a Senior Recruitment Consultant, I came from a successful mortgage career and background, and understand first hand that this process is a complex one.  By utilising digital customer communication, Nationwide Building Society delivered a really innovative digital app and I thought that this creation was revolutionary! In fact, to be honest, I actually thought to myself, ‘How hasn’t this been developed before in the mortgage industry?’. This app had a lot of synergy to me personally, and it got me thinking about the needs and requirements of others, and what other people might have been impressed by in their chosen fields of specialism, or even related hobbies?

I’m not sure whether this can be classed as digital customer contact as such (although it certainly provides a great digital experience!), as I saw an article on a web/video chat product called ‘Petchatz’ a few months back, the app has been created, so that you, the owner, can not only monitor your dog/pet at home, but talk to them as well, it even gives your pet a treat at the instruction of the operator! Brilliant…

Now in a more functional, and business related world, I have also seen another digital innovation from ‘Payar’ that allows a consumer to purchase their chosen items in store, should there be a large queue at the counter. You can make the purchase on your phone and will be sent a receipt, allowing you to exit the store, goods in hand and no need to queue… what another great idea! Who wants to queue up at a counter when we all lead busy lives? This saves the purchaser valuable time, and the retailer valuable resource… a great win-win for business and consumer.

Digital innovation and the continued evolution of the omni-channel customer contact industry is an exciting place to be right now and is one of the reasons I so enjoy supporting organisations to recruit those niche, hard to fill roles across the Digital and Customer Experience markets, but what about you? I wonder… what has been your best digital experience? Or, the most useful digital creation that you have seen to date and how has it affected you?

Please do let me know by posting your comments here, or you can contact Douglas Jackson, or, Hannah directly at mail@douglas-jackson.com, or, call 0845 620 9720.

Hannah-Louise Cox is a Senior Recruitment Consultant at Douglas Jackson specialising in recruiting executive level and senior management appointments across Customer Contact, Digital and Customer Experience.