How to Enhance Customer Experience with Interactive Touchscreens

Are you planning to attend an event, tradeshow or exhibition? Or perhaps you’re scoping out your sales and marketing tools for a customer centre or marketing suite? We are all aware that Customer Experience is key to differentiating your business from your competitors. But how important is it really in a B2B sales environment?

“The next competitive battleground for leading-edge companies, whether they sell to consumers or businesses, will be in creating experiences.
We are now in an experience economy.”
The Harvard Business Review

There are very few businesses that won’t be affected by the experience economy. In retail, customers are visiting physical stores and expecting more; they want to interact with brands, have an emotional connection and an element of the online experience they enjoy.

Similarly, in customer experience centres, something that more and more B2B companies are investing in, customers want to have a more immersive and satisfying experience –  in fact, they expect it. Touchscreens and digital signage are a great way to strike a balance between the digital and the physical, and they’re transforming businesses.

A well-designed touchscreen experience will draw customers in and give them more options to interact with your brand, products or services keeping them engaged for longer and giving you the opportunity to develop a deeper connection with them.

So, how will an interactive touchscreen help you enhance customer experience? Well, as sales enablement tool and touchscreen development specialists, we know a thing or two about creating engaging and immersive customer experiences. Here are some of the things we always consider when developing an experience for customer journey enhancement:

1. Grab your customers’ attention

Firstly you have to get your customer’s attention and draw them to your interactive, you need to pique their interest. But, it must be inviting, obvious and welcoming; we humans are cautious creatures and if the experience looks overwhelming or complex we’ll be nervous about approaching it.

How you catch people’s attention and hold it can be achieved in different ways, most often through the initial visuals that are on the screen before people start interacting. But it’s also important to think about the space your touchscreen will be in. For instance, what is around the touchscreen itself – is it part of a wider visual experience? If not, is there a way of working with the immediate space around it to make it more intriguing and inviting?

2. Make it intuitive and accessible to improve your customer experience

Touchscreens have to be easy to use and guide people through the experience, so they stay engaged and can quickly navigate to what they’re looking for. Remember, when someone uses your touchscreen experience they want to achieve something, or they’re being encouraged to achieve something, so you must make it clear how they can do that and the route to achieving their objectives – this is subtle but crucial to get right.

Think of ways you can smoothly guide people through your interactive experience; at no point should they become confused or frustrated or they’ll simply walk away. The touch points should be obvious, and easy to use for all ages and accessibility needs. This is all about user experience (UX) a good touchscreen developer should know exactly how to put your ideas into practice in a way that will work for your customers and deliver the experience you need to deliver your objectives.

3. Give customers what they want

In fact, make it all about them. Interactive touchscreens should, at their heart, be customer-centric. In order to deliver the best experience for your customers, you need to know them inside-out. What do they want and need from you and the experience, and what do you want them to do specifically during and after using the experience?

A touchscreen is about making their interaction with you and your brand easier, so think of how you can enhance their buyer journey in a simple way – rather than over-complicating things. For instance, if you have a wide product range or some complex solutions, think about how you lay out your experience to make it easy for them to find things.

Think: what are they interested in and what would enable you to take things one step further once they’ve found what they want to drive that deeper connection with your brand, rather than just ensuring they find the products they need? For example when they find the right product or information, maybe they can email it to themselves – but only once they have provided some personal information. TIP: Maybe add some of the below?

4. Add engaging features

The good thing about interactive touchscreen experiences is that just about anything’s possible. Adding fun features like object or demographic recognition, 3D models, videos and gamification mean that you can make the experience relevant to your brand and the message you want to give and people can really immerse themselves in your experience and want to stick around for longer.

You can even have your touchscreen interact with its surroundings – such as lighting, or objects in the room. All of this can be a great way to attract people’s attention and encourage more customers to get involved.

5. Make your experience a story

Brand stories are the most effective way to establish that all-important connection with your customers, and including a visual story as part of your touchscreen experience will make it more persuasive and memorable.

You might want to tell your brand story through an interactive video or animation. If so, think carefully about your message, your character/s and how your customers can relate to them in an authentic way. How do you want people to feel having seen your story? Emotion plays a big part in making meaningful connections so try to build an emotional connection.

6. Keep them coming back for more

What can you add to your interactive touchscreen experience that means people will want to return? Part of the appeal of interactive is that the experience doesn’t have to b the same each time it is used. You can vary the content people see so each time they return there’ll be something else to explore.

There are so many ways you can entice people back for more, but you’ll also find that just providing a smooth, seamless and enhanced customer experience will encourage return visits.

Improve your customer experience with POP

By now you should have a better idea of just some of the ways you can enhance your customer experience with an interactive touchscreen platform. A good touchscreen experience should capture people’s attention, be intuitive and easy to use, whilst taking your customers on a journey. Make it fun and engaging, but also simple enough to deliver exactly what they want, when they want it.

If you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed by your options for customer journey enhancement, an experienced touchscreen specialist or interactive agency like POP can guide you through the creation process and do most of the heavy lifting.

Do you have any more specific questions about interactive touchscreens in your business or retail? Feel free to get in touch with us. Email hello@popcomms.com, call +44 (0)117 329 1712 or download our guide.