Most businesses have adopted digital solutions in 2023. Customers don’t have to visit a physical shop to buy something in this era. You can simply visit the service provider’s website and place an online order. A delivery executive will drop the product on your doorstep in no time. You can also track the shipment status with a dedicated mobile application. Gone are the days when customer journeys started from a physical store. Since everything has gone online, corporate entities must focus on Application Performance Monitoring (APM). Simultaneously, corporate entities should also focus on End-user Performance Monitoring (EUPM). DEM (Digital Experience Monitoring) is a combination of APM and EUPM. It is essential for corporate entities that thrive on offering better digital channels/solutions to customers. Read on to understand DEM in detail and its pros for corporate entities.

Definition of DEM

Application performance monitoring focuses on how well an application or a digital platform performs. EUPM focuses on the way a user interacts with digital applications and platforms. DEM combines both processes and ensures consistency across different digital channels and platforms. DEM is a performance-monitoring discipline that optimizes the experience of a human or a digital agent with enterprise applications/services. DEM allows an enterprise to gain a single view of all its digital services, from software solutions to web security. It then enables enterprises to gain visibility into digital customer journeys. Any shortcomings in the digital customer journeys will be fixed in real-time to uplift customer experience. DEM is a little different from the digital employee experience, as it focuses on how employees interact with digital solutions and applications. DEM is more inclined towards the experiences of customers on digital platforms and applications.

Customer journeys can be interrupted due to several reasons. A lack of service availability (downtime) can result in a poor digital experience for customers. Similarly, a website that takes too long to load might not offer a better digital experience to customers. Sometimes, the application does not fail to perform, but the customer experience becomes poorer. For example, a glitch on the official website of an enterprise might hamper the digital experience. The enterprise will keep an eye on every customer interaction, application, and digital platform. The entire process of keeping an eye on digital customer interactions and digital platforms is referred to as DEM. Usually, enterprises rely on a DEM platform to monitor the digital customer journeys and performance status of digital channels/solutions. The ultimate aim is to enhance the service availability of enterprise applications and offer customers a better digital experience.

How does DEM work for enterprises?

For digital experience monitoring, enterprises need the right tools. Traditional DEM tools aren’t capable of handling the complexity of today’s applications and digital platforms. For the same reason, AIOps platforms are being used for digital experience monitoring. Once the tools for DEM are selected, it is time to monitor the digital customer journeys and fix the pertaining issues. There are two ways to monitor the digital customer experience and fix the underlying issues.

The first method is real-time use monitoring or RUM (Real User Monitoring). With the help of DEM tools, enterprises record digital customer journeys. They wait for the customer to find an issue during their digital journeys. Once an issue is encountered, the respective IT team will get to know about it in real time. The concerned IT professionals will know about the underlying problem and try to fix it quickly. When they fix an underlying issue quickly, they preserve the service availability. It is crucial to note that RUM requires real users to interact with enterprise applications or digital platforms.

The second technique is STM (Synthetic Transaction Monitoring). STM uses behavioral scripts to create a real-user scenario. The actions will be similar to what a user would take on a digital platform. However, the user is always synthetic and not real. Think of it as an algorithm recreating a real-like digital customer journey. The issues encountered by the synthetic user might be experienced by real users soon. If the issues are fixed before the real users experience them, the digital experience will become better. STM is a proactive form of digital experience monitoring, compared to RUM. RUM is more of a reactive digital experience monitoring.

When talking strictly about DEM, it is only concerned with monitoring the digital customer journey and finding possible issues. However, an enterprise is not going to ignore a performance issue. For the same rationale, DEM also involves steps taken to improve the overall experience. It includes fixing performance issues, glitches, errors, and more.

In the past few years, the number of enterprise applications has increased. For example, enterprises offer customers mobile applications, websites, interactive kiosks, and other digital platforms. When there are so many digital platforms, it is difficult to keep an eye on the digital experience. It is trickier to maintain service availability across different applications, websites, and endpoints. Also, traditional DEM solutions fail badly at collecting digital experience data from multiple sources in real time. For the same rationale, AIOps platforms are being introduced for digital experience monitoring. Let us see how AIOps (Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations) plays a part in digital experience monitoring.

How AIOps helps with DEM?

As discussed above, traditional DEM solutions cannot handle the complexity of enterprise applications. An AIOps platform is capable of handling the increasing number of enterprise applications. It will collect customer experience data from different sources in real time. Proactive Application Performance Monitoring becomes a reality with AIOps. Such platforms indulge in event correlation and high-end data analysis. They can identify unusual behavior of a software system or application in no time. When an application starts deviating from its normal behavior, it means something is wrong. With AIOps, an enterprise can identify digital experience issues even before the customer. With proactive incident management, an enterprise will always provide customers with a better digital experience. Also, AIOps-led solutions can help with synthetic user monitoring. Most of the tasks are automated with an AIOps-led solution, thus reducing the burden on employees for DEM. Start investing in AIOps platforms for DEM now!