Customer experience in digital commerce
The future of customer experience for enterprise brands is through digital interactions online. In 2021, it will be the key differentiator for B2C brands instead of prices or products, according to Walker Insights. That’s why CX deserves your time and effort.
Technology has changed the way individual shops and interacts with brands. The user’s preferences and demands ultimately decide how brands can portray themselves.
Today, either the individual customer is the boss, or strong brands dictate what the customer purchases. ‘How to improve Customer Experience’ is one of the top priorities for companies. In reality, the majority of companies plan to compete mainly or entirely based on CX. In a recent article by the “future of commerce” they noted the following statistics;
- 86% of the consumer will pay more in exchange for a great customer experience
- 73% of consumer believe customer experience is an essential factor when boils down to purchasing decisions
- 65% of consumers find influential marketing a positive experience rather than traditional advertising.
A brand is always measured against the best customer experience a consumer had, irrespective of the industry.
Its estimated e-commerce industry will serve 2 billion consumers in 2020. Online B2C retailers expect to do $4 billion in sales in 2020. According to a recent article from CustomerThink.
Why IS Customer Experience the Heart of E-Commerce Business?
Steve Jobs
You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back the technology, not the other way round.
The success of industrial disruptors such as Airbnb, Amazon and Tesla attributes to numerous factors. Still, they all have one thing in common — the focus on delivering excellent customer experience rather than just selling a product or service.
Today, consumers keep themselves updated with the latest tech, tools and skills. They demand Amazon-like pace and service from any corporation, irrespective of the industry space they play in.
People want to browse and buy anytime, anywhere and on any device. This is no longer a “nice to have” capability, but something expected by consumers on their purchase journeys. We call this true omnichannel experience. As customers make their path to purchase, each touchpoint and new screen can increase the drop off rate and decrease the chances of a checkout. The concept for good CX is less is more, this means reducing the amount of clicks, touchpoint and interactions that end in a transaction on both sides of the sale.
Offering seamless sales transactions and meaningful engagement is a significant challenge for enterprise companies, they are riddled with complex buying journeys and customer segments, one common pain point also being manual processes that are not streamlined. So, a seamless sales experience means making the customer buyer journey as easy and straightforward as making your morning coffee. Customers should be able to search ‘what’ without hassle.
What Are the Main Challenges in Customer Experience?
DELIVERING A UNIQUE OMNI-CHANNEL EXPERIENCE
What is your omnichannel plan for the end consumer? Will they come back to the store? Will shoppers buy online and pick up at your physical store? Can they exercise loyalty points in the shop and online? Will they find your items in their favourite spot, whether it’s a branded boutique or department store? Ask yourself, whatever the answer, how do your customers want to shop? Your customers should have the freedom to shop the way they want to.
CUSTOMER LOYALTY PROGRAM
Not all brands seem to have a plan for improving their consumer loyalty. Interestingly, 80% of brands have not endorsed a loyalty programme. Only 34% of brands send editorial-only marketing content. It’s also harder for consumers to be loyal to a company.
If Shoppers aren’t emotionally attached to a company, chances of repeated product purchases reduce.
It is not enough to attract one-time buyers if you want to grow in the future. Healthy CX does not end at the conversion process. This should be the starting point for a long-term relationship that will keep customers interested in returning.
PERSONALISED EXPERIENCES
Emotions play a vital role in the commerce industry. Any experience with a brand be it positive or negative can have a lifetime impact. CX is king, getting what you want when you want and recommended products based on your preferences is essential to business success. Generating personalised journeys for the individual buyer persona at each stage of their shopping journey is a challenge for merchants. Also known as 1:1 Personalisation.
This is then compounded for enterprise brands who build out these personalised journeys at scale. The issue of time and time again is getting a platform that can provide these capabilities, to scale these personalised experiences, data being the key tool to feed these personalisation engines.
McKinsey’s The State of Fashion in 2018, stated “For the consumer, personalisation and curation are becoming increasingly necessary. When customer values unite with authenticity and creativity. Since 2018, using data to personalise a journey has been adopted into every major brand’s roadmap and strategy for ecommerce.
Moreover, a survey by the Boston Consulting Group showed a revenue increase of 10% or more for clothing retailers that introduced personalisation strategies.
2 Tips to Improve Customer Experience
Artificial Intelligence(AI) and Machine Learning(ML) can help:
Customers expect swift replies from the support team in case of a problem. There can be delays from support in case of holidays, health concern etc. However, the customer won’t bother to wait. Chatbots can help here.
Chatbots are bots trained with the help of AI and ML that can communicate with customers 24/7, 365 days a year. They can even help to escalate the customer’s requests when required. Gartner predicts that by 2021 more than 50% of businesses will spend more per year on chatbot production than conventional mobile app growth. This is not surprising considering that 75% of online customers expect a response within five minutes.
Customer Journey Mapping
Comprehension of the complete customer journey helps in designing CX that can please customers, based on how they “actually” interact with a brand across all touchpoints. Mapping the contact points a customer can take includes anything from a product or service request to a check-out, a follow-up service and more. Note that all experiences with your brand are part of the overall experience.
To really get your customer journey validated, it’s important to get 1st-degree data, extracted through surveys 1:1 interviews and focus groups to truly find out what path customers take.
Top 2 Customer Experience Trends to Look for in 2021!
CX, as a focus, to your brand’s digital capabilities, will drive the success of your brand in 2021. Adopting these functionalities and experiences will keep brands relevant for the next 3 years.
The following are the most critical trends in customer experience for 2021, but these again call for a long-term vision and loyalty to your company’s values. Add them to your roadmap and prepare for execution.
Understanding your customer
Understanding consumer behaviour lets marketers wear the hats of the scientist. It’s more than just crafting compelling ads or catchy posts. Human behaviour insight gathering can help organisations to improve their employee and customer experience collaboration. It can also help to achieve executive alignment to strengthen cross-function communication.
But do brands have the talent to evaluate these findings and draw the relevant results?
Mobile-first customer journeys
The small supercomputer that can be found in every individual pocket has the potential to boost brand engagement; our mobile experience is at the forefront of how we interact with brands online. From product comparison to one-time coupon, location-driven promotion, personalisation content offering, and much can be unlocked with the help of a tiny mobile gadget. To make effective use of such expertise, internal brand departments should coordinate for flawless execution and change management for shifting consumer behaviour.
Do modern brands have to start from scratch, or do they have effective models to learn from?
Are There Any Commerce Platforms That Meet My CX Needs?
SAP Commerce Cloud, an omnichannel solution, combines the digital and physical touchpoints into one framework to take care of customer orders quickly, safely and efficiently across all channels.
SAP Commerce Cloud (formerly SAP Hybris Commerce) is an omnichannel platform for B2B, B2C and B2B2C businesses designed to engage and communicate with the customers through digital and physical touchpoints.
For the fifth time in a row, SAP commerce was listed as a pioneer in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce 2020.
How can FAIR help you?
Over the last eight years, FAIR has delivered customised SAP commerce enhancements, integrations and implementations that provide seamless CX to brands and their customers.
With FAIR as your strategic partner, we can get your SAP commerce up and running in no time, ready to scale and flexible enough to cater to any business need.
