The Covid-19 pandemic has expedited the digital revolution by three to four years, according to a report by Animated Video Service. Additionally, it claims that at least 80% of its client interactions are digital. Recently, clicks have mostly substituted and replaced consumer interactions. Therefore, the question is: How can brands, especially those whose operations involve eCommerce, reinvent their digital customer journey in this context?
Many businesses had flimsy eCommerce websites before lockdowns to complement their in-store experiences. These websites would be used to assist online users in searching more effectively. Due to the fact that many merchants did not want to lose out on in-store sales, these websites may be seen of as a teaser of their offers. Rarely was the whole inventory accessible online, and there was hardly any transparency or accuracy regarding the status of the inventory. The availability of some items might occasionally occur (and the website would not receive an update).
However, by 2020, even retailers that operate across many platforms have realized the value of websites and their capacity to create individualized client journeys. Additionally, websites see the greatest increases in customer loyalty and revenue. So, the new cool is rapid, tailored, and robust online help. Businesses today (especially those that operate online) have shifted their focus to satisfying the needs of the client above everything else. Recently, the much-anticipated “omnichannel” experience phase has also arrived, where customers will only interact with a business through their preferred channel. We will discuss ten methods in which you can enhance the consumer experience for your eCommerce business in light of all these variables. Let’s quickly examine it:
1. Stay Current with Data Insights to Become More Customer-Centric
Frequently, the support manager is not involved in regular client contacts. In the midst of all of this, insights from social media (tweets, posts, comments, Dms), emails, chats, etc., can go unshared or unnoticed.
Most companies that offer external customer help end with transactional procedures. I have bad news if you represent one of those brands. Customers today are able to recognize these brands, and they won’t hesitate to leave you. This generally pertains to online store brands. eCommerce companies that are not customer-centric won’t last long in 2022. Because of this, it’s crucial to close any service gaps and elevate the client experience. This is only possible if your eCommerce ticketing system is connected to your data silos.
Persistent service gaps can be prevented with the correct eCommerce ticketing system. No comment, query, or support ticket would evade detection with a connected interface. Vendors who have a complete picture of their customers’ needs can offer insightful recommendations, take appropriate action, and boost productivity.
2. Request client feedback
It’s critical to understand what your clients think of your offerings. Ask your consumers repeatedly about their experience making their purchase, receiving it, using live chats or self-help facilities, or communicating with your customer service representatives.
Get input from customers on each of these factors, and then make sure it is simple and intuitive for customers to make purchases and request assistance online. If a step in the digital journey is challenging, customers will give up or, worse yet, complain to others about their negative experiences. Word-of-mouth spreads quickly!
3. A Must: Omnichannel Experience
Businesses have noticed a rise in tech-savvy interactions over traditional processes in recent years. Today’s consumers desire to communicate with brands via social media, email, self-service knowledge bases, FAQs, SMS, and other channels. Social media has fully developed into a well-liked medium that provides the quickest assistance. For this reason, well-known companies like Walmart, Nike, Flipkart, and others have created social media pages just for customer service.
Offering customers a variety of channels does not always equate to providing excellent customer service. Your ability to deliver flawless experiences will be aided by unified omnichannel customer service. It lessens the main barrier posed by the support and enables messages and information to move freely between consumer touchpoints. Customers can resume work on a request they started through a completely different channel.
4. Automate as much as you can
Customer care for eCommerce websites benefits from automation because it allows for improved efficiency throughout the support operations. Client service representatives spend the majority of their time conducting manual research, leaving little time for genuine customer interaction and problem-solving. As a result, a lot of eCommerce companies are embracing automation via artificial intelligence and virtual assistants. Automation helps relieve your support team’s burden so they can concentrate more on offering individualized services and fostering long-lasting relationships.
Example: Panasonic once had trouble explaining things to their customers who didn’t understand English. The company teamed up right away with Unbabel, an AI provider that offers rapid email translations. This made it possible for Panasonic’s customer service team to maintain both quality and punctuality.
Therefore, it’s crucial to determine which trends or technological advancements will best suit your industry. You must consider what your clients and support staff desire!
5. Self-Service Support for Customers
Think about it:
Do You Want to Cut Down on Repeated Customer Requests?
If the answer is yes, your company will need to put a self-service solution in place. Every eCommerce support team deals with a tonne of queries at once, often to the point where they are too many to handle manually. This is where your eCommerce ticketing system’s self-service features may help. Other advantages include:
Reduced support costs increase social engagement, which in turn boosts customer satisfaction and success.
enables clients to handle basic problems on their own
It allows you to formally document the information about your goods for use in post-sale inquiries. These articles’ primary goal is to arm readers with knowledge that will enable them to solve difficulties.
6. Make sure the agent experience is excellent
Customer service representatives carry the brand. Their performance on the floor depends on a variety of factors, including tools, training, and the work culture you adopt. Agents occasionally experience burnout, which is typically brought on by a lack of professional satisfaction, unattainable goals, extreme stress, etc. Your customer satisfaction may potentially be impacted by this. Therefore, it is crucial to provide customer service representatives with power.
In order to improve the quality of their eCommerce customer service, firms are now implementing cutting-edge technology to support their agents and maintain overall efficiency. This includes interactive dashboards, interactive analytics, chatbots, training courses, and self-service capabilities (for agents).
7. Individualization Is Key
Customers will find a cause to stay (or return, if they’ve already left) when they see that you are committed to helping them solve their problems or that you genuinely strive to understand them. A lot of marketers concur that their efforts in customization have paid off in some real ways and increased their businesses. An in-depth understanding of the customer persona is necessary to deliver a personalized experience.
The greatest way to master personalization is to divide your clients into many buyer personas according to their expectations, purchase journeys, loyalty, and other factors. You’ll be able to increase and strengthen your consumer loyalty as a result. It will help you customize better responses if you collect data from numerous factors such as geography, industry, purchasing history, average value, and so forth. Brands that don’t implement their procedures will quickly see their clients defect to rivals that do.
8. Put the needs of the customer first.
Let’s use the case of a consumer in Paris who is expecting their order of a comforter because the city is experiencing poor weather. They chose to have the pickup done at the curb. Now, only a representative who is knowledgeable about or up to date on the weather in Paris can provide this specific consumer with better service. If the customer service representative handling this case is unaware of this, there’s a good risk they’ll lose the customer due to an impersonal response. Furthermore, if the customer has great value, it would be worse. In this situation, the agent could (and should) offer to deliver the merchandise for free to the customer’s door due to inclement weather. Personalization helps with retention very well. However, it’s equally crucial to use the data responsibly while avoiding giving your clients cause to worry about their privacy.
9. Make use of live chat
It would be accurate to argue that convenience and rapid pleasure are the driving forces behind the eCommerce sector. Customers want accurate support that is delivered quickly. This idea serves as the foundation for the complete client experience:
Find anything as soon as you can.
Check out immediately
The item arrives at their door.
You can better meet these expectations by using live conversations. You can rapidly deliver succinct answers through live chats. Additionally, it can pause a convoluted question until your agents take over.
10. Monitor Important KPIs
The monitoring of pertinent performance indices for your assistance comes last but not least. Customer service is an effective marketing technique that has a significant negative impact on a brand’s reputation. Setting guidelines for monitoring and assessing key performance indicators is a crucial first step in improving customer service procedures. It will assist you in locating any process kinks and choosing where to direct resources in order to make improvements.
Conclusion
The intense competition in the eCommerce industry has saturated the feature and pricing components of every company. Brands must develop distinctive service offerings starting in 2022 to differentiate their operations from those of their rivals. Customer experience has never been more crucial than it is today. And a guaranteed method to do it is with an e-commerce ticketing system.
