We’re sure you’ve caught on to the times already and noticed how the consumer landscape has really changed since the onset of COVID-19. Gone are the days when buyers would walk into Zara at their local mall and peruse hundreds of clothing items. Why do that when they can simply hop online and pick out a new dress in half the time and without having to walk around and wait in queues?
Online shopping has become the new shopping, and the onus is on businesses now more than ever before to deliver an unforgettable and pleasant experience to their customers that make them come back again, and again.
While this may sound incredibly daunting, in reality, it is easier than you think. We’ve worked out a few ways eCommerce business owners can create an incredible customer experience that spans across many points in the customer journey including sales, marketing, and support!
The recipe to customer success
Act on customer feedback
All your customers really want is to feel loved and supported as though they’re the only girl in the world. Don’t spend too much time brainstorming ways you can take your support to unprecedented heights when the entire process can be expedited by going straight to the source. Who knows better than your customers how they want to be treated? Communication is so important here and all it takes is giving your customers the opportunity to give their feedback through reviews and surveys.
From lead capture through to onboarding, NPS, product feedback, and churn, survey insights will help you learn and scale. Set up your surveys to be offered to your customer as and when they’re engaging with your brand so that their feedback is consistently influencing the running of your business. Turning to email campaigns is an excellent way to generate customer feedback and create personalised responses that offer bespoke support and content that speaks to their specific problem while providing you with input that grows your business.
If you really want to enhance this process, why not give a reason for your customers to give their input by offering them rewards that encourage loyalty and turn the whole experience into a fun one!
Maintain an omnichannel customer experience
In an age where people own and operate on a plethora of different devices, it’s important for your business to prioritise meeting your customers where they’re at – and delighting them in the process. Whether that be on a tablet, mobile, desktop, online, or offline, make sure you have a strategy in place for each of these channels that give customers a consistent experience with your brand that they can still connect with and be excited about, no matter where they are.
Regardless of the channel your customers engage with you on, you should be providing your customers with the same level of service so they always know what to expect from you. If you’re an online retailer, think about bringing your products to wherever your audience is hanging out, especially on social networks and marketplaces, such as Instagram and Facebook. Going multi-channel also augments your customer support, allowing you to communicate and engage on different platforms. These channels make it easy for your audience to reach out to you.
Prioritise meaningful customer engagement
In order to practice effective engagement, your brand’s communication should be on point. Sending the right messages, to the right people, at the right time and on the right channel, is what will win the hearts of your buyers.
Making sure that whenever you come into contact with your customers that you are providing a personal touch is paramount to creating purposeful engagement. A surefire way to achieve this is to become reactive to the behaviours of your customers and tailor your messaging around what they need next as part of their personal journey with your brand. Use insight and data tools to learn the extent of their interaction with your website, their purchase history, their motivation behind purchasing from you and what else you can do to improve their experience. All of this makes your customer feel valued and promotes further engagement with your company!
Supercharge your support
Given that your customers find themselves in an online shopping environment, remember that it’s not as easy as finding the manager and resolving a problem instantly.
That’s why it’s important for online merchants to create ways for customers to self-serve so that whatever queries they may have, they can find that you’ve already thought of answers and made it easy for them to be resolved! This can be done in the form of comprehensive FAQs that buyers can read and access. You can also incorporate intelligent chatbots designed to be able to answer simple questions. These methods save your support time a lot of time that can rather be spent on dealing with more pressing issues, upselling items and tending to other parts of the business.
It’s important that when providing support to customers, you do it quickly so as to prevent any frustration on the customer’s part that might lead to them walking away from your business. While chatbots might be incredibly helpful in jumping on customer queries quickly (and they definitely do serve a significant purpose in the grand scheme of things), they fail to be you: a human. Customers appreciate it when support teams are able to connect with them emotionally and if you’re able to establish such a connection with them, you take a step forward in making them want to come back.
Optimize your checkout process
The final line to cross in creating a nourishing customer experience is that of the checkout.
To be able to tick this box, it’s crucial to ensure that there are no obstacles in the checkout that prevent your customers from taking their business elsewhere. Things like having to submit billing information repeatedly, or being prompted to create an account only minutes away from completing their purchase are guaranteed ways of turning buyers away.
Prevent these catastrophes by giving customers the means to create an account the moment they enter your site – and you can do this by means of stunning and enticing visuals. Using integrated apps on your site you can support payments from a number of payment providers that are sure to create a seamless payment experience from beginning to end.
Small improvements can have the greatest effects
Improving your customer experience doesn’t have to be equivalent to mission impossible – sometimes it requires only a bit of research, and other times things worth changing and bettering are blatantly obvious. What matters is that you think about your customer experience as deeply as you think about your product or your brand. At Blend, we understand it has the power to be a major point of differentiation between you and your competitors, and are able to help you capitalise on CX in order to build a strong business. Contact us today and let’s get the ball rolling!
