Customer Experience or customer satisfaction is way more critical than it sounds. Its importance in ecommerce cannot be overstated. For any ecommerce business looking to thrive in this intense competitive environment, providing an extraordinary customer experience is no more a nice-to-have, but a must-have thing.
As online shopping witnesses an upward trend, customers expect a seamless and personalized experience because they have more options than ever before. Failing to meet this expectation can hit hard on any business and damage its brand’s reputation.
It is crucial to improve customer experience as it is not just about keeping your browsers happy throughout their journey in your store but creating lasting relationships with your customers to drive the bottom line of your business.
For driving sales, building strong reputation of your brand and increasing customers loyalty, a seamless and positive customer experience is just the way through.
But what exactly does a great customer experience mean? Why does customer experience management hold so much importance in ecommerce business?
This article aims to dive deep into the importance of providing great customer experience and how it can boost customer satisfaction, revenue and retention that will ultimately help in thriving your business.
Common Mistakes That Ruin Customer Experience
- Poor website designs – unattractive designs of your online stores, confusing navigation, slow load time and lack of clear call-to-action all these can put off customers and make it difficult for them to search for what they are looking for.
- Lack of understanding the actual target audience – when an online store fails to understand its customers preferences and needs, it ultimately lands up delivering poor customer experience. Being unaware of how to market your product, what products or services to offer to customers at what time and how to provide good customer support,all these hurdles crop up when you have poor understanding of your target audience.
- Inappropriate Customer Service – Not responding to customers queries in time and effectively, not providing clear and concise information to buyers, not resolving their issues all create negative experiences of customers in your stores. This negative experience results in loss of trust in your brand.
- Overstating omni channel communication – Not providing consistent services and information across all channels and not responding to customer inquiry on different channels leads to fragmented and baffling experience for customers.
- Poor Marketing plan – failing to use the right channel to communicate with your customer or not having a clear strategy to reach or retain customers affect business badly. When your marketing plan is not solid enough you will lack visibility of business growth and will also lose on engaging with your customers.
- Disappointing payment and delivery experience – hassle in payments, unclear information about the exact delivery of the product makes your customers disappointed and ultimately lose trust in your brand.
- Paying no heed to social media – Shoppers these days take social media to express their views either bad or good. Not being responsive to their comments, inquiries and complaints on social media gives a bad impression about your brand.
Businesses striving to avoid these mistakes and putting their best to improve customer experience and provide a seamless and positive shopping throughout builds trust and long term relation with their customer.
Customer Experience Strategies That Boosts Customer Satisfaction, Revenue and Retention
Boost Customer Satisfaction
- Personalized the experience – personalized interactions with shoppers in your store such as customizing product recommendations based on customers likings and preferences make them feel valued. Customers appreciate when businesses understand their needs and preferences and getting this level of attention enhances their satisfaction.
- Offer multi channel support – It should be hassle free for customers to reach business through any method preferred by them be it phone, email, chat or social media. Hence, it is important to provide support across multiple channels. This not only reduces friction but also resolves issues efficiently and ensures higher customer satisfaction.
- Provide quick and seamless service – When all of it is about customer satisfaction then quick response time and efficient service is the main and major, and why it shouldn’t be, after all speed matters when we all live in this fast paced world. Customers when heard promptly for their issues perceive a positive outlook of your brand.
Improves Customer Retention
- Gracefully handle issues – No business can perform with utter perfection. Problems and issues are inevitable and will arise, no matter how hard you try. And, it is how you handle your business issues with your customers that makes or breaks your relationship with them. To reinforce customer loyalty and to flip the negative experience into a positive one, your business must resolve the problem promptly, effectively and empathetically.
- Active involvement with customers – To keep your customer engaged and feel connected to the brand it is crucial to be proactive towards them. Show your customers that you care about them and strive for a continuous improvement by regular follow-ups, check-ins and feedback requests. Having a proactive approach rather than reactive, when engaging with customers, leaves a significant impact on customer retention.
- Work to build trust and loyalty – the foundation of customer retention is set on the pillars of trust and loyalty. To develop this sense of loyalty towards your brand you need to provide your customers with positive experiences consistently. Once a trust is built, it translates into long term relation with customers, reducing churn rates and maintaining a steady stream of revenue.
Drives Business Revenue
- Word-of-mouth marketing – they say that the best marketers are your happy customers. They provide invaluable WOM marketing by sharing their positive experiences with their family and friends. It is the most powerful marketing strategy as seen as the most credible and trustworthy. Unlike traditional marketing campaigns, it attracts new customers and drives business revenue without any high cost associated with it.
- Working on Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) – A good customer experience can increase their lifetime value with your business. Customers when satisfied with a brand are sure to return and make repeat purchases. They are also less price sensitive and are ready to pay a little extra for a better experience.
- Cross Selling and Upselling opportunities – offering positive experience to customers gives you opportunities to upsell and cross sell which is more likely to be accepted. Customers consider buying additional products and services when they trust brands and feel valued. Hence, good customer experience in combination with well timed recommendations and offers can help boost business sales without appearing pushy.
The Road Ahead …
Positive experiences for customers in your store are powerful drivers of business success. Customer experience strategy is a necessity in this competitive environment and not just a good-to-have thing.
If any business works on enhancing customers satisfaction, improving customer retention strategies and driving revenue growth, it can significantly improve its bottom line.
Businesses that invest in providing great customer experience find themselves amidst happy customers, greater loyalty and more revenue. It’s a win-win situation that pays off in both the short and long term.
Therefore, for an ecommerce store it is crucial to focus on delivering exceptional experiences at every touchpoint and watch your business thrive.