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5 Ways To Elevate Customer Experiences In E-Commerce
Contributed article by Megha Agarwal
E-commerce has taken the retail world by storm. While global
giants like Amazon dominate the global retail landscape, millions of more
e-commerce platforms are servicing different niches and countries. It is
predicted thate-commerce sales will take up 24.5% of all global retail sales by 2025! It
calls for e-commerce platforms to prepare themselves to enjoy the maximum
remunerations of this global jump.
Retail shoppers expect brands to deliver instant and
frictionless customer experiences across touchpoints. Whether customers are
buying from a brick-and-mortar store or shopping online, an engaging customer
experience can keep the users hooked to a brand.
What is the E-commerce Customer experience?
E-commerce customer experience is having complete control
over how your brand engages with your customers. It includes optimizing the
engagement process from the online browsing experience to the purchase experience
and finally following up and redressing any issues with the customer.
Everything from the view and user-friendliness of the website or an application
to a smooth and straightforward check-out interface followed by mediums for
reviews and redressal of complaints is a part of the e-commerce customer
experience.
Elevating the e-commerce experience can help platforms
to build a loyal and happy customer base. Let’s look at 5 ways how you can
upgrade your e-commerce customer experience and their subsequent impacts:
#1 Know your customers well
Understand customer needs
The modern, fast-paced lifestyle demands businesses to
adjust to new consumer needs. Customers now want a swift shopping experience as
they check out products in retail stores and switch to online applications.
E-commerce platforms such as Amazon, eBay, and Alibaba owe their success to
their ability to adjust to the evolving shopping experience.
E-commerce businesses should strive to make their websites
and applications as user-friendly as possible. Add features such as filters for
brands, price, sizes, etc., to help customers swiftly locate the desired items.
Also, make the check-out section simple and quick with maximum options for
mediums of payment. As per a survey, 66% of consumers lost their trust in a
brand after a frustrating website experience. Websites and applications,
therefore, offer businesses an excellent place to introspect their overall
customer-friendliness.
Analyze customer satisfaction
E-commerce customer experience goes unchecked if there are
no provisions or ways for customers to share their experiences. Businesses can
set up and regularly engage in the reviews section and set up quick and
easy-to-fill feedback dialogs that promptly open up after a purchase or a
call/chat. It helps businesses be aware of the quality of their services and
where they can improve.
#2 Be where your customers are
Optimize mobile experience
As per statistics, 54% of e-commerce sales in 2021 were
initiated from a mobile. It gives e-commerce platforms an excellent opportunity
to engage customers by making their platforms and applications mobile friendly.
Quick loading pages, carefully placed keypad options, engagingly designed
mobile interface, and broad software compatibility are crucial elements to stay
relevant in the hyper-competitive e-commerce space. Remember, as per a survey,
a bad mobile experience dismayed 55% of customers from re-engaging with brands.
Social media
A crucial part of an elevated e-commerce experience is to
have a reliable brand persona. Customer loyalty is built when customers can
rely on your brand for their needs. Engage with your customers regularly and
update them on any changes and releases via social accounts.
Social media also acts as a place where potential customers
can freely engage with your businesses. Optimize mediums like Instagram and
Facebook shops to attract social media savvy customers. Along with traditional
routes like websites and applications, leverage newer mediums accessible to
your customers.
#3 Help customers help themselves
Per a survey, 67% of customers preferred finding answers on
self-help portals rather than talking to a customer service representative.
People often try finding solutions online rather than calling customer support
when encountering a simple issue. It illustrates that your customers expect you
to provide quick answers in an e-commerce setting when looking for answers.
FAQs and articles
FAQs and articles sections have provided customers with
relevant answers from the start of the web revolution. Often, companies fail to
optimize this section in the most impactful manner. Outdated and irrelevant
FAQs and articles plague online portals. It further misguides and confuses
customers regarding the relevant solution.
Optimizing and effectively managing the online knowledge
helps build the customer’s faith in your company. Articles and FAQs must be
regularly audited and updated based on any changes. When you help customers
help themselves, you will notice a drastic decline in inbound traffic to your
call center operations.
Chatbots
A survey found that 68% of the customers like chatbots
because they provide quick answers. Chatbots can help customers find relevant
answers in just a few seconds if optimized efficiently. Chatbots have also
evolved to a new level, with AI-driven chatbot services providing intelligent
solutions in the least time.
Another use case of chatbots is to upsell and promote new
products and services. Chatbots can quickly analyze a customer's shopping
habits and patterns when integrated with CRM software. It can then successfully
provide intelligent suggestions to a customer for a new product and
service.
#4 Personalize customer experiences
Businesses send tons of emails and promotional messages
daily to their existing and potential customers. However, with the evolving
landscape of e-commerce businesses, personalization is now a necessary
component of the e-commerce customer experience.
Move beyond names
When it comes to personalization, companies mainly conclude
their personalization efforts by adding customer names to their generic message
template. However, since every e-commerce platform participates in similar
promotional activities, customers need an exciting differentiator to recognize
your brand uniquely. Customers expect brands to treat them as individuals and
not merely as numbers.
Customize customer interactions
Today, customers interact with e-commerce platforms via
multiple touchpoints. Call center executives, online chats, emails, chatbots,
and messages on a business's social media pages are some. Companies have an
opportunity to learn from the history of a customer’s interaction with their
brands. It includes past purchases, issues, buying preferences, wishlisted
items, and customer activities. Businesses can use the data to provide a
customized ecommerce customer experience that makes them feel
valued.
And why not? Customers are happy to share their information
to get a personalized shopping experience. A report found that 65% of the
customers are willing to share their data if that gets them a personalized and
customized shopping experience. So instead of vaguely upselling accessories,
executives can simply pitch products that matter most to each customer.
#5 Equip support agents with the right customer service
tools
Technological advancements in the customer service domain
have revolutionized customer service operations. Gone are the days when
customer executives worked with age-old agent scripts and struggled to solve
complex problems. Now, e-commerce platforms can make the service experience
reliable, personalized, and quicker by incorporating customer service
tools.
CRM Software
CRM or customer relationship management software is used to
gather customer information in a single place. E-commerce can organize
information about a customer’s demographics, previous interactions, purchase
records, and information in one place. Customer service agents can provide a
personalized experience to a customer by incorporating insights from CRM
channels. CRM leverages sentiment analysis to increase customer loyalty and
eventually upsell.
Knowledge Management Platform
Knowledge
management implementation empowers companies to create, gather, and
organize their information in a single place. Often, customer agents cannot
locate the required information quickly, leading to an increase in average
handling time. It not only leaves a customer frustrated but also affects the
productivity of the service executive. Ecommerce knowledge management helps
improving by organizing the present information held by a company. It further
provides ways to create, store, and review future communication.
E-commerce platforms can further integrate their CRM and KM
software to provide relevant and insightful information to their agents. It
further elevates the service experience.
Conclusion
The expansion of e-commerce services in every industry has
forced a battle to attract customers. A seamless and engaging ecommerce
customer experience can help businesses to retain customers and gradually
expand. 52% of the customers would go out of the way to buy from a brand to
which they are loyal. Elevating customer experience thus becomes more than a
necessity.
Businesses need to analyze and intelligently use the data
consensually provided by the customers to tailor a memorable, impactful, and
helpful experience. Along with this, e-commerce platforms need to optimize each
customer touchpoint to ensure an omnichannel
customer experience.
AUTHOR
Megha Agarwal has been working as a digital marketing intern
with Knowmax, an enterprise knowledge base management platform for the past 3
months. She carries out daily marketing operations from outreaching relevant
websites to getting the content published and working on various content pieces.
Apart from work, she loves to read books and do painting in her free time.