A physical location used to be the focal point of the customer experience. Before the internet, everything revolved around the retail experience you could provide clients at your physical store. Customers are given terrific expertise thanks to the helpful staff, actual inventory, and a simple exchange procedure, but expectations have altered as we’ve entered the digital age.
Your customer experience is about a seamless in-store and online experience in light of the expansion of eCommerce improvements. According to the Post-COVID survey, 59% of consumers are more concerned with the customer experience, which is expected to be a key purchasing factor in 2021.
Describe The Ecommerce Customer Experience
Your e-commerce experience is a part of your overall customer experience or how clients feel about all of their interactions with your business. Ecommerce customer experience is a comprehensive term that includes online and offline experiences, from a customer’s initial exposure to your brand to the post-purchase process.
“E-commerce customer experience” refers to customers’ sentiments when buying your products or services online. A wide variety of activities fall under “e-commerce experiences,” including selecting and paying for a music subscription service on a tablet or purchasing a new vacuum on the Amazon app for your phone or computer.
People may have very different e-commerce experiences. But they all need to be satisfying for your customers, or they will become frustrated and find another option for making their purchase. And despite how critical eCommerce has been to revenues for every industry in the past few years, many companies still offer a bad experience for their customers.
Also, Read: How Can Online Stores Create A Good Customer Experience?
Trends In Customer Experience For 2022-23
According to CustomerThink, the success of your business in 2022-23 will be determined by your customer experience plan. This year, the importance of providing a positive client experience across all channels cannot be overstated. The following is a list of the top customer experience trends:
- Self-service
Internet ordering services that integrated the online and offline worlds during COVID were first introduced due to safety and health concerns, but they are now commonplace. Customers that use BOPIS and similar services can avoid paying delivery costs, saving them time and money.
- Telehealth
This financial year saw rapid growth in digital health. According to a study, 60% of people prefer to schedule appointments online. The telehealth trends highlight the value of digital appointment scheduling, which is important for retailers and healthcare providers to adopt.
- Websites
Websites are crucial for the user experience once more. The top websites will feature customer-focused content and information about what to expect in real spaces after COVID. The web experience will largely influence customer loyalty in the financial year 2022-23.
- Relations
According to a study by Salesforce, 71% of consumers think that companies that demonstrated greater empathy and care this year won more devoted customers. Businesses have to invest in customer relationships and corporate culture.
Techniques For Improving Customer Experience
The following simple actions can be taken to improve the client experience:
- Go back to your website
Particularly in the post-COVID environment, consumers typically begin their retail visits online. As a result, ecommerce websites are growing again and will be crucial in 2022-23. Make sure your website’s design and content are up to date.
Ensure that it is easy to use and offers a positive user experience. Use SEO strategies to ensure that your website shows up for relevant search terms in search engines. Include relevant information on customers’ expectations while placing an order or visiting your store.
- Be conscious of your clients
The customer experience is still mostly a mystery, but when we listen to our consumers, the mystery disappears. Customers are excellent at expressing their wants, but we must gather and use the data properly.
Utilise retail data, surveys, and polls to improve the way you get client feedback. You may learn a lot about your target market by keeping an eye on how people purchase from your store (both online and in-person). Utilise a top-notch POS system to monitor, evaluate, and apply customer input at every omnichannel retail point.
- Make the experience seamless
Integrating your online and offline consumer experiences flawlessly is the most crucial thing to do this financial year. Consumers should have a positive experience no matter which touchpoint they choose to interact with your organisation.
You must ensure that your online appearance and website reflect your physical store and vice versa among the ways to do that are: Synchronising the administration of the inventory, design coherence (colours, fonts, logos, and style), etc. You should also enable online ordering or in-store pickup for customers.
- Include the most recent technological innovations
The retail sector frequently engages in a technological arms race. By using new technologies, several businesses have responded to the problems posed by COVID-19. You can apply queue control, where customers may track their checkout queue and get a message when it is their turn.
Some options to take into account in the current digital world, when contactless has developed into an expectation, are – the administration of concierge orders where customers place orders via fixed screens or mobile devices, and employee texts the customer to let them know when their order is ready.
Use digital signage for advertising sales, menu items, and other things. Technology related to health and safety, including temperature scanners, holders for hand sanitisers, and UV-Clean solutions.
- Give it a personal vibe
Any successful e-commerce platform must have a well-thought-out, individualised user experience as its foundation. Each purchasing experience should seem as though it were specially designed for them if you want to delight your customers.
Making it simpler for users to find and choose the goods and services they want is what personalisation entails. Suggestion of related products is a popular personalised customer experience tactic used by successful e-commerce firms.
For instance, if you purchased a camera on eBay, the site would suggest other equipment like tripods and telephoto lenses similar to the camera. These customer experience tactics helped turn Amazon and eBay into e-commerce behemoths.
- Reduce abandoned shopping carts
The shopping cart is abandoned when potential customers start the online checkout process but ultimately decide against making a purchase. The virtual shopping cart items inserted but later removed are handled as such.
While abandoned shopping carts at physical establishments are merely annoying, virtual shopping cart abandonment rates may indicate bad user experiences for customers. Therefore, regulating the shopping cart abandonment rate on your platform is essential.
Conclusion
Businesses often become unduly enthused about particular trends in customer service. They frequently minimise, dismiss, or outright reject many other important trends. A standout customer experience remains crucial to earning, keeping and maintaining consumer loyalty. You can easily give your clients a smooth experience by implementing the best strategies.
