We all know essentially when the notion of “customer experience” began – with the emergence of commerce itself. Sure, early traders lacked refinement in their exchange of goods and services, but one reality has never changed despite today’s pioneering “CX” breakthroughs: Bad experiences turn customers off and away.
No amount of innovation or good intentions will easily offset such damage…especially in the digital world, where astute prospects already demand high-caliber ecommerce experiences. Those expectations aren’t always met, leaving new opportunities for those who excel on this front. It’s a pursuit or ambition that should never actually conclude.
Expectations are always evolving. Delivering the best customer experience now and over time, however, becomes exponentially easier when data and analytics steer the course. It means gaining a better understanding of and stronger alignment with target customers every way you reach them and vice versa.
Increasingly, that begins and often continues in ecommerce settings. Your customer experience edge emanates from a personalized web and interconnected social presence, which should come as no surprise.
Digital degrees of separation
On the other hand, you may not be fully aware to what degree your digital connections matter – or may in the future. Current acceleration in e-business activity is likely to continue gaining momentum as market conditions improve. Mobile business already accounts for more than 50% of revenue in our economy, and approximately 70% of online traffic flows in from mobile devices.
Consequently, getting customer experience fundamentals down – and down right – should already be among top priorities. Focusing on just a few critical areas can lead to quick wins and help ensure customer website visits increasingly result in sales, whether via ecommerce or otherwise. With customer experience excellence, prospects move closer to purchase more rapidly as well as more frequently. The positive digital experience should continue, not end here, and contribute to your company’s ongoing value.
Whatever that value is today or in the months and years ahead, make sure it translates online. Find a way.
You also don’t need to go it alone. Without qualified expertise or knowledge in-house to efficiently get you on the right customer experience track, you may never get there and squander opportunities to digitally acquire and nurture prospects.
Granted, in our omnichannel universe, it would be relatively unwise to entirely shift all eggs to a digital basket. To say the least, digital interaction and ecommerce should
complement other touchpoints, selling strategies and channels.
Cutting through clutter matters more than ever. Timely, relevant, helpful content will continue to make a profound CX difference with effective automation wherever possible.
Measurable data, immeasurable potential
Your best customer experience asset will likely pertain to strategically captured data, secured in adherence with privacy regulations and expectations, effectively assessed and judiciously applied with the power of a proven analytics platform. Decision-making should almost become intuitive yet with greater assurance, predictability or responsiveness than we humans can naturally attain or process on our own.
Traits, trends and tendencies can speak volumes before anyone even picks up the phone, if they even need to, whether for addressing questions, sharing vital information or detailing key offerings in ways buyers appreciate. What you deliver (and when) during any stage of a personalized customer experience needs to shine from initial digital contact and thereafter.
Here are some questions to think about as you give CX the attention it warrants today and as ecommerce further proliferates:
- Do you conduct customer “journey mapping” in an orchestrated omnichannel way?
- In what ways, if any, are you automating processes with data-driven intelligence?
- How effective is your mobile strategy and overall approach to CX excellence?
- Have you dug deeply into site engagement metrics to identify new business opportunities?
- With increasing traffic, are your conversion rates moving in the right direction?
- Are you harnessing new SEO strategies and tactics to compete more effectively?
Building a dynamic customer experience strategy enables your business to quickly and effectively respond to fast-changing customer expectations. Leveraging data to make smart decisions is the key — and the true difference-maker. The time is now. Are you ready?
In the next part of this multi-part customer experience blog series, we’ll cover everything you need to turn your company into a customer-centric business built for the experience economy.
