The quality of your customer experience (CX) shapes how customers view and interact with your business. Keeping up with the latest CX trends and best practices will help ensure you can build a loyal customer base that advocates for your brand.
If you’re having trouble retaining customers, a bad CX is likely to blame. And with an ever-increasing number of customers interacting with you almost entirely online, a good understanding of how e-commerce channels impact customer experience is essential.
These are some of the top CX trends and practices to watch out for.
Understanding What Drives Customer Satisfaction
Understanding your customer base is always going to be the most important thing when it comes to creating a succinct and ideal customer experience.
In recent years, one of the primary factors driving customer satisfaction has been speed of service. With almost everything available at our fingertips, we’ve become impatient and used to next day or even same day delivery.
This culture of instant gratification also now means customers expect a speedy reply from businesses when issues are raised or if social media messages are exchanged. Almost every kind of business will now have more digital interactions with customers than ever before, so it’s important to stay hot on this.
Seamless Omnichannel Messaging & Experiences
Just because so much of the customer experience now takes place online, does not mean you should disregard traditional and physical experiences. Offering seamless messaging across all channels with a focus on a highly personalised experience is key.
In this respect, it is especially important to collect the right data on customers, so it can be pulled and used across channels to improve in-store experiences, making the journey from seeing a product or service on social media or website to engaging with that product in a physical store that bit smoother.
More and more customers are beginning to expect this kind of flawless omnichannel experience and are more likely to engage with and purchase from a brand when such services are provided.
Improving Technology to Benefit Customers & Employees
With the increased interest in instant messages and resolutions, it is essential that customer service agents can always perform as efficiently as possible. To help manage the workload and ensure employees do not experience burn-out, the strategic use of technology is crucial.
AI should be used to cut down the number of repetitive tasks to allow employees more time to provide customer-facing experiences and build better relationships. AI chatbots used to resolve simple issues or point customers in the right direction can also be invaluable to increasing the speed at which customers’ queries are answered.
Technology like this ensures your business is always available to engage with while ensuring customer service employees aren’t overwhelmed with work.
Adapting to Constantly Evolving Customer Behaviours
The pandemic pushed many new customers into the digital sphere; while many may have preferred more traditional experiences before, there was little choice during these challenging times. Rapid digital adoption continues to change the way consumers shop and expands your customer base.
Savvy businesses have always aimed to be one step ahead of the game when it comes to understanding and predicting evolving customer needs and desires, which only becomes more prevalent as digital transformations continue to take hold.
Prioritising Smartphone Experiences
The majority of customers access websites and brands via smartphones, so ensuring your site and all its functions are accessible on mobile devices should be a top priority.
Distinct apps for mobiles allow you to create an optimised experience, and with more people than ever making purchases from mobile devices, a site or app that’s slow or offers poor user experience could do a lot of damage.
Efficient in-app customer service chat functions are also essential and should be improved as slow or confusing messaging systems will again leave customers with a bad experience, making them less likely to return.
Listening to Dissatisfied Customers
Rather than simply resolving a customer’s issues and moving on to the next, work to understand why they have left a negative review or what made their experience dissatisfactory. Both positive and negative reviews can be incredibly valuable.
Dissatisfied customers can show you where CX weaknesses lie, allowing you to implement changes more rapidly. This will also contribute to a greater sense of brand loyalty; reach out to thank customers for feedback and show them you are willing to listen and make changes to improve future experiences.
This ensures you can turn customer frustration into actionable change.
Ultimately, good CX is one of the central pillars to the success and growth of your organisation. Without an experience that gives customers everything they need (and more), businesses will not be able to stay ahead of the competition.
If you would like to improve internal processes, develop more effective cost reduction strategies or get expert advice to make investing in new technologies and processes possible, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the Expense Reduction Analysts.