The craze for online shopping is nothing new.
Online shopping has been booming in leaps and bounds over the past several
years.
And now, with the COVID-19 pandemic,
online or digital shopping is here to stay. Over the last few years, digital
shopping has taken over retail shopping because it
saves more time and, of course, offers better and cheaper deals.
With the e-commerce industry becoming more dominant
in recent times, shoppers have become better acquainted with this
digital trend.
Hence, it’s imperative to constantly analyse the customer experience and develop ways to improve
it. Customer experience in this regard holds immense importance, as more people
resort to online shopping.
Let us discuss what a good customer experience looks
like and what are the various ways to measure the same.
Here’s How You can Create a Stronger Customer Experience for Digital Shoppers
A good brand speaks for itself and so
does a product. But amid a pool of such brands and products, how would an
e-commerce site ensure the customer’s loyalty hook to their products? Several factors can help in enhancing the customer
experience.
1. Product information: Adequate
product information is key to selecting and choosing a product. Sufficient information will always help a
customer make a decision rather than surfing through other websites and videos
to learn about the same details.
2. Fast shipping: A delivery within
three to four working days is always a hit among shoppers. The product's fast and timely delivery retains a customer's loyalty because who
would not like quick customer service?
3. Omnichannel communication:
Omnichannel communication ensures ease of access to a company in case of any delay
or query. In such a setup, the customer can route through their preferred mode
of communication without worrying about getting the message across.
4. Trusted customer
support: Easy
communication of grievances is imperative for any business to build itself
successfully. Generating feedback from customers is very important for any
business to earn the trust of its customers. Prompt response to a customer’s
complaint following any grievance is need of the hour in the world of digital
shopping.
5. Friendly sale representative: Sale
representatives who often connect with customers for feedback or communicating any new deal, should be
well-behaved and patient. In the absence of face-to-face
communication, the tonality of
communication is very important. How a representative approaches a customer is
very important. Rudeness and impatience have little space in the world of
enhancing customer experience.
Measuring
Customer Experience
Ensuring maximum customer satisfaction is a significant
challenge and an essential skill to master. One such way is to measure customer
experience and improve it accordingly. There are several tools that can help
understand and track what your customers are looking for and how they find the
experience.
There are software, metrics and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that provide a company with the data to evaluate the
customer experience.
If the company uses unified communication systems and
software integration models like cloud telephony, CRM or help desk software,
they can easily track and tally the customer experience. Automated survey
software can be added without much trouble and make it hassle-free for
customers to provide feedback.
The three most popular metrics for
evaluating the customer experience are the Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction Rate (CSAT), and
Customer Effort Score (CES).
Let us have a detailed look at this different software and how they help the company in
evaluating customer experience:
Net Promoter
Score
Called NPS, this is the easiest indicator
of evaluating customer experience, where you ask your customer a simple
question like, “How much did you like the product,” “How
likely are you to recommend the product to a friend,” and so on.
On this note, you put a scale of numbers,
ranging from 1 to 10. If a customer rates between 1-6, that indicates the
customer experiences detractors. Similarly, a rating between 7-8 indicates
passive, and between 9-10 means customers will act as your brand promoters.
Now to find your overall rating, subtract the percentage of your detractors
from the percentage of your promoters.
Customer Effort Score
CES is an indicator of the interaction between the
customer and your brand. It’s usually done by asking
a couple of questions and scaling the responses into categories.
The key idea behind CES is to understand how much ease a
customer can purchase and scan through your products. For example, ask your
customer, “How easy was it to access and browse your website?” and then divide
the responses into 7 points:
1. Extremely easy
2. Very easy
3. Fairly easy
4. Neither
5. Fairly difficult
6. Very difficult
7. Extremely difficult
To get your CES score, the sum of the scores has to be divided by the number of
people who submitted responses. And low scores mean you’re doing great.
Customer Satisfaction Rate
CSR must be used to understand your
customer's satisfaction level with your website and products. And the measure
for the same is very easy to do. You ask your customer one simple question,
“Are you satisfied with our product?” Like CES, you divide the responses into parameters:
1. Very unsatisfied
2. Unsatisfied
3. Neutral
4. Satisfied
5. Very satisfied
And to get the percentage score, divide the number of satisfied and delighted customers by the total number of responses and
then multiply by 100.
Why and How you can retain a good customer experience?
Rendering good customer service alone
does not help a business strive in the market of digital shopping. While
customer service should be well-curated,
ensuring that it enhances customer
experience is just as
important.
In today’s market, it’s crucial to have a
data-driven, customer-oriented system to boost your e-commerce platform. One
must know that more people resort to online buying, and it’s a prime medium for
many businesses to grow. Hence, it’s
imperative to remember that customer experience is the new normal.
There are more ways to succeed in this new
normal, and one of them
would also be implementing the right call centre strategy in your business
model. Here are a few pointers as to how you can ensure call centre success:
1. Ensure that the business establishes and monitors the KPIs
2. Keep checking for the quality of the product and assure the best of it
3. Publish meaningful and helpful content in FAQ formats for easy understanding
4. Invest in a system that will organise customer inquiries and grievances
5. Provide customers with multiple self-service options
On the other hand, to ensure top quality customer service, the call centre has
to be built for emergency and critical periods. Hence, certain points must be
kept in mind while creating a
contingency plan:
1. A clear communication with call centre agents around the set of expectations
2. A team must be assembled to supervise
the plan execution
3. A rigorous test of the contingency
plan
4. Identifying a backup plan
5. Shortlisting and prioritising
responsibilities to boost business
Wrapping it up
Setting one’s digital plan right is very
important to have a customer-centric approach in the world of new normal. And
if you’re yet to create a digital transformation action plan for your
e-commerce business, now is the time.
