Digital customer experience should be a top priority for your business. The pandemic outbreak and stay-at-home policy have been forcing customers and businesses to shift everything online. This digital transition is particularly challenging for business owners as customers expect brands to deliver quality services while maintaining emotional connections without physical contact.
In fact, 67% of customers will pay more for a great experience. And consumers who establish a personal connection with the brand tend to have a 306% higher lifetime value. This only reinforces the fact that businesses need to become “experience” leaders in the modern digital marketplace.
A strong digital customer experience is your golden ticket to more happy customers. Digital customer experience refers to all the online activities a customer engages with your brand. This includes a plethora of online channels like websites, social media, chatbots, webinars, and other virtual connections via mobile devices and desktops. 74% of customers have used multiple channels to start and complete a transaction.
Hence, your brand should streamline the online customer experience at every touchpoint throughout the customer journey. Let’s explore 3 digital customer experience trends every retail and eCommerce should pay attention to!
Customers value the digital shopping experience over products
Businesses are shifting from selling the product itself towards the services that come with the product. That’s because online shoppers now emphasize the overall digital shopping experience a brand offers instead of the simple usability of a product. This transformation is particularly distinctive within the retail and eCommerce industry.
Apparel brands are empowered with various sizing tools to fully utilize this digital customer experience trend. According to a report, 46% of shoppers expressed that selecting the wrong product color and size is their top reason for returns. Implementing fit finder tools or suggesting a customized sizing chart are all solutions to help customers make more conscious purchases that lead to lower return rates.
Technology advancements are assisting clothing and fashion brands to improve online customer experience in many creative ways. For example, Sephora is boosting its sales by using augmented reality with real-time facial recognition that perfectly matches the shopper’s skin type and eye color. This helps shoppers better visualize the actual presentation of the product efficiently. Zara rolled out a feature called “What’s my size?” by integrating a fit finder tool that offers the best size recommendation for online shoppers. Shoppers simply need to enter height, weight, and fit preferences to receive their sizing tips.
Apart from apparel brands, size quizzes or customized size charts are both helpful in assisting businesses to sell products that come in different sizes. Whether it’s footwear, pet products, or car seat covers, fit recommenders like Kiwi Sizing can increase customers’ confidence, boost sales and reduce returns with diverse chart designs.
The personalized shopping experience is indispensable
We can’t stress enough about personalization when it comes to eCommerce business. Customers are becoming savvier than ever and brands simply need to go all-in on winning consumers’ hearts through personalized content. Online customers expect their customer experience to be unique and according to Accenture, 75% of consumers are more likely to buy from retailers who personalize their customer journey. By matching the right content at the right time to the right customer, brands can boost higher sales and customer satisfaction simultaneously.
Design personalized content with your customers in mind. What this means can vary, ranging from inviting customers to set up a digital profile with incentives to asking their desired product types for future product recommendations, to automated personalized email marketing. For example, if you’re an online clothing brand that offers different styles of garments, you can ask customers about their dressing preferences or size information. ASOS has done an excellent job in using sizing tools to provide the best-fitting recommendation for each individual. Tommy Hilfiger increased revenue by 30% when they sent personalized cart-abandonment emails to shoppers and won them back.
With the explosion of customer data and advances in technology, brands can now better segment their customers and run more personalized campaigns more effectively. There are opportunities at different touch points of the shopper’s journey across various channels to engage, up-sell, and promote products and services customers care about. This competition of personalization would only get more fierce as typical consumers on average received more automated marketing every day than ever before.
Chatbots and Real-time responses are good business
The convenience of digital technology has entitled consumers to demand more from brands they are interacting with. One of the requests is speedy, efficient replies from customer support agents regarding product or service inquiries. 82% of consumers look for an immediate response from brands on marketing or sales questions. Customers expect the brand to listen attentively to their problems and prioritize their needs during a real-time conversation.
Cutting down your response and resolution time can have a positive impact and improve customer experience. 90% of customers rate an “immediate” response as important or very important when they have a customer service question. Millennials prefer live chat over other communication channels when shopping online. And this is where a messaging platform or chatbots can come to the rescue.
Chatbots are artificial intelligence software that’s designed to create human-like interactions between businesses and customers. Many eCommerce businesses are now connecting chatbots to their messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger, SMS, or telephones. Famous clothing brands like H&M are utilizing chatbots as size recommenders, which allow customers to type in their preferred garments and personal information in order to suggest the best-fitting size for them.
With chatbots, brands are able to provide instant responses to customer inquiries coming from numerous channels without hiring new staff. In addition, a chatbot is one efficient way to empower digital customers with prior product knowledge via FAQs, tutorial guides, or even blog posts. When customers finally get in touch with a service representative, they could already be in the ready-to-buy stage, which makes it easier for businesses to secure deals. For all the above reasons, more retailers and eCommerce owners are regarding chatbots as an additional revenue stream in the coming years.
Having a customer-centric mindset is now a must-have for all eCommerce owners. Excellent customer experience can be achieved with a streamlined digital shopping experience, personalized product recommendations, and real-time responses.
Below are a few tips to get you starting on improving your customer’s online shopping experience:
- Offers omnichannel customer support
- Leverage the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Engage with your customers at every stage of their journey
- Implement customer loyalty programs
- Build a customer-centric culture
- Analyze your customer data and provide personalized content
The ecommerce marketplace is extremely dynamic and fast-paced. Hence, businesses should always track the results and finetune them in a data-driven manner. Make educated assumptions and planning based on the data you collected because your customers have a lot to say about your brand these days!
What’s next?
Digital customer experience is a top priority for businesses as more interactions move online. This includes all online channels, such as websites, social media, and chatbots, that customers engage with a brand through. Personalization, streamlining the shopping process, and excellent customer service are important aspects of a successful digital customer experience. In the retail and eCommerce industries, the overall digital shopping experience is more important to customers than the specific features of a product. Brands can improve the customer experience by offering personalized content, multiple payment options, and simplifying the returns process. Good customer service includes live chat and timely responses to customer inquiries.
Kiwi Sizing is an e-commerce plugin to help solve the sizing problems for online shopping. Over 40% of online clothing returns are due to sizes. Kiwi Sizing is designed to make sizing easy by offering stylish size charts and easy-to-use fit recommenders that let shoppers know what is the best size to purchase. We help improve conversions, cut down on returns, and lower the need for customer support.
We are trusted by thousands of Shopify stores with over 400 5-star reviews. Try it now for free and start reducing unnecessary returns.
- Website：https://www.kiwisizing.com/
- YouTube Tutorials：https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQpP0NIIALWyMIa6NrFH3dw
- Demo shop：https://demo.kiwisizing.com/
