The eCommerce industry is a highly competitive and data-driven environment which requires delivering a great customer experience. Information is gathered at every point along the customer journey – starting from the moment the customers search for the product until receipt or even after return. The entire journey contains various details which can be used as knowledge about customer experience and hence as a key to eCommerce optimization. Thus, online retailers need to know how to improve customer experience during the entire journey and how to turn Big Data into customized eCommerce solutions.
Establishing the Right Touchpoints Along the Customer Journey
Touchpoints along the customer journey are the key element to eCommerce customer experience management. The journey starts within the customers’ minds. An eCommerce company should therefore understand what customers want to see while viewing a product or what service they need to have during the entire purchasing experience process (ex: customer service chat pop-up). According to the results of modern research conducted on consumer behavior, customers are not necessarily looking for the best price. Instead, customers inquire information such as
- Where do I get the most convenient service?
- Is my preferred payment method available?
- How convenient is the returns process?
- How dependable and fast is delivery?
- How helpful is the customer support?
Customers 4.0 are aware that beneficial service will come at a certain cost. They are not only willing to pay more for high-quality products, but also to do so for high service quality during the entire process.
1. Gathering Detailed Information
Once customers become interested in buying a product, they start to do research on the company offering that product. If you are aiming to improve the eCommerce customer experience, look no further – it all starts here. Find out which offer is the most appealing and which search results seem the most trustworthy. Check if there are existing customer reviews and whether you can trust their authenticity. If your website can affirm this prerequisite, customers will most likely visit your website and continue the journey with you.
2. Trustworthy Website Experience
Once a potential customer has visited your website, you need to take your service to the next level in order to manage and improve customer experience. How is the navigation experience on your website? It is essential that contents load quickly and customers can find exactly what they are searching for. The website has to comply with the trust they had in the company when they clicked on the ad in the first place. Moreover, a lively community sharing information about products and services experiences makes a positive impression on customers. By reaching out to your customers and supporting them right away, you will succeed in taking them to the next level of their decision.
3. Convenient Order Process
Losing customers even before they purchase the product is the worst case for an eCommerce business. At this point, you have already spent money on the marketing, paid website designers, and developers only to have the customers skip out after filling up their basket. If this is happening to you, reassess if there is enough information about the delivery and returns process whether you offer the right payment options. According to an online survey in 2021 about 50% of eCommerce customers prefer PayPal or similar payment providers when online shopping (source: statista.de).
Make sure that your alternatives for entering addresses are sufficient and examine how international delivery is handled. Do customers still feel confident about the products they were looking for? If your eCommerce platform provides all these requirements and offers speed and ease during the order process, you will significantly ensure a better customer service performance.
4. Outstanding Delivery Experience
Before customers even finish ordering a product, they become anxious about the delivery date. They are looking forward to receiving their shipment and have multiple questions regarding the receipt date, order status and current location of their shipment. Whether they were able to choose a certain delivery service or not, the entire delivery experience is 100% connected to the shop in which the customers ordered. Improving the customer experience also includes the delivery process, and is therefore a crucial part of the eCommerce customer experience management.
5. Simple Returns Handling
Having products turn out to be different from the original expectation is quite disappointing. Returning them means extra work, time, and annoyance for customers. Although you have no real power over customers’ expectations of products, their dissatisfaction will have an impact on their impression of the customer experience at your online store. Making the returns process as easy as possible and understanding customer needs will help to retain your customers and make them order again.
6. Adequate Customer Support
When a question or request pops up in the customers’ minds, it is essential that they can easily contact the customer service team on their channel of choice. By offering a live chat or a number to call free of charge from around the world, customers have multiple options to contact your support. Do not avoid customer contact but encourage customers to get in touch with you. The voice of your customers is the greatest source of data that can help you to improve customer experience to a prominent level.
Improving the eCommerce Customer Experience: Here’s How Our Tailored Solutions Help You Do It
Finding suitable solutions to improve customer experience in eCommerce is a difficult task. There are many different customer touchpoints that each influence customer experience individually. Spectos offers tailored solutions to monitor and measure each touchpoints. Gain insights into your service quality from your customers’ point of view with our Mystery Research and Mystery Shopping. Transit time measurements ensure end-to-end visibility over your shipments to provide customers with their requested delivery information. Improve service quality and encourage customer contact by establishing a superior customer dialogue.
Our Multi-Channel Satisfaction Surveys help you to continuously gather responses on your overall performance at every point along the customer journey. You can easily access your customized solutions at any time using our Spectos Real-Time Performance Management™ platform to derive targeted and data-driven improvements in eCommerce customer experience.
Improve Your eCommerce Customer Experience Now!
Tip: We also recommend our blogpost on eCommerce Optimization
