In the coming months, cynics will continue to denounce the death of retail, media will still be urging the government to cap online sales, undeterred by all, e-commerce players will continue to curate quality customer experience and grow invincible. The damage done to the retail sector is irreparable, also worsening customer experience has done more damage to the retail sector than online sales.
A NASDAQ study predicts, “By 2040, 95 per cent of all purchases will be made through e-commerce”, also “50 per cent of companies are willing to divert their advertising budgets towards customer experience innovation”. The growing impact of e-commerce and customer experience will render a few existing players obsolete and turn nascent organisations into the next big thing.
E-commerce sector is growing annually at 23 per cent because it is relying heavily on analytics to predict what customers want. By investing heavily in understanding customer behaviour and predicting their next move, e-commerce entities can recommend better products, control customer attrition and increase sales.
Upcoming trends
These upcoming e-commerce trends can be leveraged by e-commerce platforms to offer quality customer experience. All these trends will help online stores improve on varied customer experience metrics such as CLV, CSAT, NPS, and Churn Rate.
Predictive experiences will enhance customer lifetime value
Personalised experience has helped e-commerce players garner a great response from customers. Customised offers created fear of missing out and drove sales.
With the increasing competition, online stores need to pivot from personalised experience to offering a predictive experience.
Also read: Customer experience: The opportunity that growing businesses are failing to see
Predictive experience is when stores analyse the existing customer data to identify what product the customer will be needing in the near future. Analysing purchase history data, how frequently a product is bought and the time gap between two purchases will help marketplaces offer predictive experience and increase conversions.
Predictive Experience has worked wonders for subscription-based services; a gentle reminder seven days before a subscription expiration has helped Netflix offer uninterrupted streaming and a quality customer experience.
Amazon drives 29 per cent of sales just by recommending products to its existing customer users. Amazon has invested heavily in creating a predictive experience. Amazon analyses the following metrics to offer an accurate recommendation:
- Purchase history
- Wish list
- Similar products bought by customers of same age group and demography
Offering predictive experience increases customer lifetime value because it not only recommend good products but offers a reason to buy it too. Reminding customers that they are running out of a product and they can order with a click is a great way of driving sales and increasing customer’s lifetime value.
Customer journey management will control customer churn rate
With new e-commerce players setting foot in the playing arena, the cost of customer acquisition is rapidly increasing. Also, multiple organisations trying to acquire the same customer demographic drives brand loyalty away.
Also Read: Coping with consumer behaviour during the COVID-19 crisis
In such times of despair, e-commerce businesses should rather concentrate on retaining the existing customers. Also, a repeat customer’s average e-commerce spending is US$52.50 whereas a new customer spends US$24.50 on average.
Now that online stores are pivoting from customer acquisition to customer retention mindset, customer journey management is going to play a crucial role. By drawing a pictorial representation of customer’s interaction with an online store, businesses can identify roadblocks and remove them.
Such intricate scrutiny will highlight multiple hindrances but will also offer incomparable insight into customer’s expectations.
Customer churn rate
Just when businesses start to analyse the customer’s journey and try to remove the bottlenecks, the overall customer experience increases while customer attrition goes down. Since the customer churn rate is defined as the number of users at the end of a period divided by the number of users in the beginning, by improving customer experience, customer churn rate can be controlled.
Omnichannel experience
Today, customers want to start the conversation from where they left it last time, irrespective of the device they are on. The fact that 65 per cent of customers are not willing to do business with an organisation just after one bad experience, it becomes indispensable for enterprises to invest in offering omnichannel experience.
Since big players such as Google and Amazon have already set the standards high for omnichannel experience, customers tend to expect the same from every other online entity. With omnichannel experience already shaping up as a stimulating trend in 2020, investing in it will only drive businesses towards excellence.
E-commerce businesses can also leverage capabilities like interaction analytics to understand customer’s expectations and the overall sentiment associated with their brand.
Also Read: How COVID-19 is fostering new wave of retail
Net promoter score
When customers are valued, catered on priority, and offered with a seamless experience through varied platforms, they are likely to tell about it to their friends.
A study shows that a happy customer is likely to tell six friends about the experience. Just by offering omnichannel experience, existing e-commerce players can improve their Net Promoter Score.
AI can drastically improve customer satisfaction
From chatbots to enhanced search functionalities, Artificial Intelligence will empower e-commerce users with the power to get more done in less time. By deploying Artificial Intelligence, online stores will be looking forward to improving search, simplify the retail catalog and offer better customer support.
The good thing about artificial intelligence is that it learns on its own. All you need to do is integrate them with the central repository and assign access. AI will monitor varied searches made by customers and study them. Once they have monitored enough data, they will start predicting patterns followed by customers. They will assist with search queries and category selection based on their browsing and shopping history.
Customer satisfaction
Alexa and Siri are the best examples of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Based on the data you feed them with, they try to optimise your experience.
They not only schedule interviews for you, order stuff from an online store but also remind you about things you might have forgotten. AI and ML have established their utility and presence in our daily lives even without us becoming aware.
Also Read: Why a learning-integrated life is important amidst the COVID-19 pandemic
Online stores can rely on AI for offering a better experience leading to higher customer satisfaction rates. Whenever a customer seeks assistance with searches, discover products faster and checkout, AI can be the best ally. Artificial Intelligence, when leveraged by e-commerce stores, will use locations, purchase history, and shopping patterns to offer better recommendations, simplify searches and checkout processes leading to better customer satisfaction.
Since an Invesp study found “It’s seven times more expensive to get a new customer than to retain existing ones”, it is safe to say investing in customer experience innovations is a better idea than betting big on customer acquisition.
By identifying and focusing on the latest trends such as Predictive Experiences, Artificial Intelligence and Omni Channel, e-commerce organizations can offer better customer experience and score better on varied customer experience (CX) metrics like CSAT, NPS, and CLV.
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