For any business, its customers hold great importance; just like a car can’t run without fuel a business can’t thrive without its customers. Thus, the success of a business is related to many aspects and dynamics related to customers: how customers discover the business, how much exposure to the business they have, what customers believe about the business, and how satisfied customers are with its services and products. These and many other aspects act as parameters that decide business success. For this reason, customers have always been at the forefront of business priorities, seeking new tools and ways to ensure their customers remain satisfied and loyal to their business.
Ecommerce is a great platform and relatively new space for customer-business interaction. This domain of market channels has presented various new opportunities for business to serve their customers in better ways that have set a path toward enhancing customer satisfaction by leveraging the innovative tools of Internet technology. In today’s article, we’ll see how eCommerce has done this. Understanding this better can help us implement it for our businesses as well and enhance the customer experience for customers.
Why does customer experience matter?
Customers are what decide the success of your business and you must understand that their perception of your business can significantly affect how it performs. If a customer is not satisfied with your services or product then you risk losing them to your competitors. Moreover, building a system that aligns greatly with customers' needs enhances the productivity of the business as well by establishing a system that leverages advanced tools to eliminate the manual processes of the customer support department and reduces the time spent handling customers' inquiries and complaints.
Furthermore, by building a good customer experience you build a reputation that spreads through word of mouth – a friend who has a good experience with your business will tell his friend who is likely to buy from you as well and the opposite is possible as well. Many customers are wary of trying new businesses and much depends on them seeking social acceptance of the business. Hence, they turn to customer reviews and ratings of the business. Providing a good customer experience will encourage your existing customers to leave positive reviews for your business motivating new customers to consider your business. Thus, leaving a good customer experience for the customer starts a cycle that propels it to bring new customers for your business.
Answering customer inquires
When people are spending their hard-earned money on your products, they want to get answers to all their questions that concern them before they reach their buying decision. In the complex world of business these days where your resources are already occupied with overwhelming tasks answering the queries for each customer manually can consume a great deal of precious time and leave your customers waiting for a long before they get their answer. Webstore provides various tools that help online businesses answer queries for their customers automatically which benefits both the customer by providing instant answers and the business by eliminating the need to use their human resources which they can utilize on other important tasks. For example, a customer can find the manual of the product online and get their question answered instead of waiting on the phone to talk to customer service representatives.
Automatic notifications
Sometimes even if the customers don’t have active inquiries their subconscious mind demands updates about their orders. Ecommerce stores and apps take benefit of the various digital technologies to keep the customer abreast of their order status during different stages of their order until it’s delivered. This provides customers a greater sense of relief as they wait for their products to get delivered and improves their confidence in the business enhancing its credibility in their opinion. Customer notifications are not just limited to order status but also serve as an opportunity to provide them with a personalized experience, e.g. an eCommerce store sending an automatic notification to the customer once their favorite product is back in stock. Therefore, with notifications, you can ensure a better customer experience by bridging the gap between you and your customers and keeping them more satisfied by telling them that the business cares about them.
Personalized experience enhances customers' satisfaction
One thing that matters most to customers is the personalized experience. Having an identity has intrinsic value; something that sets us apart from others. Ecommerce stores fulfill the needs of the customers by providing them with a personal experience providing them the option to establish their profile and presenting offers that match their interests. Product recommendations, special discounts, loyalty rewards, and adding products to a Wishlist are some of the components of the ability of the eCommerce business to help customer establish their profile on their webstore and have a sense of their own identity associated with the given webstore. This personalized experience, therefore, provides customers a chance to establish their own presence on the given webstore which enhances their experience.
Conclusion
For any business, a lot is built on the experience of customers since a lot of business comes from returning customers. If your business is not providing satisfactory services to customers, then you run the risk of losing them to your competitor. Thus, businesses must put their effort into ensuring that the customer experience is maintained by continuously analyzing the needs of their customers and how they want to be served and then meeting those needs.
If you’re looking to implement an eCommerce store, then the x2xeCommerce can set up a webstore for you and also integrate it with your existing business solution to help you realize a unified business management system for your retail business. An example of an integration solution by the x2xeCommerce is The x2xeCommerce RMH-Shopify Integration Solution. Reach out to the x2xeCommerce team for any query or a free demo.