Every interaction your customer has with your brand is part of the customer experience (CX) you’ve set up.
It means you have a responsibility to improve every area of your business, from the time customers look through your products to the moment their purchase arrives at their door. It can even extend beyond that through an entire post-purchase stage with customer service.
A poor customer experience in ecommerce website can be a significant turn-off for your customers, which can have financial consequences. Roughly four in five (81%) of customers have said a positive customer service experience increases their chances of buying again.
Advances in tech and enable you to improve your customer experience in ecommerce more effortlessly than before. This article helps you improve your customer experience and eCommerce marketing efforts quickly.
Why Personalization Matters in Your Business
Personalization should be a priority when you’re looking to improve your CX.
According to McKinsey & Company, 76% of customers expect businesses to personalize their interactions. When you meet your customers’ expectations, it can lead to revenue and profit.
Beyond that, an excellent CX with a priority on personalized service can be your competitive differentiator. It’s especially beneficial when you’re competing in a saturated market.
3 Strategies to Personalize Your Customer Service
Personalizing your services doesn’t end at calling your customers by their first name with every email you send. Check out the strategies below to explore more sophisticated ways of personalizing your CX.
1. Use data to inform your product recommendations
There are easy-to-use tools available today that help you gather numerous valuable customer data. You could learn an enormous amount about your customers, from where they live to their purchasing preferences.
Study the data you gather to inform your decisions on how to market to your different customer segments. That way, you can promote products relevant to their interests instead of a generic ad that speaks to everyone but resonates with no one.
2. Tailor your email campaigns to your audience
An effective email campaign must have a compelling subject line and call to action. You don’t have to send one email to all your audiences; segment your customers based on their demographics and purchase history to personalize your email content more precisely.
3. Create dynamic website experiences
The most apparent difference between a retail and an eCommerce store is how much more customization options you have online. Your eCommerce storefront isn’t just a static website. It’s a platform to create a dynamic and personalized experience for all your customers.
Based on website cookies and social media pixels, you can design a persuasive and appealing landing page tailored to each user’s preferences online. This strategy increases the likelihood of a conversion.
3 Benefits of Using Chatbots for Your Customer Service
Since customer service is often a demanding job, chatbots can help you in a number of ways.
1. Offers 24/7 availability and instantaneous responses
Chatbots don’t need to clock out or rest, unlike humans. Since your eCommerce is open 24/7 and people worldwide can access it, an always-available chatbot can help you accommodate buyers who are outside your time zone.
2. Personalizes customer interactions efficiently
Interacting with customers and creating a personalized experience can be taxing for any human agent, especially when there are often hundreds of customers to attend to. However, chatbots allow you to make the process more efficient without needing to spend more of your human efforts.
3. Allows for order tracking and assistance
The logistics of running an eCommerce business can overwhelm anyone. In times of holiday rush sales, when customer orders are piling up, how can you ensure you fulfill and track it all efficiently? Chatbots.
You can program your customer service chatbots to automatically provide customers with their order status quickly. You can also instruct it on how to respond to your most common questions, such as how to return and report a damaged item.
Delegating repetitive tasks to a programmed chatbot allows you to focus on more pressing issues and unique customer concerns requiring your attention.
3 Tips for Implementing Chatbots
There’s a difference between having a AI chatbot on your website and making good use of it. Improving your chatbot interactions can go a long way in improving your customer’s perception of your business. So, here are a few tips to follow to maximize your cyber assistant.
1. Choose the chatbot that suits your needs
Although different chatbots offer the same service on the surface, there are plenty of nuances you need to consider to find the one that’s best for your customer experience in eCommerce. It depends on the problem you want to solve.
For example, suppose you’ve discovered that many of your customers abandon their carts. The ideal chatbot may not be one that’s specially programmed to track orders. Instead, it could be one that can send promotional emails and reminders to nudge customers to complete their purchases.
2. Tailor your chatbot’s responses
Just because chatbots are robots doesn’t mean they have to respond so lifelessly. Inject some life into your chatbot’s responses and try to make it sound like the human personification of your brand. Ensure that its personality aligns with the products you sell.
If you sell medical supplements, a professional tone would work best; for athletic gear, an energetic and motivational tone would fit well.
3. Monitor and assess your chatbot’s performance
There are always going to be areas for you to improve when it comes to your chatbot. Take issue resolution, for instance. Monitoring your chatbot’s performance could help you see that it can resolve a customer’s problem in 60 seconds. Could it do it faster?
Even if it’s only a minor improvement, think of all the time you could save for your customers and streamline your process.
Improving your chatbot is a neverending process. What matters is that you constantly monitor it to ensure it’s consistently serving your customers well.
How to Implement AI Solutions Effectively
There’s an undeniable power that AI solutions imbue your eCommerce with. As the famous saying goes, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Here are a few ways to implement AI technology to avoid getting caught in a web of headaches and frustrations.
1. Always consider your customer experience objectives
What exactly do you intend to achieve with AI? Remember that AI is just a tool; investing in it too early could be like having a solution in search of a problem. Return to your company strategy for the year and see how AI can help you achieve that faster or more efficiently.
2. Use first-party data
Your AI solutions are only as good as the data you feed it. Gather all the information you want to train your AI on so that it can provide clearer and more relevant answers. For example, if you want your chatbot to provide good product recommendations, then give it access to your database of customer behavior and their past purchases.
Of course, you must be transparent with your customers about how you use their data. As long as they consent, you should be in the clear.
3. Measure your AI impact on customer experience in Ecommerce
How do you know that the AI solutions you’ve implemented are working? At what point can you say, conclusively, that you’ve gotten your money back from the investment? If you aren’t measuring how AI tools are impacting your customer experience in ecommerce, you’re wasting a huge opportunity to pull ahead of your competitors.
Always learn more about your customer experience in ecommerce and adjust when you feel it’s necessary. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are industry standard units of measurement that indicate whether you’re heading in the right direction or not. Only then can you tell how successful your AI solutions are.
Better Customer Experiences Translates to Loyal Customers
With technology continuously evolving, there are more and more ways for you to begin improving your customer experience in ecommerce. Affordable software available today allows you to personalize every interaction you have with your customers, from product recommendations to customer issue resolution.
You shouldn’t overlook AI, either. It has the power to supercharge your operations—granted that you understand how to implement it properly. Ultimately, there’s no reason not to invest in your eCommerce customer service at this point. You’ll quickly find that it’s a worthwhile business investment.
