How-to: Improve customer experience in e-commerce

Customer Experience - what is that supposed to be?

Everyone is throwing around the term customer experience and yet most people have no idea what it actually means and why it is so important for online retail?

[tooltip title="Customer Experience" color="blue"]The customer experience (CX) describes the sum of all experiences a buyer has with a company. This experience lasts as long as the contract between the two parties exists[/tooltip].

Benefits of an improved Customer Experience

If you offer your customers a perfect shopping experience, they will reward you for it. In the long term, online retailers can thus increase customer satisfaction as well as customer loyalty. Because we all know: Satisfied customers come back.

The most important advantages at a glance:

• Repurchase rate increases
• Recommendation rate increases
• Customer satisfaction & retention increases
• Retention rate increases
• Customer service enquiries decrease

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3 tips to improve the customer experience

The benefits are many, the incentive is enormous. If you want to offer your customers a seamless customer experience, you should follow these three tips:

1. Personalisation is the be-all and end-all

Customers want to receive the same care when shopping online that they also expect from bricks-and-mortar retail. Not so easy, is it? True, but that doesn't mean that shopping online can't be personal. How can this personalisation be implemented and contribute to more customer experience in e-commerce? Through product suggestions tailored to the customer or virtual style advisors - and these are just a few of the possibilities that online retailers can use. Retailers should also communicate with their customers at all times and at every touchpoint of the customer journey and offer them added value through relevant and personal content.

You are welcome to include your own example here :)

2. seamless customer journey

What most people forget: The customer journey does not end after clicking the "buy" button. However, some retailers still believe in this misconception. This is why contact with the customer is often broken off after the order has been sent, because many online retailers think that the customer journey ends at this point. A mistake, because everything that comes now is all the more important for the customer. Waiting for the long-awaited package is one of the most emotional phases of the shopping process for the customer. Nothing can go wrong here, but if it does, the customer must be proactively informed about it - by the online retailer itself.


3. Keeping promises

According to the retailer, the new sneakers should be delivered the very next day. Great - but only if this promise can be kept. Otherwise, it is better not to promise the customer anything at all. If you lure online shoppers with offers and promises, you have to keep them. Promised availability and delivery dates should be kept in any case, otherwise the customer will be annoyed and in the worst case will buy from a competitor. The parcelLab E-Commerce Shipping Study shows that 27 percent of Germany's top 100 online retailers cannot keep their delivery promises. For 17 percent, there is no delivery promise at all. The good news: 8 percent of retailers deliver their parcels earlier than promised, 48 percent at the promised time. Despite all this, there is still room for improvement.


Conclusion

The topic of customer experience is not a hype that appears briefly and disappears as quickly as it came. Customers are becoming more and more demanding - even when shopping online. If you don't offer your customers a seamless customer experience, you have to reckon with them migrating to the competition. On the other hand, if you can offer customers a positive shopping experience, you can look forward to happy and loyal customers. Therefore, the entire shopping process should also function smoothly - from ordering to shipping to returns.