Top Strategies to Deliver a Seamless Customer Experience
Customer Experience (CX) is today’s business benchmark and is fast becoming a new norm for brands. Putting your customers first has never been more important, as 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a seamless customer experience.
In contrast, 42% of consumers say a seamless experience across all devices and channels is a "top expectation." 11% of decision-makers see seamless, omnichannel experiences as the most important factor when delivering quality customer experiences.
What is a Seamless Customer Experience?
Seamless implies a wonderful customer experience that is efficient, smooth & enjoyable. A seamless customer experience is when the customer sees the same branding, structure, values, experience, and brand tone regardless of whether they are doing online or offline shopping with the retail brand.
Top Strategies to Deliver a Seamless Customer Experience
There are some crucial strategies to deliver a seamless customer experience:
1) Put your Customer Relationship First
Customer relationships have become the most valuable assets for any company. A company's success is directly proportional to building effective customer relationships. Technology will never replace the value of a client relationship, and it is simply a tool to help build and preserve that relationship.
Retailers need to make sure that they do everything possible to keep their customers happy and satisfied so that they continue buying from you and recommend you to others as well. Positive word-of-mouth will help spread awareness about your brand much faster than conventional marketing methods and at very low costs.
Customer interactions will always be at the center of companies, no matter what fancy buzzwords emerge or cutting-edge technology is developed in the future.
2) Understand your Target Customer’s Journey
A retail business needs to understand the entire customer journey starting from
Product research: Customers research the various aspects of desired products like cost, feature & specification.
Identification & consideration: Once the research is over, customers analyze the product information they have gathered.
Brand transaction: It is the stage where the actual purchase happens between the brand & the customer
Experience: If the transaction process is simple, engaging & leaves a positive influence, then it can be said that the customer had a good shopping experience.
Retention: At this stage, the retail business focuses on retaining customers and extracting more revenue from existing customers.
Once retail brands have a fair understanding of the target customer - what they care about, how they act, interact & aspire with different channels. The collected data for new & existing customers will make recognizing the key stages of their pre-purchase and post-purchase journeys easier.
3) Understand what Sets Online and Offline Shopping Apart
When a buyer decides between online and offline shopping, they do it based on the following criteria:
- 24/7 availability of products
- Speed of shopping
- Convenience of shopping
- Location of shopping
- Fair pricing of products
- Easiest returns
Developing a buyer persona based on the above factors will help retailers understand what typical customers want and how they want it to be presented.
Further, it will help retailers observe, plan and remove the obstacles or friction points that deter the customers from enjoying a seamless shopping experience even if they leave one touchpoint and join the other.
A core benefit of going omnichannel for a retail brand is
- Figuring out both the online & offline places where the customers hang out.
- Showing up in these places to create touchpoints to cater to the customers.
- Making those touchpoints accessible & shoppable.
4) Pay Attention to Shifting Customer Expectations
Customers want a joyful shopping experience with convenience on every channel like mobile, voice, and in-app support. Retail brands should remember that customers do not want just a digital version of their analog experience. They want personalized experiences to meet their needs.
Retail brands should focus on selling the product and the utility part so that customers do not just use and throw away the product after use. Creating a community around your product can prove highly beneficial for the retail brand.
Nike, the legendary sports shoe brand, added 25 million new members via several apps in the second quarter of 2020. These apps are not solely to sell shoes and sports apparel, and these are "activity" apps designed to cater to the specific needs of the customers they serve.
Nike Training Club and Nike Run Club are two apps that assist clients in tracking their activity, learning from professionals, and accessing training programs and classes. These apps foster an emotional connection with customers, who regard Nike as the go-to expert fitness brand. It leads to increased sales, particularly in the area of eCommerce.
5) Invest in key Technologies that Deliver a Seamless Sustomer Experience
Retail businesses can easily satisfy and retail their loyal customer base by investing in technologies to deliver a seamless customer experience.
Internet of Things (IoT): The Internet of Things (IoT) can assist you in providing a smooth consumer experience and enables you to connect devices or applications that can provide real-time feedback on user preferences, diagnostics, and usage data, all of which can be used to improve the customer experience.
Read Now: How does IoT play an essential role in omnichannel retail experience?
Endless Aisle: Endless Aisle solutions are a game-changer to bridge the customer experience gap between a physical and eCommerce store. The technology acts as a virtual shelf by enabling customers to browse or order a wide range of products that are either out of stock or not available in-store and can be shipped to a closer store or their homes.
Must Read: Fynd Store - More than an Endless Aisle Solutions
Augmented Reality (AR): Augmented Reality in retail provides customers with an immersive life-like experience while giving them all the information they need to make an informed purchasing decision. The technology offers a plethora of styles in different sizes, colours, and shapes in a single view.
Recommend Read: How can Augmented Reality help retailers?
Conclusion
At Fynd, we believe that a seamless customer experience is the key to success in a retail business as more customers are likely to return and refer your business to others. These top strategies to deliver a seamless customer experience will help your business be more efficient, productive and provide an all-around customer experience.
600 brands have used Fynd omnichannel solutions to deliver seamless customer experiences. Their customers enjoy shopping no matter what channel they choose, and it is one of the best ways to stand out in the competition. Learn about how retail brands can deliver a seamless customer experience. Book a demo or Contact us now.
