Whether businesses accept it or not, bad customer experiences can have a negative impact on the business. From a financial point of view, it can affect sales and in the long term it can damage customer retention. If left unchecked, it can seriously affect your brand reputation and stop you acquiring new customers as easily.
The growth of digital channels poses new challenges for ecommerce businesses, as there are more ways in which customers can contact and complain. Whilst this also provides better visibility, it also means that shoppers have more tools than ever to vent their frustrations.
There is a lot of evidence to validate the importance of a positive customer experience. Research from Zendesk of more than 1,000 shoppers found:
- 89% say a quick response to an initial inquiry is important when deciding which company to buy from
- 97% say bad customer service changes buying behaviour
- 46% continue to change their buying behaviour two years after a bad customer service experience
The impact of CX strategy in ecommerce
Knowing its important is a good starting point. But how do you implement an effective customer experience strategy? What do you need to do, what should you prioritise and how do you know it’s working. We decided to reach out to an industry expert who has spend decades working for large and small retailers across the globe, helping them to improve their processes and capabilities to deliver better customer service.
For our 67th episode, we’re joined by ecommerce and CX veteran, Martin Newman, who is focused on empowering positive change for consumers and brands. Martin talks to us about the importance of customer experience, where it should sit in a business and the perils of bad customer service with practical examples. He also explains his new CX platform Customer Service Action and where it fits in a retailer’s customer service framework.
You can also listen to our episode on ecommerce CX strategy via the following:
Key discussion points
- How is consumer behaviour changing, what are the trends & what’s the implication for business in terms of CX?
- Why does customer experience need to be championed at Board/leadership level?
- What are some of the negative impacts you’ve seen on businesses when the CX isn’t consistently high?
- CX doesn’t feel like it has as tangible a ROI as for example customer acquisition; what’s the business case for investment?
- Which brands do you think are doing this well and how?
- Let’s talk about your new CX platform Customer Service Action – what is it, why is it needed?
- You’re opening up the platform for integration – can you explain how this will work?
- What features will be available to retailers?