The pandemic prompted a significant shift in customer behavior as they take the digital route to make purchases rather than the traditional offline stores, which has helped boost the e-commerce industry. The global e-commerce market is expected to reach $6.35 trillion by 2027, with an annual growth rate of 11.51%. Businesses across industries are prioritizing the delivery of superior product experiences, as the rise of the internet has enabled easy access to information, causing customers to become more informed about products and services, leading to higher expectations. To stay ahead, businesses need to understand the two types of modern-day customers, digital natives and buyers who look for the best deals and discounts from multiple online and physical stores.
Moreover, often a technological disconnect exists between what customers want and what the brands offer them. Customers no longer want to wait in long queues while checking out, deal with poorly designed websites/mobile applications, and expect shorter delivery times. Businesses must steer their investments in technology that keeps the buying experience flowing with minimal interruptions and adds on the convenience feature. Therefore, brands must pick up the pace, listen to what the customer wants, and implement them to provide an exceptional customer experience and future-proof their businesses.
Here are five tips to boost the product experience for a tech-savvy consumer:
1. Building sharper customer personas
In this era of digital interactions, customers expect a personalized and engaging experience at on all touchpoints, be it online, in-store, or on social media. In order to achieve this, businesses need to focus on building sharper customer personas of their ideal customers with insights from customer behaviors, preferences, and demographic information. To create effective customer personas, businesses should gather and analyze data from multiple customer interactions, as well as purchase history, surveys, feedback, and other sources. When examined, this data allows retailers to identify patterns and insights to help create targeted marketing campaigns and better customer service that boosts customer loyalty and increases sales. A compelling customer persona is essential for businesses to stay competitive in today’s market, which will help in a more profound understanding of customers’ needs, motivations, and decision-making processes. Additionally, sharper personas aid in establishing strong customer relationships through the recommendations of customized products and experiences that cater to specific personas at the right place and time.
2. Creating unified experiences
Companies that use technology to transform customer experience have noted a 15-20% increase in customer satisfaction and improved customer rates and growth by 20%. So, it is essential to enrich customer interactions with digital and customized experiences. With customers continually engaging at multiple touchpoints, such as websites, social media, etc., they desire seamless experiences and smooth transitions between all touchpoints. To provide a unified experience, businesses must maintain congruous brand messaging across all platforms, including building websites, apps, social media pages, and emails with consistent design elements to create a coherent design. Moreover, organizations should adopt a customer-centric approach focusing on understanding evolving customer preferences and customizing their messaging and experiences. Additionally, businesses must fight silos, promote harmonious team communication, and use 360 customer views to personalize experiences, thus, allowing customers to make successful purchases at any touchpoint. With a unified experience, customers build trust, confidence, and become loyal to the brand and may increase the likelihood of repurchasing and better customer lifetime value.
3. Conversational commerce
Organizations should quicken their accommodation of conversational commerce as it is here to stay. The global spending on conversational commerce channels is estimated to grow to $290 billion by 2025. Consisting of messaging apps, chatbots, robotic process automation (RPA), and many other artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tools, conversational commerce improves customer journeys with proactive and contextualized communication and enhances conversion rates. Customers are enabled to directly interact with the business, from getting answers to their queries to recommendations for products and services based on customer persona throughout their buying journey. Additionally, brands can move them through the purchase funnel with reminders, introduce them to newer products that they were unaware of, and continue to provide personalized recommendations even after the purchase has been made. With AI-based tools, businesses can save manpower and reduce the waiting time required to connect with customer support executives. Companies that adopted conversational commerce have observed increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, as customers value the immediacy and convenience of conversing with the brand in real-time.
4. Creating a smart device strategy
With a rise in the number of consumers using smart devices such as smartphones, wearables, and smart homes, businesses must craft strategies to ensure their products and services can be accessed and used across these devices while being compatible and simple. One of the essential aspects of smart device strategy is designing websites optimized for multiple smart devices, where the design techniques are responsive and adjust to the size of the device being used. Additionally, brands should ensure their strategy is compatible with smart home devices for increased consumer adaptability. Moreover, businesses must leverage AI-based tools for immediate customer support across multiple devices. By doing this, brands gain a significant competitive advantage in revenue growth and cost savings. On the one hand, smart device strategy enables seamless and integrated buying journeys for customers to interact with the business’s products and services. On the other hand, businesses are benefitted from the building of connected experiences that help in creating a newer set of strategic choices for value capture along customer purchase journeys.
5. Paying attention to AI and AR
With AI-based tools, brands can identify and segment customers, provide personalized recommendations, improve product search, automate customer service, and streamline and analyze customer insights. These tools can also analyze vast amounts of customer data, including browsing history and purchase behavior, that help identify customers’ needs and pain points. This allows brands to understand the consumer better, create targeted marketing campaigns, resolve customer queries and complaints quickly, and persuade them to make successful purchases that meet their needs and enhance the overall experience. Augmented reality (AR) has transformed how customers interact with products. By allowing them to visualize products with immersive and interactive technology, such as the try-on products virtually, and 360° product view, AR has made online shopping engaging, which aids in higher customer satisfaction. Additionally, with AR’s rapid prototyping, brands can shorten their time to market and reduce costs as well. Simply put, AR tools can help brands stay up to speed with customers’ expectations and build customer loyalty, improve conversion rates, and drive revenue growth.
The way ahead to boost product experience
Now is the right time to attract tech-savvy customers and future-proof businesses with new and exciting technologies. However, adopting advanced and latest technology does not guarantee increased sales or satisfied customers. The end goal while incorporating technology should be to benefit the end customers with an informative product experience and engaging customer journey that addresses customers’ pain points. Including long checkout lines, prolonged wait times for customer service, unhelpful store associates, and out-of-date inventory of out-of-stock products.
Organizations should work closely with their customers by conducting research, collecting feedback through surveys to understand expectations and preferences, and designing user-friendly solutions. This helps bridge the gap between retailers and consumers. Adding to this, e-commerce companies must also ensure the adoption of customer-friendly technology with no requirement for technical expertise so that the customers’ focus remains on the buying experience.
