Solving Retail Challenges with CX Technology

For retail customers, whether online or in-store, the customer journey can be a daunting and often frustrating experience. 76% view shopping online as lacking excitement, while 29% view it as a chore. For businesses, this can mean the loss of sales – and revenue. One report cites that 98% of customers believe that customer experience (CX) is a key aspect of brand loyalty, while another states that consumers who are loyal to a brand spend 67% more compared to new customers.

To succeed in a competitive marketplace, retailers must do everything they can to remove friction points and sales obstacles to ensure customers stay with them through the entire customer journey, from product selection to service delivery to aftercare, providing exceptional customer service that drives repeat business. To do this, it’s vital that retailers understand how every touchpoint influences the customer journey and then put in place tools and processes to fix friction points.

The good news is today’s advanced CX platforms and tools can help with many of these retail challenges.

Retailers need to be available wherever their customers expect them to be. Research company, Forrester, found that some customers are using four devices daily, whether that’s to see reviews, compare prices, read descriptions, watch videos or chat live with a sales assistant. Achieving consistency across all devices and channels should be a top priority if retailers want to compete with big online retailers. That means having a robust omnichannel strategy.

Omnichannel doesn’t simply mean giving customers convenience and flexibility, it also puts retailers in a better position to gather data that can be used for product recommendations, personalisation and even better customer service. The latest CX technologies can help retailers embrace omnichannel and offer customers a more consistent experience across all channels.

Personalisation is nothing new in the world of CX, but can be particularly effective in a retail strategy, where it has been shown to cut customer acquisition costs by up to 50% and increase revenue by between 5% and 15%. When it comes to retail challenges, turning shoppers into brand fans is a major pain point. Customer data is the key to enabling your CX and service teams to deliver highly personalised, memorable experiences. And the latest AI-powered CX tools don’t just funnel data from multiple sources, they can analyse huge amounts of data in real-time providing insights that can empower your personalisation strategy.

Advanced tools, such as those offered by natural language processing (NLP) can allow retailers to analyse huge amounts of information to uncover customer behaviours, predict trends and create actionable insights. This holistic view of customer sentiment and behaviour can then be used to pre-empt CX issues and solve them before they even happen. By delivering exceptional customer service, retailers can stand out from their competitors.

Physical stores can give companies an advantage over online-only retailers. 71% of customers use their smartphones when in a retail outlet. In-store touchpoints can become data collection points that feed into your CX platform offering store level insights. Turn physical stores into much more than a retail space. Introduce creative, interactive experiences, such as sensors, kiosks and devices that draw customers in for demo purposes. This gives retailers the opportunity to gather further feedback and suggestions.

One of biggest retail challenges for online businesses is cart abandonment. Customers are impatient. Slow responses at touchpoints along the customer journey can lead to abandoned purchases and negative reviews. AI-powered chatbots can step to handle queries on the spot, provide support and assist the customer to complete the transaction.

By embracing the latest CX technology, businesses can turn retail challenges into opportunities, build stronger customer relationships and drive repeat business and referrals. In the increasingly competitive retail world, customer experience in no longer a useful option to have, but a business necessity.

Talk to a representative at DigitalWell to discover how the latest CX solutions can help your retail operations succeed in a competitive marketplace.