Today, new technologies are spoiling the consumer: thanks to apps, AI, machine learning and other technologies, consumers can do what they want, when they want and where they want . Due to the increased use of digital technologies, customer expectations for digital services are higher, making the online customer experience more important than ever.
The online customer journey is the proverbial journey that your customers make while interacting with your company or brand. Every interaction a customer has with you online is part of that online customer experience and will contribute to whether or not they purchase your product or service.
The central question in this online customer experience is: “How do you meet the expectations of your customers?”. With these 5 tips you can significantly improve the online customer experience of your customers.
1. Understand and map the behavior of your customers
To understand what the online customer journey should look like, you first need to understand who your customers are and map their behavior .
By first understanding the different behaviors of your customers, it’s much easier to determine what their expectations of the digital experience might look like. Creating customer journey maps is one way to help you manage and improve the digital experience.
2. Bet on omnichannel customer interactions
Customers want to be able to contact you on their terms. Omnichannel provides your customers with an integrated, unified buying and support experience with your brand across channels and devices.
Today, consumers use three to five different communication channels to get in touch with a specific company. Therefore, it is important that companies understand the benefits of multiple touchpoints in order to optimize communication with current and future customers.
3. Analyze how well the digital channels fit into the customer journey
Check which digital channels you offer and which your customers use. If necessary, use additional channels to reach your customers even better. In addition, don’t wait for your customers to come to you, but use your CRM to actively address your customers .
A good deal of focus should also go to smartphones. Today’s consumers live on their phones. You can order food, do groceries, clean and so on. In short, we live in a world where our phones can do things for us that we used to do ourselves.
To improve the customer experience, it is therefore recommended to optimize your website and/or webshop for smartphones, so that your customers can also purchase your products with their smartphone .
4. User-friendliness ensures more loyalty
Try to make the shopping experience as simple as possible. A collection of minor frustrations can cause the customer to drop out even before he/she has completed the purchase. Nothing is more frustrating than a customer card with a loyalty point system that you can only use in the store and not on the webshop and vice versa.
5. Install an omnichannel platform
An omnichannel Point-Of-Sale system improves the experience process for the customer and for the retailer. Because all data is stored centrally, your customer and their orders are known everywhere, both offline and online. Returning or exchanging orders is therefore much easier, as is the extension of loyalty programs .
Thanks to the centralized system, you can get to know your customers better to tailor the shopping experience and create a personal profile.
Organizations looking to improve their digital effectiveness should consider centralizing all available channels in a single platform. This will help them better understand the different interactions customers have with the business and use that data to improve both the customer and retailer experience.