Author: Aimilia Aspri

Empathy is the brand equity of Retail, according to Harvard Business School 

It is a widely accepted fact that good customer experience is a many-factored game. Price and quality of the product, service level, the effort of purchase, customer expectations and the feeling that comes when a product is delivered or a service is used, are just some of the aspects of what makes or breaks the experience a brand offers at its audience.

However, there is one aspect that is gaining more and more attention lately: the customer’s emotional connection with a brand. And this connection is the result of empathy, a word that keeps coming up often when we talk about successful online retail experiences.

Why does empathy matter in Retail?

First of all, what is empathy?

The Oxford English Dictionary defines empathy as “the power of projecting one’s personality into (and so fully comprehending) the object of contemplation.”

 

 

If we project a brand’s personality into the object of its contemplation -its customers- then we can say that empathy in the CX world is “all about walking in our customer’s shoes, and understanding and being sensitive to their thoughts, feelings, and experiences.” (Source: M4Communications)

Empathy drives profitability for Retailers

This understanding and connection to the customer’s mind is the fuel the generates trust, leads to loyalty and drives sales and growth. To illustrate this point, the top 10 companies in the Global Empathy Index 2015 increased in value more than twice as much as the bottom 10, and generated 50% more earnings!

Increase empathy by collecting customer feedback 

The message here is that you don’t need to be one of the top 10 companies in the world to master the effects of empathy when communicating with your audience. You only need to learn to not be afraid of customer feedback and set out to discover what motivates your audience, what they expect and how you can be the one to give them a memorable experience!

The road to success is paved with good intentions and… customer expectations. Customer expectations are the actions or experiences that a customer can anticipate when he gets in touch with a brand. And the brands that care about meeting said expectations from customers and try to meet them in a satisfactory manner are the ones destined to stand out from the crowd.

Meeting customer expectations is key to business growth, sustainability and profitability. Gathering insights and understanding their expectations in a key step, but acting on these insights is equally crucial for any company that really cares about their customers. 

How can you manage customer expectations?

Even though customers can approach your brand with expectations that have been already shaped by their previous experiences -with your brand or others- or their particular need at the moment, there are ways you can anticipate certain of them and even manage to fulfil them.

1. Measure your customer satisfaction!

CSAT or Customer Satisfaction Score is a CX metric that showcases how well or how poorly a brand manages to meet customer needs and expectations. By activating a CSAT questionnaire, you can expect to gather valuable insights on the nature of these expectations and the possible bottlenecks that may deter them from being satisfied.

 

2. Maintain consistency through your channels!

Social media, call centre, e-mail forms… Customers now expect to be able to communicate with your brand via different channels. The majority of them also expect that they won’t need to repeat their personal details, when communication moves from one person/channel to another, but in reality, they find out this a rather unlikely scenario.

A way to solve this classic “Expectations VS Reality” conundrum is to try to surprise customers by keeping their communication with your brand as consistent as possible. Sure, it won’t happen in a day and it requires effective communication between different departments, but it is definitely worth the effort. Keep in mind that, according to the 2020 Customer Expectations report by Gladly, 86% of customers now expect you to know them as they switch from channel to channel.

3. Treat your customers as human beings, not numbers!

Customers want you to know them! More specifically, 79% of them say personalized service is more important than personalized marketing. Despite this, many customer support teams still centre their support around cases instead of customers. The result? Only 36% of consumers feel like a unique individual when engaging with customer service. Judging from these numbers, creating personalized experiences based on your customers’ previous interactions and feedback is not just a trend anymore. It’s a necessity!

4. Ask for customer feedback!

How can you know what people expect from your brand if you’ve never asked them? Asking for feedback is a sure-fire way to engage in a conversation with your audience, make them feel known, heard and valued. Start listening to them today by checking out our customer feedback guide.

5.Engage your social media followers!

33% of customers that participated in a survey conducted by Statista claimed that they don’t expect any response at all on the complaints they post on brands’ social media accounts. Imagine their surprise when you get to be the one that proves them wrong and start having conversations with your fans and followers.

Customer engagement and expectation fulfilment in one go! Who said there aren’t any ways to engage your customers without breaking the bank?

 

Think hard about how you want to make your customers feel. Think also about the opportunities you offer them to connect and engage with your brand. Why is this “exercise” important? Because good branding is -at its core- about personal connections and human emotions. And customer engagement is the process that helps you create meaningful interactions that will make your customers return to you, time after time.

What are the benefits of customer engagement?

In 2021, with a plethora of e-shops and products to choose from and the pandemic making online shopping the norm, present-day customers are not easy to acquire. In fact, acquiring a new customer can now cost five times more than retaining an existing customer.

With acquisition becoming harder to achieve, CX experts have turned their attention to a more elusive, but powerful concept: customer engagement. And this part of customer experience is increasingly becoming more important and competitive since it leads to customer retention and allows brands to stand out and attract new customers.

Let’s explore the most important customer engagement benefits further:

A. Engaged customers boost retention rates!

Satisfied customers will be back for more. And as long as their experiences with a brand remain positive, they will not only repurchase, they will also be more inclined to share their opinions of the brand and recommend it to others. According to Bain & Co, a mere 5% increase in customer retention can increase a company’s profitability by 25%-95%! 

B. Engaged customers boost loyalty!

Satisfied customers also have a positive effect on word of mouth (WoM). This results in an increase in the number of promoters and an enhanced Net Promoter Score (NPS). NPS is also a metric that can provide satisfactory predictions about customer loyalty levels and offer useful info on what customers want from a brand. And why do you need customer loyalty predictions? Because, loyal customers are five times more likely to purchase again and four times more likely to refer a friend to the company, according to Experience Matters.

C. Engaged customers are more willing to provide feedback!

The benefits of customer feedback are so numerous they deserve their own article, but one of them is the insights generated from feedback analysis that create opportunities for customer engagement and retention. However, if you want to achieve a significant survey response rate and get those valuable insights, you need to make sure you engage your customers in ways they will appreciate. If done right, the results may astonish you!

Customer engagement is an elusive concept, a process that takes time and constant adjustments to hit the spot and help brands and online retailers forge relationships with their buyers. 

Now, you may know what customer engagement is and you may also have already made efforts to boost yours. The question is: have you measured your engagement? If so, did you use the right metrics?

As is the case with everything engagement-related, there is no “one-solution-fits-all”, even in the case of its calculation. This stems from the fact that there are different ways to engage your customers via numerous different channels. Choosing your engagement metrics based on the channels used is a good first step towards generating reliable and valuable insights.

 

What are the most important engagement metrics?

 

Α. Conversion Rate

A conversion rate is the percentage of people that completed the desired action out of the number of people that were exposed to a specific campaign (e.g. Download e-Book, Subscribe to a Newsletter, Click a Link to a Website Page, Provide Feedback, Leave a Review etc.)  A high conversion rate means that your audience engaged with the content of your campaign and is eager to act when asked by your brand.

How can e-satisfaction.com help with your conversion rate?

e-satisfaction.com offers you a suite of features that help you inspire the actions of your customers. Specifically, gatoskilo.gr, an online pet shop, activated our Refer a Friend and Review mechanisms. The results? It became the most reviewed pet shop on skroutz.gr and was recommended to customers’ friends more than 200 times!

 

B. Website Metrics (Sessions, Pages/Session, Average time on page, Bounce Rate)

Session metrics measure the behaviour of a website visitor. The metric Sessions is the total number of sessions. The metric Pages/Session is the average number of pages viewed per session. Average time on page measures the amount of time (on average) users spend on your website and the bounce rate measures the percentage of sessions that leave your website without taking any additional action. Google Analytics is a great tool to measure the metrics mentioned above and see how your visitors interact and engage with your website content. 

C. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

NPS measures of consumers to recommend your product to someone they know. Ιt is also a good way to calculate your potential Word of Mouth (WoM) and diagnose if your customers are OK with their choice. Furthermore, NPS is a valid metric to check whether your customers are becoming loyal to the brand/store.

All you need to do is ask your customers a simple -but very important- question:

If you pair this question with additional, open-ended questions you can ask customers to justify their choice and offer you more feedback on what they like or dislike about your brand or products. 

NPS surveys also prove that asking for customer feedback is a great way to engage your customers: customers chose to offer their opinion because they feel valued and heard by the brand, while the brand obtains valuable insights that can be used to engage them in even more meaningful ways and earn their trust.

How can e-satisfaction.com help with your NPS surveys?

With e-satisfaction.com, you can create fully-customizable, branded and responsive NPS surveys. A range of survey templates and ready-to-use questions is at your disposal, along with a real-time dashboard, featuring a carefully selected set of charts. Segmenting and exporting your survey results becomes a simple process and if you want to compare your metrics with that of similar companies, you do so via our benchmarking mechanism. 

If you feel that the term “customer engagement” is everywhere you look, you’re not alone! You probably already know that it leads to customer loyalty and retention, but -still- if someone asked you to define customer engagement, you would not be able to come up with a comprehensive answer. So, let’s cut to the chase and attempt to shine a light on what engagement means and how it creates value for your customers.

If you go through a list of attempted definitions of customer engagement by CX experts, it becomes apparent that most of them mention the words “interactions” and “relationships”. In the rather illuminating words of HubSpot’s Paul Greenberg: “Customer engagement is the ongoing interactions between company and customer, offered by the company, chosen by the customer.” 

Through these interactions, companies seek to create and strengthen their relationships with their customers. There are different ways to engage your customers, depending on their stage on the buyer’s journey, and there are also various channels, strategies, content formats and tools you can use.

However, no customer engagement effort can be successful unless online retailers, companies and brands realize that engagement goes hand in hand with the creation of value for their customers, even after the point of purchase. 

Simply put, you need to show your customers that you care about your relationship with them and that this relationship is not solely based on the number of transactions they have completed on your e-shop.  

Offering high-quality products and service is sure to get their attention in the first place, but offering them reasons to engage with your brand is what makes customers keep coming back or staying close to you.

Of course, smaller businesses cannot afford such a bombastic and costly implementation, but that does not mean that simpler engagement approaches, like online surveys, personalized emails with content based on customer history or a seasonal social media contest, don’t result in significant results. 

At the end of the day, whether we are talking about tech giants or small e-shops, it is customers that get to decide when, where and how they will interact with a brand. And you want to be offering them the opportunity to do so!