Category: Experts Talk

Life is full of moments and the journey of every single customer in every single service is full of micro and mega moments, experienced by both consumers and brands. If we focus on customer experience, these moments are placed in context to form what is called the “Customer Experience Continuum” that has been perfectly visualized by Gartner in the following image.

The most interesting thing about this relatively new visualization of the customer’s journey is that it begins with the “Buy” action and it does not end there. And this does make sense. When a consumer buys for the first time from your store or uses your product for the first time, it is not the end of your relationship but its beginning.

Why? The response is quite straightforward if you think it for a while:

• You want to stay in touch with this consumer (and not pay to acquire a new one)
• You want your consumer to speak about you to friends and promote you (without having to do or spend anything)
• You want to see this consumer turning back to you the next time they want to cover a similar or related need

In the game of building long term relationships with your customers, the focus is not on how much does it cost to get new customers but how can I keep my customer engaged, active and closely related to me and my brand. The first step in this game is to start thinking what happens after a customer buys from you and this is the first moment of truth that you have with your customers. The next step is to map the moments of truth you have with your customers and start working on them!

 

 

Want to know more about the moments of truth with your customer?

Read the following articles:

• 4 must-known moments of truth that will close the loaylty loop
• The 3 steps that will transform customer experience based on moments of truth

Over 2.1 billion people throughout the world are using messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger, Viber and Whatsapp. During the past years the most known messaging apps have taken huge steps further, by offering lots of functionality that connect users to brands and enterprises, such as chatbots and public channels. Today, users all over the world are using messaging apps not only to chat with friends but also to connect with brands, browse different businesses that will cover their needs and watch/read interesting content. (Source: Businessinsider)

All these tools, combined with the fact that users are far more engaged to messaging apps, compared to their engagement to e-mail (a recent study found that the open rate of mobile messages is 98% versus 22% for e-mail, and 90% of people read a mobile message within 3 minutes from receiving it) makes it evident that companies should start communicating with their targeted audience in messaging apps as soon as possible.

Djamel Agaoua, Viber’s CEO, stated that “messaging is just starting its journey on mobile devices” and it looks that by comparing Viber or any other messaging platform with SMS, anyone will classify SMS as outdated. A quick comparison is shown in the following image:

In a nutshell, when compared to SMS and e-mail, the new messaging apps, like Viber are:

• Cost efficient
• Rich in content capabilities
• Interactive and smart

These are the reasons that made consumer preferences shift towards mobile messaging. So businesses should follow by moving down this road, where they interact with users not by broadcasting messages, but by starting interesting discussions in a rich and interactive environment while at the same time customer engagement with a brand will be increased.

Omnichannel shopping experience is the latest buzzword in retail and there are many ways to define it:

• Hubspot defines it as: “the ability to deliver a seamless and consistent experience across channels, while factoring in the different devices that consumers are using to interact with your business”.
• Google defines it as: “ensuring [retailer] marketing strategies are geared toward enabling customers to convert on any channel”.
• Forbes defines it as: “The ability of your customer to be in contact with your company via a variety of channels and to essentially be able to pick up where they left off on one channel and continue the conversation on another.”

In a nutshell, omnichannel customer experience is about removing barriers and making all different channels transparent for the consumer, providing consistent experience and freedom in all possible touchpoints. This goes way beyond the “shop online and deliver offline” and of course it does not have much to do with “I use a mobile app to show offers to my customers”.

To make it more clear, imagine Maria, a millennial walking down a busy street full of stores. Her phone buzzes, inviting her into a nearby store to enjoy her favorite ice cream flavor she’s enjoyed there before. Having just eaten breakfast (the most important meals of the day), she keeps walking, but mentally files the Viber message for later (after sending it to her best friend saying “these guys are perfect!”). Half a block later, a fashion store catches her eye and she steps in. As she enters the store, her phone buzzes again with a coupon for 20% off for the next two hours on dresses. Maria likes the offer and works with a salesperson to find the right dress but the store doesn’t have it in her size. No worries: The salesperson locates it in another store of the chain and offers to drop-ship it to her house. Maria feels like she really got a bargain and asks for one more dress for Anna, her best friend, to discover that other location only has one. The salesperson locates one dress in that store and one in a store in another city, coordinates the drop-shipping for both, and gives her the BOGO (buy one, get one 50%) discount she deserves (better, after all, than the 20% off that tempted her initially), even though both dresses come from different stores, and neither from the store in which she’s standing. That afternoon, back at home, Maria finds that three shoe boxes from her favorite shoe store have arrived. Two of the pairs fit her perfectly; the third is too wide. She finds the shoes in a better-fitting size and orders them for in-store pickup the next morning, as the store is close to her friends house that she will visit. The pickup is ready when she comes in, and with the proximity functionality on her phone, the store’s employees are able to recognize her arrival, stop folding clothes and other low-value tasks, and hurry to meet her at the front door where they hand her the package and accept her exchange, wishing her well with an e-coupon to return.

Why omnichannel is important for customer experience?

• Companies with omnichannel customer engagement strategies retain on average 89% of their customers, compared to 33% for companies with weak omnichannel customer engagement.
• 72% of digital shoppers consider in-store experience as the most important channel when making a purchase.
• Shoppers who buy from a business both in-store and online have a 30% higher lifetime value than those who shop using only one channel.
• 47% of digital shoppers claim that consistent personalized shopping experience from one channel to next is one of the top omnichannel retail capabilities.

Sources: Business2Community & IDC

Whether the purchase experience starts online or offline consumers have a plethora of options as to how they may want to move through their buyer journey. As a result, consumers are found to engage with a brand in several different channels and they are expecting a consistent, complementary and aligned customer experience in every channel they choose to start, continue, stop or restart their journey.

The example provided above maybe look challenging to be implemented, but this is what customers want. Start interacting with you anywhere they want, move across channels anyway they feel and finish their interactions where and when they want to. You can control this process not just by enabling them to move, but by guiding them through all different channels, making this interaction more frequent and knowing them better every day, to provide them better experience.

Are you still wondering why you should focus your strategic plan in building a personalized omnichannel experience? Read more here and you will be totally convinced!

Want to know more about the omnichannel experience?

Read the following interesting articles:

• Omnichannel vs Multimodal Customer Experience 
• e-satisfaction.com faces the challenge of omnichannel experience

Consumers no longer turn  to local businesses to meet their needs. They have tons of options and they can choose to shop in-store or through desktop, laptop, smartphone or tablet. More options mean more opportunities for a brand to connect and engage with consumers, but it also means more complexity. Keeping interactions consistent across multiple channels and ensuring a continuous experience for consumers is the new challenge that every business should confront.

It is a real challenge for businesses to provide this continuous experience and in this effort, a lot of businesses miss the big picture, by offering multimodal customer experience and not omnichannel customer experience.

What’s the difference between multimodal and omnichannel customer experience?

Multimodal Customer Experience

The multimodal or multi-channel customer experience is what most businesses invest in today. They have a website, blog, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other channels like price comparison websites, Amazon or eBay.

All of these platforms are used to engage and connect with customers, but what about consistency? Each channel has its own characteristics, so if these channels are designed and built separately, the consumers do not find it easy to move through them, making it hard or unpleasant for them when jumping from one channel to the next.

Omnichannel Customer Experience

On the other hand, an omnichannel customer experience accounts for each platform and device a customer will use to interact with the company. Consumer data are used to align the company’s message, goals, objectives and design across each channel and device, within the scope of providing a consistent and aligned customer experience.

According to Forbes, an omnichannel customer experience signify the ability of customers to immediately contact with a company through a variety of channels and to be able to pick up from where they left off on one channel and continue their purchase on another.

An omnichannel experience involves a holistic view of all customer interactions, across all channels and over time, equipping customer support departments with every possible detail about a customer aiming to provide the most consistent customer experience. Customer support agents are more efficient which in turn leads to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Omnichannel can help your company convert first-time customers to long-term brand evangelists because of the wealth of information available to the customer support agent and consequently, interactions will be made more personal than ever before.

To sum up, multimodal experience grants the basic cross-channel functionality required for easy customer interactions and engagements, but omnichannel takes customer experience to a higher level and applies the multimodal process in the framework of a long-term customer journey and a long-term relationship between a brand and its customers.

Want to know more about the omnichannel experience?

Read the following interesting articles:

• Why an omnichannel experience is important for you? 
• e-satisfaction.com faces the challenge of omnichannel experience

Providing an amazing customer experience is really important for any business, regardless of the vertical, the product they are selling or the type of customers that is targeted. Amazing customer experience is the secret to customer retention, customer loyalty and paves the path to profitability. Providing excellent or amazing customer experience is a multi-variate riddle that is not at all easy to be dealt. It needs to understand what customers need, analyze issues that disturb their experience while they are consuming, detect patterns of customers and many more.

In this post we provide some initial thoughts on this issue and help you create and excellent customer service!

1) Provide a true omnichannel customer experience

Omnichannel is not just about starting a purchase online and ending offline, it is a much bigger challenge and it is all about options that customers love. When they buy, they want to move across channels, use multiple devices and utilize as many touch points as possible to make the best possible purchase. In this process, they expect a consistent experience in every channel they choose. Channels must be as transparent as possible and communication barriers between online and offline must be brought down, allowing the customer move through these environments, effortlessly.

2) Look at every moment of truth, especially after purchase

During every shopping journey that your customers do to buy from you, there are a number of moments during which a person or a product is tested, a decision is made or a crisis has to be faced. These are the so called moments of truth and they are the best moments to get in touch with your customers. If you follow your customer’s journey, you will see them educating themselves, finding you, registering to your website, ordering, receiving products, using products or services, asking for support and (ideally) returning to buy something else or repeat a purchase from you. In every single one of this moments and the experience of your customers is affected by how good you are during these moments. If you want to amaze them, find these moments and use them to delight them as these are the moments that will build a long lasting relationship.

3) Get personal with your customers

Customers want to feel like they have access to real people with feelings, not robots. Artificial Intelligence and chatbots are a trend but do not forget to be human and engage with customers at a human level, not only through mechanical automated email responses. Respond to customers’ e-mails or messages in a personal way and make sure that your customer service team is easily accessible and always available for them.

Throughout this process you should take full advantage of all the tools that you have at your disposal, i.e. social media, chat services, to reply as soon as possible to their requests and therefore, create trust relations between the customer and the customer service agent.

4) Ask for your customer’s feedback

The more you know about your customers the more likely it is to understand their needs and expectations. Ask for their feedback to better understand your strong and weak components in respect to the customer service provided. Collect this valuable information and plan your optimization strategy to improve customer experience and engage customers across all stages of their journey.

To conclude…

Maybe the most essential thing you should start doing tomorrow is to start viewing customers, instead of transactions. ERP systems, eCommerce platforms and all the tools we use today count how many transactions, not caring about the person behind them. Adding CRM in your strategy and using CRM tools to gather customer information and create customer profiles is the best place to start if you want to invest on a customer centric strategy. By having all customer information in one place you can facilitate communications between your customer service team and your customers but also, between different teams within your organization.

Providing an amazing customer experience is a challenge but it is not a matter of cost. All you have to do is start thinking who are your customers and what are their needs and when you do this, you have made your first step in a successful customer centric, strategy that leads to growth.