Consumer expectations are constantly on the rise, driven by innovations and new offerings that promise more efficient and personalized experiences. For retailers, the stakes of customer satisfaction and engagement that come with a digital world are extremely high: In one recent survey, nearly 70% of consumers said that page speed influences their decision to purchase, with 15% saying that slow loading times would send them to a competitor’s site.
Now that the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted even more of our lives online, introducing new consumers to digital sales channels, providing seamless digital experiences is more urgent than ever. What’s more, those experiences are now unfolding across multiple touch points, compounding the challenge for retailers. Within web sites and native mobile apps, there are now chatbots, live chats, product reviews, real-time feedback surveys and more — all creating new data points that must be properly managed and monitored to optimize the customer experience.
But which improvements will actually move the needle? For retailers to truly enhance the digital experience, it’s crucial that they capture, visualize and take action upon all that happens across web and mobile channels and across the various customer touch points, all in one piece. This is what we call True Digital Customer Experience.
Ushering In The True Digital Customer Experience
What exactly does this mean? The reality is, what a consumer views on their screen when using either a mobile app or through a browser is just the tip of the iceberg. Many elements of excellent customer experience happen below the surface — through various integrations at the backend. Simply put, sleek digital experiences require complex background work.
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As an example, in order to inform you about whether an item you’re interested in is in stock or not, the web site or app needs to pull information in real time from the brand’s inventory management system. Therefore, in order for enterprises to have a complete picture, they need to collect all data and events coming from both the client side and the server side. Failing to obtain this view means that retailers will miss out on significant chunks of relevant data, which in turn will hinder their ability to understand customer intent, the context of their experiences, all their interactions with the brand, the expectations they have and the outcome of each session.
With tagless technologies, retailers can travel back in time to get this full-circle view. When a retailer identifies an unforeseen customer pain point, these solutions make it possible to understand how long it’s been an issue, how many people it has impacted, and how it has affected the bottom line. Equipped with these insights, retailers will know what level of priority to designate to different issues and can nip problems in the bud before they become more widespread.
Data First = Customer First
Without abundant data, it’s impossible for retailers to truly understand their customers, their demands and the brand’s success in meeting their expectations. Accordingly, companies of all stripes are recruiting data specialists, with “data scientist” and “data engineer” both making the top 10 of LinkedIn’s 2020 Emerging Jobs Report.
While it’s smart for organizations to invest in building out their data teams, it’s also important to instill data fluency in all team members, and to ensure that they’re equipped with the tools necessary for accessing and analyzing digital data. Fostering a data-centric culture ultimately enables a customer-centric organization, arming businesses with the real-time insights they need to understand customers, predict future behaviors and anticipate what needs to be done to meet ever-evolving customer expectations.
Customer care representatives, for instance, must be empowered with visibility into all customers’ past or live experiences on a brand’s digital channels. This is critical to addressing points of frustration, tackling issues in a timely manner and alerting other professionals within the organization to recurring problems. Product managers equipped with the right solutions will have complete visibility into digital journeys — analyzing customer habits, discovering new audiences, and improving user engagement.
Businesses increasingly recognize that to get the digital formula right, analytics must permeate all aspects of the company’s operations. Mars, for example, is leaning heavily into digital analytics for a flurry of organizational operations — including eliminating menial tasks for employees and enabling them to work on more meaningful projects — with the ultimate goal of enabling an efficient, friction-free customer experience on digital channels.
Such an approach allows each department within an organization to get to the root of problems much more quickly and effectively. Understanding that a problem exists is a necessary but insufficient step; what’s truly needed is for enterprises to dig deeper to fully grasp the dimensions of the issue, and that requires all hands on deck. It also requires data analytics, backed up by robust AI and machine learning capabilities that can quickly pinpoint the factors behind user abandonment and determine the impact of any bugs in the user experience.
Of course, data analytics aren’t a one-and-done affair. Enterprises must continuously analyze their data so that teams can home in on key questions: What reasons might explain why users are abandoning an app at a given point? Are there any commonalities in users with low conversion rates?
What customers expect two, five, and 10 years from now will be different from what they expect today, as changes in technology, market trends and cultural shifts drive continued evolution in customer behavior. That makes it vital for enterprises to prioritize identifying and anticipating their customers’ needs, with a data-savvy organizational culture being the linchpin. Only then will retailers be able to deliver customers the smooth, memorable (and hopefully, repeated) digital experiences they deserve.
YaronMorgenstern has been the Chief Executive Officer at Glassbox Ltd. since October 2015. He served as General Manager of Financial Markets Compliance at NICE Systems, leading both the NICE Trading Floors and NICE Actimize Capital Markets Compliance groups, and was responsible for the execution of the unique Holistic Surveillance vision that combines trade and communication surveillance capabilities. Morgenstern oversaw product creation, solution delivery, go-to-market planning, and client relationship management activities across NICE compliance solutions. Prior to that, Morgenstern held the positions of Vice President of Strategic Initiatives & Operations at NICE Systems. Before joining NICE Systems, he served as Director of Corporate Development and Strategy at Amdocs. He holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering and MBA from Ben Gurion University in Israel.
