February 22, 2023
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As an e-commerce trader, you deal with customers daily, but can you truly call yourself customer focused? Below are some quick pointers to help align your strategy with your customers best interests in mind.
Your customers are the pillars of your business, and as your organisation grows, so should your customer service strategy. Develop and learn from real experiences your customers are having and aim to consistently deliver excellent service. Be available to answer questions, either on social media, email or phone and make sure your contact details are easily found. Another important aspect of customer service is the staff that represent your brand. Employees who believe in your brand will ultimately deliver better results. Reward success and recognise achievements within the team to keep moral high, remember they are the front line dealing with customers queries or complaints day in day out.
It costs five times as much to attract new customers than to keep an existing one. Existing customers are 50% more likely to try new products and spend 31% more compared to new customers. There are digital tools to hand when aiming to up your customer retention, such as retargeting or email, mobile and social media campaigns. However, the key is a touch of personalisation. By successfully using past purchase data and especially abandoned cart follow-ups, you can increase your revenue by up to 25%. To find out more about cart abandonment and increase retention, read our article 'The ultimate guide to reduce cart abandonment'.
As retailers, you know the value of data. Past purchase data drives sales and offer campaigns, however, do you ever gather information that's beneficial to your customer? For example, are you advertising your new tall range to someone who mainly shops petite? Do you know your customers favourite colour? Little nuances like this can mean the difference to customers, relevance is key. And gather information not only about the customer but your business. Customer insight is invaluable and should be used to shape your business processes. Understand what they expect from you and where you can make improvements. If you choose to do a customer survey, ask the hard questions, don’t fix the survey to only give good results, your business will benefit in the long run.
Building trust with your customers can take time, and when things go wrong it pays to take responsibility. A cast iron money back guarantee and a clear returns process will calm any purchase doubts that occur at checkout and give customers a good fall back for any issues that occur with your product. Focus on the enjoyment of your product, not your bottom line. Refund any faults or fitting disasters. You might find any complaints good feedback to fix production issues to stop the same problem happening in the future.
96% of people who visit your website are not ready to instantly purchase. Create value for your customers and generate content that naturally intrigues and entertains. Research, look at your data and define topics or buying patterns, this will help establish what your customers are interested in and allow you to plan a content strategy to suit. Think of your relationship with your customer as a long-term partnership, not a one-time sale.
Whilst happy customers can be your biggest advocates, surveys show that an average dissatisfied customer will tell 9-15 people and 13% of unhappy customers will go on to tell a further 20 people. In one interaction, a bad customer experience could reach 33 people. Make sure you are on hand to deal with any negative feedback quickly to stop the spread of satisfaction. However, bad reviews and feedback can be beneficial to your business. They can help you identify weaknesses or problems that you may not be aware of. It may be a fault with your delivery provider, or somewhere in the production line. Reviews, positive or negative, are key in helping customers to make purchase decisions. So make sure they are clearly displayed and easy to access from your product page. You may even think about offering incentives to leave reviews, an addition 5% off your next purchase for a review of your product, for example.
