Today, customer journeys have increasingly become more fluid, dynamic, and uncertain. Real-time customer engagement is a crucial component for providing a differentiated CX. It is important for delivering a timely, relevant, and personalized engagement throughout an omnichannel customer journey.
Customers today have access to an abundance of information about brands, their services and products. They have higher expectations of what brands should be doing for them – around three-fourth of customers say that a single extraordinary experience elevates their expectations of other brands, according to the 2019 State of the Connected Customer report from Salesforce.
Moreover, with an influx of smaller and more agile brands addressing customer demand via disruptive services and products, it has started to take away market share from less tech-savvy and non-agile brands. However, the disruptors raise the expectations of consumers even higher by constantly introducing new and valuable products. This results in a continuous cycle of accelerated, competitive pressure in the industry.
A winning CX strategy is a crucial step in a successful transformation, with 75% of consumers expecting brands to use technologies to create better experiences, as per the Salesforce research. However, as per a 2019 RedPoint Global and Harris Poll Survey, even though around 57% of marketers reported that their organization had the right CX strategy in place, they were unable to effectively execute it.
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With this in mind, let’s look at the three most critical components of a CX strategy that will help retail businesses survive and thrive in today’s competitive digital transformation age.
Automation and AI
AI has the potential to revolutionize customer experience, with the capabilities to predict what customers want, even before they themselves know what they want.
As per a 2019 study done by Juniper Research, global spending on AI by retailers will hit US$12 billion by 2023. With AI acting as an automation driver, a majority of businesses have already started adopting AI automation tools, and experts believe it will double within a few years. Businesses are ramping up their investments efforts in order to unlock enhanced efficiencies in back-office operations, and are also deploying advanced analytics to automate marketing functions and forecast sales demand.
Leveraging Personalization
Customers today feel personalization should be a service standard and expect brands to know their buying habits, needs, and preferences. However, there is a big disconnect between brick-and-mortar and online stores. Personalization has become the norm in the online world – customers accept that they will see an ad on their social media feed about something they may have browsed on a website. But they do not feel comfortable with similar strategies in physical stores – a general sense of pushiness and privacy concerns are the biggest hurdles.
Hence, it is important to train retail employees to utilize Artificial Intelligence carefully as a personalization tool. Employees should be trained to view AI-supplied data as a way of cultivating a more helpful and pleasant CX.
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Omnichannel Experience
Businesses need to provide an excellent customer experience regardless of the places or platforms that make it possible. Whether it happens on a mobile device, a website, or a store, is secondary.
Businesses should not obsess over whether the website and the physical stores are offering the same products at the same price – the only thing they need to be careful here is that they provide the same brand experience across all channels. Customers are aware and accept that there will be distinctions here; hence, the value of the brand must be consistent independent of the channel.
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