Are you future proofing your business? Preparing for the future of Digital Commerce
How are companies reinventing ways to serve consumers in a digital world?
Technology can be a complicated balancing act and solving old problems can inadvertently create new ones. As technology advances, we also see fundamental changes in the consumer landscape growing in complexity. With the introduction of more eCommerce sites and digital marketplaces, and shopping via social media, customers are now demanding personalized experiences. In fact, research from PWC shows that 32% of customers will walk away from a company they love after a single bad experience. Now, 86% of buyers will pay more for a great customer experience.
With more than 4 in 5 consumers willing to pay more for a better experience, there is an opportunity for companies to generate more revenue if they can leverage data effectively to meet those continuously rising customer expectations.
The need for unified data and connected experiences
The collection of data is now endless, whether from marketing campaigns or customers’ online purchases and everything in between. But far too often, we see that data end up in silos and not being utilized to its full potential. Using a customer data platform, like Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, allows your business to store all that data in a secure unified location, and to action it, enabling you to truly understand your customers’ behaviour and intent. Utilizing this knowledge leads you to deliver more personalized and meaningful customer experiences.
The evolution of retail
The evolution of the retail landscape has given us insight by looking at some of the major issues businesses are currently facing. Although we carry some of the same pain points, our solutions from the past were not built for the problems we now face with rapid change and growth in today’s consumer market.
Traditionally businesses operated out of a single location; there was no perceived need to adopt an omnichannel strategy because back then, omnichannel was not a goal, or even a concept yet.
A Changing Landscape Means Different Problems—And Different Solutions
Today’s consumers demand businesses are everywhere they are, and with always-on, multichannel business models, come new challenges. Some of the reasons why some retailers are closing their doors are because they are not speaking the language of today’s customers, which is one of personalization.
The New Retail Reality
Customers hold more power than ever, they are shaping their buying experience and increasing the ability to get what they need from anywhere at any time. Customers now expect seamless, multichannel experiences with a simple checkout process, fast delivery, and easy returns. These are no longer just trends we are seeing in the market; they are now essential for sustainable business growth. On Black Friday in 2020, online sales surpassed $9 billion, up 21.6% year over year, according to Adobe, which analyzes website transactions from 80 of the top 100 U.S. online retailers.
In our new landscape, some businesses will let this environment be a barrier to their growth while others will leverage it as an opportunity. The businesses that focus on implementing processes and strategies to adapt to customer demands will succeed.
How are you building a future proof technology stack?
Being customer centric is easier said than done. Many businesses today need to consider how their backend operations are affecting their customer experiences before they can move to a customer centric model.
Everything from shopping how, when, and where they want, and your ability to remember them are important considerations. Are you reducing the time spent at checkout? Or how are you personalizing their experience?
Backend optimizing leads to happier customers
Adopting flexible and scalable solutions can help your business accurately track and manage increasing orders across all your channels. This can also help automate and optimize your inventory management which is equally as important as optimizing other key functions of your business.
Improve your checkout experience.
An incredible 70% of shoppers abandon their cart before purchasing. Every single one of those customers found you, went to buy something, added it to their cart, and then changed their mind. Why? Some of these reasons could be common ones like extra costs, sales tax, shipping, forced account creation, or missing a payment option. When a customer gets to that point and encounters some sort of friction, they opt out, leaving a high rate of abandoned carts. With eCommerce sales skyrocketing, it is your mission to ensure your checkout process is not forcing any of your customers to leave prematurely.
Focus on enhancing your mobile commerce game.
Mobile commerce is predicted to make up a whopping 73% of eCommerce sales. So that raises the question: Why is it so hard to shop on your website using a mobile device?
It is a fact that many customers will abandon sites that are not mobile-friendly. This could include having an unappealing layout, slow loading times, navigation menus that are hard to navigate on a mobile screen, and even inconsistency within your business itself. Make it a priority to correct these issues and make your site mobile-friendly to ensure you are catching your customers where they spend their most time.
Personalization is Key
We’ve talked about the heightened expectations consumers now have with regards to customer service, but in a world full of multiple avenues of contact, delivering a truly personalized service takes a lot of effort.
Show your customers you are listening to what they want and providing a solution just for them. Showing them that you understand their needs and being clear about what you can offer them is a great motivator for conversation. Listen to them throughout and after the buying process will lead you to greater loyalty in your return customers.
But how do you maintain and achieve this?
Check-in with them throughout the process, this could include follow-up emails about an abandoned cart, requests for feedback, or even suggestions based on previous purchases.
Leveraging technology to capture and utilize this data is key to the success of personalizing your customer’s experience.
From a technology point of view, the first step is to utilize a customer relationship management (CRM) platform to deliver the kind of integration that provides total visibility. If you can ensure your employees can instantly access customer histories, it will enable them to demonstrate a keen understanding of the client’s needs from the outset.
Your CRM platform, like Dynamics 365, allows you to track and access an ongoing profile of your customers and their engagements – which could include knowing their latest purchase, recent complaints, even their preferred name.
Lastly, keep it simple. Do not forget that even though you are highly focused on personalizing their experience, sometimes a simple answer is all that is needed. Make sure your customers have access to self-service tools such as a customer portal. Microsoft Portals allows your customers to view the history of their orders, past service tickets, or check on the status of current orders or profiles. Providing methods your customers can access not only saves your team time from answering simple calls but also gives your customers confidence in your business for providing the necessary information.
A centralized operations platform like Dynamics 365 Commerce gives retailers comprehensive visibility into their historical data so they can more easily and effectively make and communicate their decisions regarding inventory.
What to check out more? See Microsoft’s Blog