Future of E-Commerce: Customer Engagement is all set to become the key brand differentiator
The e-Commerce industry is bound to see tremendous growth in future as customers found it more convenient to shop online. We can see the growth of online shopping is continuing to grow, people are more loving to shop through their smartphones. More advancement in the industry means more competition and each brand need to stand out to be on top of the game.
But does it mean more visitors to the website bring more sales? Exactly no. Customer experience is the new term which is all set to take over all the other features of marketing your brand. Customers demand more engagement from the brands they are willing to use. One-way communication from the brand is not at all satisfying and all the communication is becoming more and more two-way. Customers are expecting a fantastic customer experience and always want to communicate with their brands, wherever they are.
Customer experience is becoming the key brand differentiator. Brands need to implement their own unique ways to keep their end-users more engaged with the brand. More customer engagement means more customer retention in the future. Customer retention is a major factor in the success of your e-commerce site and a greater level of customer experience will leave more retaining of your customers.
Retaining customers is a difficult task in the e-commerce industry, and investing in customer engagement is crucial in future. Integrating advanced technologies like artificial intelligence to deliver new experiences in marketing will lead customer engagement to a new level. Companies can deliver deals, products, and other data through an integrated system of WhatsApp, RCS, or SMS.
E-Commerce Customer Engagement
It is not that old word to discuss, it has evolved recently. But not something to get complicated, in simple words it is the process of gaining new customers as well as retaining the old ones. In e-commerce, it is the emotional connection between the brands and customers grown through the delivery of an exceptional buying experience. Let us check some of the key reasons of customer engagement is vital in the e-commerce industry.
1. Retain more customers
Customer engagement in purchasing a product won’t stop by just delivering the product. A greater after-sales service will give a personal touch to the communication with the customer. it will increase customer lifetime with the brand.
2. Make a Brand Ambassador by staying loyal
If customers feel close to your brand they will tend to share their experiences with their close ones through the mouth or through social media. Let them be your Brand Ambassadors.
3. Reduce sales life cycle
Keeping the customers always engaged with the brand will automatically reduce the sales life cycle by giving information proactively.
Strategies to Improve Customer Engagement with Conversational Commerce
1. Real-time Digital tools to engage with your customer: Live Chat
Implementing digital tools to engage the customers in real-time will deliver the most pleasing customer experience.
Engaging with your customer in real-time will increase the trust in your brand, and it will deliver a feeling of closeness with the brand. Customers prefer to chat more than to call a customer service centre to clarify their queries. A live chat will increase their experience with the brand. E-commerce sites can offer live chat via WhatsApp Business Platform, RCS Business messaging, etc. top-notch e-commerce customer engagement will bring a significant increase in trust-building and hence deliver a great customer experience.
2. Engage your customer more with ChatBots
Conversational AI ChatBots are gaining more significance as it really holds the customer to have a real-time engagement with the customer. Clientele’s shopping patterns becoming more mobile phone-centric, and constantly active on their phones, preferring business communication over chats. Businesses can indeed promote their products and services to their opted-in customers, and also can have a meaningful chat with them as well.
3. Optimize omnichannel customer experience
Currently, customers use omnichannel for their communication and they would love to see their shopping sites all over there. Research shows that 73% of customers use multiple channels for their shopping. A distinct omnichannel marketing strategy will bring steady brand messages, great customer support, and an understanding of the customer journey, and hence personalise the customer experience.
4. Make a hassle-free checkout process.
Make sure you are not closing a deal just before the checkout by making the end-process simple and easy. It is more important to create a great checkout flow so that customers will not feel exhausted by the long and complex checkout procedures.
5. Up-grade your customer satisfaction
Make your customer feel special by providing more personalised and exceptional offers. This will definitely contribute more to your customer retention strategy. Delighting the customer not only provides a great offer but also making more personalised conversations with them.
6. Loyal customers matter a lot
More loyal customers mean more customer retention. Create more customer-centric content, understand your customer and increase customer lifetime with the brand.
Today the way of communicating with customers is multi-faceted and conversational messaging platforms bring a lot of opportunities for the brands to have real-time communication with their clientele. Customer engagement is going to become the key point in customer retention than price and product. If you treat your customer loyal. They are going to stay with the brand lifelong. It is also important to have an omnichannel presence as more customer engagement will bring more virtue to your brand as well for your Shop.
