Be Ahead of the Game With 3 Takeaways for the eCommerce & Retail Industry

Transforming customer experience to meet the ever-changing expectations of today’s consumers is no easy task. But it has to be done as ​​great experiences are the result of unique engagements that both satisfy individual customer needs and add value, at different points in the customer lifecycle.

It is clear from the research of African Retail, that shoppers are rapidly moving away from more traditional forms of retail and opting for contact-free and digital transactions. This, in turn, is presenting e-tailers and businesses in Kenya, and across the region, with new challenges on how to best leverage the shift towards online shopping and deliver fast, convenient and secure transactions.

We highlight 3 takeaways you can keep your foot on the digital transformation gas pedal and get the biggest return on your CX investments in the retail and eCommerce industry and we've asked other experts in the industry about their ideas and experiences:

1. Improve mobile experiences to meet growing customer expectations.

Your customers are using mobile devices more than ever, and that means they're your website/ store for an online shopping experience that's quick and easy. You can provide this by optimising your website for mobile users, but there are other ways to make sure your customers have a great experience with your company.

It's important to remember that your website must be optimised for smartphones and tablets—not just for desktop computers. According to Google, if your site takes more than three seconds to load, 53% of customers will quit it. If they do bounce, they will almost certainly move to your rivals. Reduce the file size of your website's photos as one technique to optimise it.

2. Boost customer retention by emphasising employee experience.

Most people like to use WhatsApp to communicate with friends and family, but nowadays also with businesses. You can offer a great experience if they can reach your shop via WhatsApp or any other preferred channel on your website in one dashboard using Mobile Service Cloud.

Empower your staff to deliver exceptional support, on any channel. Interact with your customers through their preferred channel via an omnichannel inbox and choose to automate your conversations with a chatbot. This omnichannel also creates more understanding for the employees regarding the clients. What do they buy, what do they like, what questions do they have?

But there’s more the tool can help you with:

- Help your team to simply focus on what they do best.

SLA Management - Set, monitor and manage different SLAs for a sub-set of your customer service operation such as brand, language, channel, team and more.

Through an employee experience portal and wallboards - Monitor essential customer service metrics in real-time with TV wallboards inside your office space or visit the portal.

- Sales Tracking (Across Channels) / Incentivise.

Attribute a sale to the right agent when customers buy after a service conversation. Includes a 'win message' and works for all channels.

3. Hyper-personalisation at the heart of eCommerce and retail.

In the world of retail and eCommerce personalisation is the name of the game. You must make use of the data you have—whether that's through your website, customer contact tools or other sources? Ensure that it's linked to offer context throughout every customer encounter. Make it omnichannel and personal. Use the channels they prefer with the message that they’re looking for. For retail brands trying to understand where to invest in mobile CX, it's fascinating to review what consumers say they find "useful" versus the features they currently use.

"Personalisation is the most important aspect for me. I feel that after you've done that, you'll be able to engage your consumers and clients more effectively. The more we know about our clients, the better we can understand them according to Lilian Mwangi, Jumia's Head of eCommerce, Product Manager, and Digital Marketing Strategist.

An example of a personalised message is video. A personalised video can be a video tailored to each customer’s interests (for example, sending an installation tutorial to a customer who recently purchased a new router for their home

It’s great for retailers to centralise all customer data into one platform. Because data on different platforms don't support each other, if you combine the data you have the holy grail, says Yahya Gondosio. eCommerce, Marketing & Growth at Jambo Shoppe.

eCommerce is a comprehensive customer experience strategy that helps you gain and retain customers by delivering meaningful, personalised information and experiences to each customer. That makes your business more competitive, which can only lead to increased sales. So whether you’re looking to get started with a new eCommerce business or would like to grow your existing one, invest in a smart solution for cross-channel customer identity and access management.

How to stay ahead in the eCommerce & Retail Industry with our solution.

Mobile Service Cloud is designed for collaborative customer service, underpinned by its Agent Inbox offering that’s been built from the ground up to enable multiple agents and departments – even third-party businesses – to collaborate.

Detailed customer profiles hold previous conversations between customers and colleagues – even across different platforms – to make getting up-to-speed on a specific case simple for anyone in your customer service team.