by Lisa van Hesteren | February 4, 2021
The shift from shopping in-store to on-screen has grown each year, but the pandemic has thrown gasoline onto the fire that was already raging for high street retail. E-commerce had its biggest year ever in 2020 and its swallowing up of legacy high street brands shows no sign of stopping.
All this means that there’s never been a more important time to make sure you’re nailing your e-commerce CX, and powering it with passionate, knowledgeable agents who love your brand as much as you do. How do you create loyal customers when there are so many other brands out there just the click of a button away?
Let’s take a look at seven CX trends to keep tabs on in the coming year…
Video is only going to get even bigger in 2021. In a world in which plenty of bricks-and-mortar retail sites are still under lock and key, video will be more important than ever in connecting customers with brands and their products.
Product videos that are optimized for use in e-commerce is a double-win: they’re not only proven to increase sales but can also decrease product churn and returns. Also taking video to the next level are those brands experimenting with virtual reality and augmented reality, aimed at bringing the changing room into people’s homes.
Helping fashionistas plan next season’s wardrobe has always been the role of fashion retail, and as we hit the century’s third decade there have never been more ways for brands to reach out and help show what’s hot and what’s not. Forward-thinking ecommerce brands will be giving their customers the chance to have live video calls with fashion-savvy CX agents, as well as using influencers to help them with their challenge of creating killer content at scale.
Driving the rise and rise of voice commerce is the increasing penetration and ubiquity of smart home assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home. Voice commerce sales are anticipated to reach $40 billion by 2022. Smart brands are future-proofing their sites to prepare, including redesigning on-site search for natural language queries. The future is going to be more voice-activated search, powered by machine learning and Natural Language Processing. Sites and CX will need to reflect how we talk, not how we type.
Meeting your customers on the channels they want to browse and buy on – whether that’s your online store or bricks-and-mortar retail environment – has never been more important. You can expect to see more brands optimizing their omnichannel approach so that those experiences feel like part of the same seamless customer experience, with each channel working with the others to help amplify sales. Is your website optimized for mobile? How many purchase options are you offering? Making payment options as easy as possible is the single best way to get products from the shopping cart through to checkout and into the hands of the customer.
Personalizing your CX means making sure your customers aren’t getting overwhelmed and abandoning shopping carts. It turns out that we don’t necessarily want more choice: we’ll trade that in for convenience. The CX trend for personalization in 2021 is all about gathering customer data in a way that’s rewarding. One way to approach this is to make it part of the shopping experience. Smart fashion ecommerce brands are creating curated fashion experiences based on customers sharing their likes (and dislikes), before hooking them up with pieces selected from that shared data.
Picking up from the previous trend, premium brands are powering great fashion CX using chatbots. Retailers are set to spend nearly $7.3 billion on AI by 2022, a fourfold increase. Brands like Burberry and Tommy Hilfiger are using AI-powered chatbots to work through messaging apps, helping customers walk through their collections and find what they’re looking for. Part of what is making AI-powered CX such a potent offer, is the combination of 24/7 service combined with their availability on hugely popular messaging apps linked to global social networks.
By the end of 2021, it’s predicted that mobile devices are expected to account for almost 73% of total ecommerce sales, with 30% of online customers likely to abandon their shopping carts mid-purchase, if they think the site hasn’t been optimised for mobile. Frictionless CX designed specifically for mobile devices and tablets will win a greater share of those sales. So if you’re not optimizing, testing and implementing a mobile-first ecommerce site, what are you waiting for?
Whatever’s in store for your business in 2021, it’s your people who will make the difference. While tech trends will continue disrupting the market, building an emotional connection with your customers through brilliant CX is all about the calibre of your CX agents.
If you’re looking for agents who are digital natives, know your brand inside out and love working across multiple channels, then let’s talk about the future of CX and how our ‘fans of brands’ can help future-proof your business.
It’s never been more important to update your CX strategy for e-stores. Read our blog to learn the seven CX trends we predict will take off in 2021.
After the events of 2020, it’s no surprise that the whole world is gaming longer and harder than it ever has before. Mobile gaming in particular has had a stellar year, as millions of us have turned to our phones to stave off lockdown boredom.
Gaming is the world’s #1 lifestyle choice, played by more people than any other form of entertainment. We’ve had a ringside seat for its evolution, working hand-in-hand with our clients to support their customers as they enter huge, new immersive worlds.
The times, they are a-most-definitely-changing. As seasoned CX veterans know, plenty of the received wisdoms of third-party contact center management have received something of a battering over the last few years.
If you were not able to attend “CX Strategy: What now?”, our panel debate from last week, then here it is. An insightful, thought-provoking hour with industry gurus Mark Hillary, Stephen Loynd, Peter Ryan and our own Robert Van Diem. Here are some of the themes that really stood out for us.
I’m pleased to announce that I will be participating in a debate hosted by 5CA on October 27th. The title is CX Strategy: What Now? It’s going to be particularly topical, as one of the key things we will discuss, in the midst of this pandemic, is working from home (WFH) in the CX arena.
I’m pleased to announce that I will be participating in a debate hosted by 5CA on October 27th. The title is CX Strategy: What Now? I know that there are a lot of webinars and online debates these days, but I really think you should make time for this one:
Following on from National Customer Service Week, our Chief Customer Officer Rob van Herpen reflects on the journey that customer service has undergone in the last decade, and the role it plays within the wider scope of the whole customer experience.
I’m pleased to announce that I will be moderating a webinar hosted by 5CA on October 27th. The title is CX Strategy: What Now? I know you might be thinking “another day, another webinar invitation,” but as I’m chairing the debate I want to try making this one a little different. We can’t meet at conferences right now so the very least anyone planning a new webinar can do is to ensure it’s interesting and this one should hit the ball out of the park.
Gaming has been one of the few beneficiaries of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. Global quarantine and stay-at-home orders preventing people from traveling, commuting, and socializing has resulted in a boom for the gaming industry. Maximize the value of your VIP players and discover how work from home (WFH) support helps you add more value to your gaming whales.
Game launched? Check. Player hype? Check. Champagne? Crack that bottle, you deserve it! But while it bubbles on your tongue, let me ask you this: Have you considered how to respond to players who need assistance or want to provide feedback? And when your player base grows (and let's be honest it will - your game is awesome), what will you do when those interactions start exploding in languages you do not speak? How will you manage the volume of requests coming in, but still provide the best possible user experience to your fans?
Yes…. Another thought piece on how COVID-19 is re-shaping life as we know it and what can we learn from it going forward. With people stuck at home and shops closed, several industries, such as e-commerce, streaming entertainment, and gaming, are experiencing hyperactivity. The influx is driving revenues but also customer support needs.
Did anyone see that Assassins’ Creed Valhalla announcement trailer? Of course you did. Chances are you did not discover it on your own, but instead it appeared on your social media channels, most likely shared by a fan of the franchise or an influencer. At least that is how it happened to me. Game marketing truly has changed in the era of digital, community, and influencers.
In BPO, we often talk about how we deliver the best possible customer experience. We focus on training knowledgeable and empathetic agents, we run and rerun staffing simulations to ensure minimal wait times. These things are important, but, for the most part, once a customer is reaching out to us, it’s already a ding to the overall customer experience. Customers want an easy experience that works as it should and is intuitive.
Last month, Vice ran an interesting article by Jess Morrissette on how games marketing invented toxic gaming culture by promoting toxicity and harassment as value propositions for gaming. While considered perfectly reasonable at the time, games marketing has luckily taken a turn for the better.
One of the most interesting things about the gaming industry is that gamers don’t behave like customers. Sure, they have no problem spending like customers, but their devotion and passion makes them more like super-fans.
With more and more companies providing work-from-home possibilities, and children spending more time at home during school breaks, many tend to fill the time previously spent commuting or at after-school activities on picking up new or old hobbies. It comes as no surprise that playing video games is one of those favored hobbies.
The World Health Organization and almost every national government has encouraged everyone in non-essential roles to stay at home. With millions of people in self-isolation, there is a real need to ensure these people have something to do.
In this new day and age where no one spends more than 67 seconds away from a screen without at least a hint of anxiety, recruiting and engaging this new wave of job seekers is no less complicated than swiping right, get a match and then not really knowing how to open a conversation anymore (sound familiar?).
In today's business world, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who does not agree that Customer Experience is an essential aspect when building and maintaining a profitable business.
We’ve probably all heard of quality assessment (QA) before, where a quality specialist goes over agent interactions and checks to see if there are any possible areas of improvement or development...
The most successful companies make listening and understanding their customers a vital part of their business strategy. Sounds simple, doesn’t it?
In this article, I’ll provide you with five tips to shape your customer service organization in such a way that you can prevent your customers from experiencing exactly this.
When you think about Customer Experience I’m willing to bet you’ll typically think about the experiences customers have when evaluating a product or service, choosing and buying it, and then actually using it.
