What Ecommerce Customer Experience Should Mean for You (If you want long-term profits)
The problem with customer experience (CX) is that most think it’s synonymous with customer service (CS) and customer journey (CJ) and user experience (UX). As a result, most ecommerce businesses don’t have a clear CX plan. So before we get to creating your CX strategy, here’s what CX is and isn’t.
Customer Experience (CX) is not…
Customer experience is not user experience or customer service:
- User experience is how a user experiences a product or system as it relates to perceptions of utility, ease of use, and efficiency. UX could apply specifically to your checkout process, your product menus or even your product.
- Customer service is the help provided by a company to those who buy its products or services and could refer to returns, product problems, general questions, etc.
While important, UX and CS are smaller components of the overall CX.
The customer experience is also not something your agencies should define. Agencies can help improve certain parts of your overall customer experience — like your store’s user interface (UI) or a certain sales process. However, their strategy will be related to their campaign.
Anything your agencies do needs to fit into your company’s overall ecommerce customer experience strategy. And that strategy is something you need to understand and define first.
So if CX isn’t UX and CS, what is it?
CX is…
Ecommerce customer experience is a big category that includes:
- UX and CS across the entirety of the customer journey
- The entire online & offline experience
- From first touch to repeat buy
- From joining to leaving
- Basically everything that influences your customers’ perception of your brand, product and service
Ecommerce CX is the “service” aspect of value delivery. The service aspect refers to how you deliver your value — how, when and where you:
- Answer customer questions
- Process orders
- Deliver orders
- Take refunds
- Present your catalog
- Present your story
“Being on par in terms of price and quality only gets you into the game. Service wins the game.” – Tony Allesandra
Stop and Think: Do I have a clearly defined customer experience strategy (not just UX or CS)? Ask a member of your team. What do they say?
If you don’t have a CX strategy, you’re not alone. We’ve found that most don’t have this written down. And that’s one of the reasons why creating an ecommerce CX plan can be a huge win for your business.
Key Takeaway: CX is the entirety of your customer’s online and offline experience with your company, from first touch to repeat buy. A good CX takes planning and work.
How Smart Ecommerce Leaders Plan for Exceptional Ecommerce CX
As the ecommerce environment grows increasingly competitive, your customer experience plays a bigger role in driving profitability. In fact, a good customer experience can be a complete game changer for a business.
Just think…
- When’s the last time you chose to get a product on Amazon over another online retailer simply because of fast and free shipping or easy returns if you don’t like it?
- And when’s the last time you conveniently sat at home and streamed a Netflix show you chose from 100s of personalized recommendations instead of dealing with confusing late fees and limited selections at Blockbuster? It’s been over 10 years since Blockbuster lost that battle.
That’s why you need to think long and hard about this. Here’s how you can plan for customer experience excellence.
Know Your “Why”
First, you need to understand why customer experience matters for your company. Ask yourself: Why am I investing in customer experience? Base your answer on:
- Where you are today
- Your 3-5 year vision
- Your competitors
- The current state of ecommerce (it’s likely not the same as it was 6 months ago)
Your “why” will likely be driven by one of these or a combination of the two.
- Long-term brand vision: Is it important that you be known for an unparalleled customer experience? Some brands, like Zappos, have built their brand around exceptional customer support to the point that it’s become part of their core brand identity.
- Competitive reaction: To stay competitive in your market, do you need to outdo rivals in specific areas like shipping speed or returns management?
As you think about your “why”, don’t forget that your CX plan needs to fit into your overall company strategy. Bookmark these guides to read later for help with planning other parts of your long-term strategy.
–Strategic Ecommerce Planning Guide – How to Align Short-Term Actions with Long-Term Goals
-Ecommerce Profitability Guide – How to Avoid Limiting Ecommerce Metrics Like ROAS
-Importance of Business Budgeting: Using Efficient Resource Allocation to Meet Ecommerce Objectives
Action Item: Take a napkin and 5 minutes and write down why customer experience matters for your company. Use this as the basis for making your plan. If you can’t do this activity, it’s a good sign that you might be throwing spaghetti at the wall when it comes to budgeting for CX investments.
Start to Make Your Plan
This is not the time to ask your web development agency how they plan to improve the user experience. YOU need to define your high-level CX strategy since it encompasses every element of your online and offline experience from first touch to repeat buys.
Start with this: Get out a piece of paper and make a list of all the main elements of your brand’s CX. Here are some you might want to include:
- Website Navigation & User Experience (UX)
- Product Information & Descriptions
- Customer Support (Pre-purchase)
- Checkout Process
- Order Processing & Fulfillment
- Shipping & Delivery
- Post-purchase Communication
- Returns & Exchanges
- Customer Support (Post-purchase)
- Loyalty Programs & Customer Retention
- Product Packaging & Unboxing Experience
- Social Media Engagement & Support
- Omnichannel Experience
- Personalization
- Customer Feedback & Reviews
- Include any others that are particular to your brand.
Make two additional copies of the list (you’re going to need three copies total). Once your lists are ready, it’s time to decide where to be strong and where to be weak.
Know Where to Be Weak, Average and Strong
If you try to excel at everything, you’ll end up being average at best in all things. True excellence (and healthy profits) come from choosing where to excel and where to just “get it done”.
Think again about Amazon.
They are excellent at what matters for their company and customers — fast shipping, easy returns, and huge product selection. But Amazon doesn’t excel at every single aspect of the customer experience. E.g. Most small businesses provide a more human-centric, personalized experience. Complex customer support issues can be a challenge to sort out. And product quality control is inconsistent, especially from 3rd party sellers.
But overall, Amazon knows where to be weak (or just average) and where to be strong.
Key Takeaway: Know where to be weak. Then be weak on purpose. Don’t be weak somewhere on accident!
Do this: Take the list you made from the previous step. Then rate what level of conviction you have for each area as high, medium, or low.
- High/Strong: These are areas where you are committed to standing out and excelling. These areas can make or break your profitability. You’ll invest heavily in these.
- Medium/Average: These are necessary areas where you need to keep up with competitors, but don’t need to go above and beyond.
- Low/Weak: These areas aren’t as critical. You can be weak without affecting profitability.
What you rate as high, medium or low will strongly depend on your “why”.
I.e. If you need to improve CX to stay competitive, then you likely know in which areas you need to improve upon your competitors’ CX. Maybe you’re in a space where you and your top competitor offer similar products but they edge you out because of the personalized experience they offer customers. So for you, improving personalization could be a high priority.
On the other hand, let’s say you have high-quality products, accurate descriptions, and personalized fit recommendations. As a result, you have low product return rates. Then you might rate “Returns & Exchanges” as medium or low.
Stop and do this:
- Give a copy of the list (without the ratings) to a member of your team. Ask them to rate each as high, medium and low based on your current investment in each area.
- Then give the third copy to another team member and ask them to rate your current performance in each area as strong, average and weak.
- Compare their answers with your original list and ratings. Find the discrepancies. Where do you need to make changes?
Where You Need to Be Strong, Be Strong
For the areas you marked as high/strong, make sure you truly are strong. Don’t just settle for basic doneness.
Let’s say you know you need to excel at personalization. So you integrate an AI app that provides personalized recommendations. You plaster “New AI Personalized Recommendations” stickers and headings all over your store.
You got it done. But are you sure you’re excelling? Do your customers trust AI recommendations? Are the recommendations actually useful? Is the AI trained properly? How are real customers reacting?
Important: When you decide you need to excel in an area of CX, you need to define what that excellence looks like.
Do this for each of the areas you marked as high/strong:
- Clearly define what excellence in that CX area looks like for your company and for your customers. Simply saying “We need to be better than our competitors” is not enough. How much better? Do you really need to be 50% better than your competitors? Would being 10% better get the same results? What are your customer expectations?
- List what needs to happen to reach that level of excellence.
- Then get specific with dollars and initiatives (like we mentioned in our precision budgeting guide).
- Communicate with your team throughout this process so they’re on board.
- Commit. Follow through on your plan to accomplish and maintain the desired level of customer experience excellence.
As you work toward excellence, track your progress with client and competitor-focused metrics.
- Client-focused: Return reductions, repeat orders, etc.
- Competitor-focused: Functionality you provide in comparison with your competitors. E.g. Your interface is now 10% easier or faster than your competitors.
Tracking your customer experience ensures you can catch changes early so your strengths don’t suddenly become your weaknesses as the ecommerce environment changes.
Key Takeaway: To excel where you need to be strong, you first need to know what excellence in that area means for you and your customers. Then make a plan to get there.
Exceptional Customer Experience = Exceptional Profits
Ecommerce customer experience is a true game changer when it comes to attracting loyal customers and long-term profits. But an improved customer experience is not a quick win. It takes time and attention and a conviction to pursue the right amount of excellence in the right areas.
Follow these key takeaways and action items to make it happen:
- Ecommerce customer experience is the entirety of your customer’s online and offline experience with your company from first touch to repeat buy.
- Know why and where you need CX excellence.
- Don’t be weak on accident. Choose to be weak so you can be excellent in other areas.
- Know exactly what CX excellence looks like for you and then plan to reach it.
Questions to answer this coming week:
- What is our CX “why”?
- In what areas do we need to be weak?
- In what areas do we need to be strong?
- What does strong look like?
- What does mom think about our CX?