The customer experience is the key to any marketing success strategy. Mimicking the age-old catchphrase of ‘the customer is always right, the role of CX data in a growing e-commerce landscape is vital if you want to see high customer retention rates and a swift return on investment.
The modern consumer is always active. They are constantly changing and evolving in line with new technological demands. Therefore, startup companies need to keep evolving and changing their practices in line with the trends if they want to see success in an online environment.
The key is knowing your customers inside and out. Tracking their engagement, feedback and demographic trends is a great way to stay on top of competitors and boost customer loyalty in a digital playing field.
Read on to find out how you can get more out of your CX data in 2022 as we explore the benefits of navigating the customer experience in a post-pandemic e-commerce landscape.
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Navigating the customer experience
So what is customer experience? Also, known as CX, it can be described as your customer’s active perception of their experience with your company or brand. Customer experience has always played a role in building brand awareness and sales success, from local main street retailers to online e-commerce giants. If the customer is not satisfied, the return on investment will reflect it.
Delivering high standards of customer service is important to all brands on the market. You want to see your customers coming back and promoting your services to their peers. The better their experience with your brand, the more positive reviews you’ll receive. Feedback alone builds brand authority, increases customer loyalty and can even move you further up the organic search string.
In fact, 84% of online consumers considerably value customer experience when interacting with a brand. Many active consumers will also pay more money for a more personalized experience. The modern consumer requires impeccable service and needs to feel listened to in order to stay loyal. There are plenty of competitors, so it’s time to stand out from the crowd.
The benefits of delivering a great customer experience are invaluable to a startup looking to improve its e-commerce success. With 54% of high performing marketing teams utilizing CX data in their experience initiatives, let’s have a closer look into the role CX data plays in a victorious marketing strategy and how to spot those CX hot spots.
What is CX data?
CX data can be collected from every interaction a consumer has with your business. From first impressions to site navigation and customer service, CX data can be tracked during all site engagements.
The key is knowing how to get more out of your consumer data. Taking a deeper look into demographic trends and audience analytics is a great start for companies that want to improve their customer service.
In fact, 63% of senior decision-makers in the corporate sector have labeled CX data strategies and emerging analytic technology as the most important tool for enhancing the customer experience.
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How to gather CX data
Gathering consumer data can be a simple, cost-effective process. For example, simply adding feedback forms within your UX design is a quick customer experience tracker. However, for marketers looking to get technical, there are a number of analytic strategies and programs that can be used in CX data collection, if you’re looking for a deeper insight into your consumer needs and gratifications.
Consumer data can be collected in two ways, knowingly and unknowingly:
As you can see above, marketers can gather data from both the customer’s word of mouth in the form of reviews, surveys and brand mentions or choose a more data-focused route that tracks physical page engagements, transaction records and even SEO keyword data.
Let’s have a closer look at both sides of CX data collection.
Customer feedback
According to Gartner, enabling customer feedback on your website, social platforms and within your sales strategy can increase upselling and customer retention costs by 25%.
While it can be a labor-insensitive process, the benefits outweigh the time costs significantly. Using your site-based customer feedback, alongside your overall Net promoter score (NPS) and customer satisfaction (CSAT) score is a great place to start on your CX journey.
As you can see here, there are many ways to gather customer feedback. From surveys to social media monitoring, these manual methods are low cost, yet effective. We suggest automating the process for ultimate efficiency. Introducing chatbots and speech analytics will allow you to gather customer insights in the background, while also automating responses that serve each consumer’s needs for a personalized experience.
Channel analytics
In a digitally optimized landscape, there are more analytic tools than ever before to aid CX data collection. While word-of-mouth feedback is effective, site page engagements and consumer clicks tell the true story of what is performing well, and more importantly what isn’t.
Recording buyer behavior and website engagement metrics using tools such as Finteza and Google Analytics can highlight what customer experience points need to be improved.
This data can then be used to build a new marketing strategy. Attacking key areas for CX improvement will reduce marketing spending and increase chances for ROI success with a new targeted approach.
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How to use your CX data for marketing success
So you have your CX data, now what do you do? Let’s learn how you can get more out of your CX data for e-commerce success.
Start centralizing your feedback
Customer feedback is only valuable when it is used effectively across a business. While enabling feedback can be a valuable indicator of customer experience, it needs to be categorized and centralized for ultimate success.
To truly understand how each piece of company feedback is contributing to the overall brand experience, all CX data should be stored on one platform and categorized into various touch points so all members of the team can gather a holistic view of what the company is doing well and what needs improvement.
Combine CX and operational data for ROI success
While storing your CX data in a centralized format plants the seeds for strategy success, it’s important to combine these findings with other forms of company analytics such as operation metrics, if you want to see a real change in your customer experience.
Combining both CX data and operational data such as your revenue, spending, logistics and sales stats will provide you with a stronger overall picture of your businesses’ success and quickly highlight the sectors you need to improve.
Combining your raw data also calls attention to action points that will provide the largest ROI impact for your business.
Identify underperforming channels
Your CX data can tell you a great deal about your customer behavior and your demographic’s current trends. If you take a closer look at your channel engagement analytics, it’s easy to pinpoint underperforming pages and communication channels that need a revamp.
The key is to provide an effective user experience companywide that improves the customer experience across each channel. Make sure you’re on the lookout for current web design trends. If any of these channels are not up to standard, you’re more likely to see call abandonment rates and quick click off data as your consumers abandon their position within the sales funnel.
Utilizing your customer data can improve the omnichannel experience as it can highlight what channels need improvements. For example, if your SMS channel of communication has a low customer satisfaction rate, it might be time to automate the experience using chatbots or introduce new initiatives to sales executives for communication success.
Anticipate your future success
One of the major benefits of collecting CX data is the ability to leverage the metrics to predict the behavior of future consumers.
CX data highlights the customer experience during each part of the buyer’s journey, providing you with insights into each stage’s performance. Using this data, smart marketers can leverage this information and take proactive steps to address potential customer-based issues before new consumers engage.
For example, if your CX data suggests that customers are struggling to navigate the site, it might be time to revamp your user experience design or there might be a lack of communication during one stage of the sales funnel that can be amended to fit new consumer demands.
Using your CX data effectively can anticipate your company’s future success.
