Driving Customer Loyalty in a Hyper-connected World: A Guide for Retailers

With more channels than ever (voice, email, web chat, social, text/SMS, and video) for customers to engage with, forward-thinking retailers see these as key to enhancing customer experiences. Every call, message, or chat might not result in a sale, but every interaction is an opportunity to increase customer loyalty, promote your brand, and positively impact revenue.

In today’s hyper-connected world, customer experience is everything. Retailers who get it right gain more than a customer’s business—they gain valuable ‘word of mouth’ marketing through reviews and recommendations.

Using the right platform, they also gain data and insights to make smarter business decisions, improve services, and create personalized customer experiences that encourage brand loyalty.

Drive customer loyalty and retention through digital experienceslink to this section

Research has demonstrated an ever-increasing demand for digital channels to support retail transactions and service requests. Thirty-five percent (35%) of customers say a positive experience with an organization has led to them using the same brand again, but 45% say a poor experience has led to them avoiding that brand in the future.

Deliver a consistent, human-centric brand experiencelink to this section

Today’s consumers expect a consistent, frictionless, and rewarding experience across every channel throughout their customer journey. While people increasingly engage with apps, self-service checkouts, websites, and digital channels, they still want to speak with a person when they need additional support or have a time-sensitive or complex issue or question.

It’s not enough for transactions to be seamless across channels. They also need to be more engaging and feature real-time support and tailored information. This enables customers to complete a purchase with a sense of understanding and confidence in what they are buying.

Conversational commerce can help online retailers facilitate this through conversational AI and virtual assistants across their social media and web channels. Its expanded use among retailers has driven an increase in total spending globally by 63% in the past year.

Leverage customer data to provide personalized experienceslink to this section

Retailers who centralize customer information to provide a single view of the customer are able to offer a faster, more informed response to any inquiry. Personalization at this level, which customers have come to expect, involves tightly integrating customer communication channels, customer relationship management (CRM) solutions, and the contact center to start.

According to McKinsey, 80% of customers expect more personalized communications across multiple touchpoints from retailers. Customers take personalization for granted, but where retailers get it wrong, they leave for a competitor.

Adopting a solution that delivers a single view of customer interactions across all communication channels does more than add context to conversations. It also allows customer-facing employees to deliver higher levels of customer service.

Customer experience requires continuous refinementlink to this section

Analyzing customer contact data can uncover insights to improve customer experience. By analyzing granular-level details of customer conversations, contact center agents and back-office employees can continuously learn and improve through ongoing coaching and training.

Build stronger customer engagementlink to this section

Training is no longer restricted to listening through hours of call recordings and relying on survey results. Advanced technologies, including Conversation IQ, Quality Management, and Speech Analytics, allow organizations to monitor interactions from the front of store to back office by automatically searching for keywords and phrases and quantifying their rate of occurrence.

Analyze sentiment in real timelink to this section

Sentiment analysis identifies positive and negative conversations, helping to understand customer delight and frustration from multiple, connected systems and applying it to business strategy and operations.

Built-in customization tools enable retailers to quickly and easily tailor the application to meet their needs. By highlighting their areas of concern with insights into customer interactions and common conversation threads, functions like sales and customer support can tailor their approach to increase revenue opportunities and improve overall customer satisfaction.

Download our eBook to find out how 8x8 is helping retailers build loyalty through outstanding customer service.