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E-Commerce acceleration – how to keep pace

Written by on May 18th

E-commerce

Accelerating the shift to online retail

The pandemic has seen a boom for e-commerce and accelerated a longer-term shift away from traditional bricks-and-mortar shopping towards online channels. 

The number of shopping centers has been falling year on year in the U.S. UBS estimates that a further 80,000 stores will close across the country by 2026. 

According to IBM’s US Retail Index, the pandemic accelerated the shift from physical stores to digital shopping by roughly five years. Since then, digital habits have hardened. First-time online shoppers are now regular online shoppers. US e-commerce grew by 44% in 2020 and is forecast to reach $1trillion by 2022. 

According to the latest Adobe Digital Economy Index, the shift isn’t slowing down. Adobe predicts that global e-commerce sales will reach $4.2trillion this year, with US consumers accounting for a quarter of that spending.

SaaS experiences unprecedented growth

Revenue from e-commerce in the United States amounted to $431.6 billion in 2020. The Statista Digital Market Outlook estimates that by 2025, revenue will increase to$ 563.4 billion.
This is the gold rush era for e-commerce, and start-ups face unprecedented growth opportunities and the challenges that go with them.

…and unprecedented challenges

Growth impacts all areas of the business,  particularly Customer Experience.

As Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon points out: “We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.” 

When your market is growing, how do you keep pace?

It starts with an intelligent User Interface

UX and CX?? In our experience the more optimized and intuitive the UX, the more straightforward the customer journey and the fewer CX issues to manage. Leaving the CX team to deal with meatier issues.

Smart UX reduces CX costs.

50% of internet users won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed interface. That makes sense, a  well-designed user interface reduces friction in the buyer journey and simplifies the user experience. A solid experience drives down customer acquisition costs and reduces costs in ongoing CX support.

Building a powerful CX team

“Customer experience strategy in 2021 is not something you save for later when you can afford it,” explains former JetBlue Director of Customer Experience Liliana Petrova. “If you aimed to do business the way you were doing it before, you could have gotten away without a customer experience strategy. But that is not the case in the coming year. Next year, all business leaders need to redesign spaces, policies, procedures, and services without changing their brand fundamentals.”

The American airline JetBlue has an enviable customer experience record. They ranked highest for customer satisfaction for low-cost airlines in North American for 12-years in a row, and a good measure of their success is down to their customer-centric mindset.

Good CX is based on a team bringing a blend of fun, sympathy and caring – and this starts in the hiring process. Training staff to take frustrated customers under their wing and deliver the best outcome. It’s about treating customers as individuals, listening, expressing genuine empathy, and maintaining calm.

Embracing ‘me-commerce’

Strong customer communication is crucial at all stages of CX — and companies are beginning to recognize that unless you embrace ‘me-commerce’, which means meeting customers’ ever-changing demands, then you’ll be left behind.

Offering a proactive CX approach, which deals with potential issues before they arise, personalizing your campaigns, and offering live chat on your website to resolve customer challenges, are vital steps. Combining this with 24-hour phone support, a multi-channel strategy, and measuring customer satisfaction will help you take your CX to the next level.

How Enshored can help

Enshored is built to support disruptive start-ups.

We augment, build and support customized Customer Experience for digital CX, Sales & Marketing, Back office and Content Moderation.

We provide the people, the culture and the operating system to support you to scale seamlessly.

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