The customer experience is changing. Once upon a time, small and medium businesses could follow a standardized consumer journey to understand what was happening and how they could better connect with clients.
Today, that journey is nonlinear. Potential purchasers are more empowered than ever, and they’re taking full advantage of that. They recognize their pain points, do their research, investigate options, and ultimately expect retailers to cater to the new experience.
How are businesses like yours expected to keep up? The secret lies in applying omnichannel e-commerce platforms to personalize the customer journey. Here’s how that works.
Understand Customer Preferences
If the customer experience is no longer linear, how is a business supposed to understand it?
Fortunately, nonlinear does not have to mean overly complicated. In some respects, the client experience is simpler than ever. You can recognize their pain points and engage with them on the channels they prefer.
The first part is something you already do. You pay attention to how you can provide value to a customer, and you pay attention to feedback to see what is and isn’t working. You then provide recourse along all of your communication channels, and your clients will select the channels they like.
When you keep the interactions conversational and use direct, omnichannel communication mechanisms, you maintain a dialogue with your customers. It doesn’t matter if their journey is nonlinear because you’re a part of the journey every step of the way.
Work for a Seamless Shopping Experience
Step one is enabling customers to engage with omnichannel messaging, but that won’t mean much if the experience has seams and doesn’t have your information across all channels. Imagine using a company’s app to process a refund for something you ordered on its website. You want to check on the return, but the app can’t find your support number. That’s a pain point, and it’s because the channels are not seamless.
Today’s customer expects to pick up the experience through all of your channels: website, social media, email, and anything else you employ.
This Mitto article explains in better detail how omnichannel can function in this capacity.
Utilize Omnichannel Marketing
While the omnichannel approach is ideal for a good customer experience, there are specific takeaways that apply to marketing.
The first is that you can highlight special offers across channels. When offers are available, easy to find, and consistent across channels, clients will once again choose their own adventure and benefit from those offers on their own terms.
You can pursue similar setups with announcements and loyalty programs. Are you opening a new product line? Announce it on every channel. Do you have a loyalty program? Let customers manage it seamlessly from each of your channels.
This idea of omnichannel marketing really comes together in the example of abandoned carts. This Mitto article goes into greater detail, but here’s the gist. When a customer leaves an online cart, you can send them an email reminding them that they have a pending transaction. You can repeat that across your omnichannel communication platforms. It’s a simple way to improve conversions while engaging with clients on a personal level, and it’s fairly easily managed with modern omnichannel software.
Personalize Customer Service
Speaking of personalization, you can implement a direct-to-customer strategy to better engage with your customers and give them a customized experience.
What does that mean?
Instead of sending out an email that advertises your Amazon store, send customers directly to your website. Instead of buying an ad spot on television, talk to your customers on social media. This is direct communication, and, according to Mitto research, 86% of customers expect this kind of behavior from their favorite brands.