It’s common knowledge that a positive customer experience is vital to the success of any business. A happy customer is likely to become a loyal customer, right?
Traditional customer service practices, such phone calls, emails, and in-person support, will always be effective. However, with the ever-evolving digital landscape, it’s now critical to consider new methods to provide that same positive experience. Below, we discuss four ways organizations can leverage technology to win over customers.
1. Support Through Social Media
Much like social commerce, or the ability to purchase a product or service natively within a social media platform, social customer support has become widely popular over the last few years. Now, platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and even LinkedIn are critical elements of the customer journey. They are using these platforms to constantly discover new brands and products and make important buying decisions – all of which make customer support easy and seamless for both the customer and the retailer.
Fun Fact: Roughly 53% of organizations use social media for customer service, according to a survey from Statista.
That number is expected to increase each year as more and more organizations realize the advantages of meeting their customers exactly where they’re at. The ability to communicate via direct messages regarding returns, exchanges, or specific product requests not only significantly improves the customer experience but also saves organizations’ time and resources.
2. Optimized Search Experiences
Nothing frustrates a site visitor quite like not being able to find what they came to your site for, making optimized, easy to use search design all the more important. These days, buyers are most likely engaging with brands for the first time via their website, so the search experience needs to be just that – an experience. Among other things, it needs to be prominent, fast, understanding of natural language, able to pull in suggestions for the user, and aligned with your catalog management layer to refine how users find products.
Optimizing search design enables organizations to provide a customer experience that is critical to generating a sale from that first-time buyer as well as generating customer and brand loyalty.
Pro tip: If you’re looking to make search design easy, follow Google’s lead.
3. Instant Gratification
Let’s face it, customers want what they want, and want it instantly. Now more than ever, they value convenience and speed – and they’re incredibly loyal to the brands that do, too. There are opportunities for instant gratification across essentially every industry. It takes on various forms including instant email receipts for product purchases, banking apps instantly transferring money between different accounts and users, and instantly responding to customer inquiries via live chat or phone call.
Artificial intelligence (AI) comes into play frequently when it comes to instant gratification. The technology enables organizations to provide that instant communication that their request is quickly being fulfilled. As a result, organizations are better equipped to strengthen customer engagement, brand loyalty, and retention.
4. Autonomous Employees
As supply chain issues and staffing shortages continue to impact both the U.S. and global markets, organizations are increasingly turning to advanced technology, and more specifically robots, for assistance. Robots have been used for a number of years now, mainly in warehouses and distribution centers for pick, pack, and ship duties, to help streamline supply chain processes. And as of recently, they’re becoming more popular in helping settle the effects of ongoing labor shortages. In this case, robots perform front-line tasks traditionally done by humans in industries including food service, retail, and more. This enables the employees organizations do have to shift their focus to the customer.
Fun fact: According to a November 2021 Business Insider article, in the first nine months of 2021, American companies ordered a record-breaking 29,000 robots.
AI comes into play here, too. Many organizations leverage AI to automate customer service processes. This is especially true for organizations with call centers. In the realm of customer service, the copious amounts of requests can be extremely taxing on human employees which, in turn, can cause poor experiences for the customer. Using artificial intelligence to automate those requests and alleviate some of the stress on employees is beneficial for everyone.
Conclusion
Leveraging various types of technology including social media, optimized search experiences, artificial intelligence, and even robots, as part of your every day regime means that your organization’s employees are able to focus on what’s really important – the customer. And while technology won’t always replace actual human connection, it certainly helps provide customers an experience that entices them to come back.
Americaneagle.com is your partner for all of your digital needs. From web and application development to experience design, strategy and insights, digital marketing, hosting and security, and more, we work diligently to help your business succeed. Contact us today to get started.
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