How are you considering your customer experience and retention marketing strategies in 2024?
Leveraging advanced technologies like AI, harnessing the power of data, and optimising SEO strategies can significantly enhance customer experiences and drive long-term retention.
Harnessing AI for great Customer Experience
Implementing an AI customer service platform can revolutionise the way eCommerce brands interact with their customers by nurturing them even before they encounter issues. Through deep integrations with systems like order management and carrier services, brands can proactively engage with customers, providing updates on their orders, delivery statuses, and relevant promotions. This proactive approach not only enhances the customer journey but also reduces the likelihood of customers reaching out with problems, fostering a sense of trust and reliability.
Another thing leveraging generative and conversational AI enables brands is to maintain consistent messaging across all touchpoints, ensuring a seamless and coherent brand experience. By tailoring responses based on individual customer preferences and past interactions, AI platforms can deliver a personalised experience, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty. Having all these touchpoints and critical data taken care of automatically, not only ensures a positive customer experience but also frees up valuable time for agents to focus on more complex issues, ultimately improving overall efficiency and customer satisfaction.
- Breaking the Boundaries with On Running
In 2021, the notion of a company with a yearly revenue surpassing $100 million taking the time to send handwritten notes for customer support might seem far-fetched… or does it? On Running, an esteemed customer of DigitalGenius, defies expectations by not only sending handwritten notes but also including a delectable bar of local Swiss chocolate, all in the name of nurturing their loyal clientele. How do they manage such exceptional personalized support? The answer lies in intelligent automation! Through their partnership with DigitalGenius, On Running automates over 70% of their customer service interactions, handling inquiries about order status, returns, cancellations, refunds, and more. This automation liberates human agents to provide genuine empathy and support where it’s most needed. By streamlining routine requests, On Running creates space to meticulously craft responses to intricate issues, resulting in swift resolutions for mundane matters and heartfelt, world-class care for those that truly matter. In an era where 77% of customers base their brand recommendations on positive customer experiences, investing in a robust customer service strategy isn’t just a luxury—it’s a necessity! If you’re intrigued, feel free to take a look at our partner, DigitalGenius’ case study with On Running.
- Improve Customer Service Agent Mental Wellbeing
DigitalGenius recently secured a renewal contract worth $60K with a Scandinavian consumer electronics brand, primarily due to the significant impact of its customer service automation platform on the mental well-being of the brand’s customer-facing teams. Through the automation of repetitive and mundane tickets, as well as the clearing of backlog, DigitalGenius has enabled the brand’s customer service agents to experience improved morale when coming into work. This enhancement has allowed them to focus more effectively on challenging tasks where they can utilise their diverse and personal skill sets, resulting in a more productive and positive work environment overall.
First Experiences for First Time Customers
When a customer lands on your site, their initial interactions and experience is crucial to drive conversions. Utilising AI-driven customer service tools to assist with product selection, FAQ’s, ensuring site speed and accessibility are optimised, and providing a frictionless transactional process are key elements in creating a positive first impression.
After a purchase has been made their experience continues as they track an order, make returns or exchanges or consider repeat purchases. In order to retain that first time customer, eCommerce brands should prioritiSe creating a seamless and personalised experience in the post- conversion stage of the customer journey.
Proactive Engagement and Personalization
Being proactive in engaging with customers and personalising their experiences can significantly impact retention rates. By effectively utilising data and integrating systems like CRM and OMS, brands can create a seamless and personalised customer journey. AI automation plays a crucial role in analysing customer data and delivering personalised recommendations and solutions to create experiences for first time customers that a human agent isn’t able to complete at that speed. When a brand can gather meaningful data for insights into customer behaviour it can help predict the needs and offer proactive help and turn interactions into opportunities for delighting customers.
Retention Marketing Strategies with Data-Driven Solutions
Retention marketing is essential for fostering long-term relationships with customers. Data-driven solutions such as loyalty programs, SMS marketing, email campaigns, reviews management, and subscriptions can help eCommerce brands drive loyal behaviour and increase retention rates.
Yotpo asked UK shoppers what strategies and experiences customers crave in exchange for their repeat business and loyalty in a survey.
What drives retention among UK shoppers?
They found customer loyalty was directly tied to customers’ emotions and values, and retaining this can be very dependent to the macroeconomic environment with customer sensitivity to price and value as the economy shifts.
However in general successful customer retention is driven through creating exceptional post-purchase experiences, communicating effectively, offering worthwhile loyalty experiences, coupled with having a deep understanding of the customer within personal marketing communications.
Creating Connections and Communities to Drive Loyalty
Retailers can create opportunities for the customers to engage in beyond the product, to foster a sense of loyalty that encourages repeat purchases and an actively engaged community. Brands can incentivise customers to engage with them on social media platforms and share reviews, as well as leveraging in person communities by inviting them to events and brand related communities to try new products. This can be a powerful tool in a retention strategy as it enables brands to gather valuable feedback, gain insights into customer preferences, and tailor their offerings to better meet the needs of their audience as well as making customers feel valued.
Check out how Yotpo revamped Bubbles retention efforts to increase revenue and engagement to SMS communication.
Leveraging SEO for Retention
SEO plays a vital role in retention strategy when used correctly. E-E-A-T, formerly known as E-A-T, which refers to the Experience, Expertise, Authority and Trust of a piece of content, and most importantly, your site is a key factor to an SEO retention strategy. This is what Google uses to establish the quality of a piece of content, and then use that information along with their ranking factors to choose where to position it in Google.
A brand should include relevant content in the conversion funnel such as:
- Research – blogs related to your target categories and niche.
- Awareness – further blogs targeting longer-tail information search terms.
- Consideration – Buying guides / blogs to match more specific search queries and to help customers make a decision with extra information
- Conversion – category and product pages that match the search intent: Once a customer hits your category or product page, it’s not a done deal, social proofing, UGC, product reviews and FAQ’s will all help visitors make a decision – after all, who would buy a product from a company with poor reviews, no lifestyle imagery, and general poor information?
- Post-Conversion: Perhaps the most neglected part of SEO and the whole conversion funnel – the post-conversion care. This is make or break. A customer will buy into your brand and become more likely to be loyal should you deliver some timely, effective post-conversion content, and care.
Focus on expanding your content to align with the needs of your target audience at every stage of the conversion funnel. Provide them with relevant information throughout their journey on your website to facilitate informed purchasing decisions. After securing a purchase, aim to cultivate customer loyalty by providing incentives for repeat purchases and reasons for them to choose your brand again. Consider implementing a loyalty program to reward frequent shoppers with subscriber benefits, fostering ongoing engagement and retention.
Discover Yotpo to improve your retention efforts and Digital Genius to enhance your customer experience with AI.