What is Customer-Centricity And Why Is It mportant for eCommerce?

Brands & Communications

A robust ecommerce strategy, centered around customer needs, plays a vital role in enhancing customer loyalty and retention. This strategy begins with optimizing the entire shopping journey.
According to a Forbes Survey, it was found that around 74% of people would purchase something alone based on the customer experience.
The concept of ecommerce customer experience encompasses all touchpoints, engagements, thoughts, or feelings exchanged between a customer and your brand. It encapsulates the entirety of these interactions as perceived from the customer's standpoint.
According to a study conducted by American Express, 86% of consumers are prepared to invest more money for an enhanced experience.
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What do you mean by Customer Centricity?

Customer centricity involves adopting a business framework that prioritizes a favourable customer experience throughout the entire customer journey. The primary objective of such a customer-centric approach is to cultivate customer loyalty and advocacy.

In every decision made by a customer-centric business, careful consideration is given to the impact it will have on its customers. Establishing a customer-centric organization in the contemporary digital landscape has become more intricate. Despite the rapid implementation of changes facilitated by new technologies, customers now anticipate a higher level of attention and responsiveness.

Why Customer Centricity is Important?
Entrepreneurs start on the journey of establishing new enterprises for a myriad of reasons, such as passion, financial gain, fame, glory, and independence. Regardless of the diverse motivations driving the creation of a company, a common principle binds them all: survival hinges on the acquisition and retention of customers. This underscores the critical significance of adopting a customer-centric approach to business.
Any organization that neglects its customers is bound for failure, making erroneous product choices, misallocating resources, and eroding goodwill with its clientele. In stark contrast, a customer-centric brand thrives by ensuring every team member prioritizes customer feedback and aligns with that objective.
Companies develop products that not only meet current customer needs but also anticipate their future desires, providing a level of service that not only attracts customers but also fosters advocacy. To navigate the challenges of the contemporary workplace, the key lies in fostering a customer-centric culture.

What do you mean by Customer Experience?

Customer experience, often abbreviated as CX, is shaped by the various interactions, and encounters a customer undergoes with your business across the entire customer journey — from the initial contact to evolving into a content and steadfast customer.
This facet of business operation is closely linked, and its significance lies in the fact that a customer who undergoes a positive interaction with a business is inclined to become a recurring and devoted customer.
Indeed, as per a worldwide Customer Experience (CX) study conducted by Oracle, 74% of senior executives acknowledge that customer experience significantly influences a customer's inclination to become a loyal advocate. If your goal is to foster customer loyalty, it's imperative to make strategic investments in enhancing their experience!

Is Customer Experience & Customer Service the Same?
The answer to this question is NO. Here’s why customer experience and customer service are not the same:
Typically, a customer's initial interaction with a company involves engaging with an employee, either in-store or over the phone, marking a crucial opportunity for delivering exceptional customer service. While customer service is a vital component of the overall customer experience, it represents just one facet.

Importance of Customer Experience

Distinguishing yourself from competitors is achieved through fostering positive customer experiences. In a scenario where numerous brands vie for public attention and diverse options abound, prioritizing Customer Experience (CX) becomes a strategic means to position your product and brand prominently in the forefront.
Consider some of the benefits that come with implementing an effective customer experience strategy.
Improved Customer Satisfaction and Brand Awareness
Elevating customer satisfaction is inherent in providing exceptional experiences, and fostering a positive perception of your brand. A superior user experience is pivotal for securing repeat business, as customers are more likely to engage with your brand repeatedly.
The foundation of customer loyalty is laid over time, with satisfied customers becoming advocates through word-of-mouth marketing.
This, in turn, amplifies brand awareness and contributes to the establishment of a robust and positive reputation for your firm.

Improved Customer Retention and Reduced Churn
Customer experience, rather than pricing, is a primary contributor to customer churn. A formidable weapon in your strategic arsenal is a positive customer experience, offering a means to distinguish your brand amidst a competitive landscape.
The commitment to providing excellent customer experiences across all touchpoints significantly contributes to heightened customer retention and concurrently diminishes churn rates.

Increased Sales and Revenue
It's evident that investing in enhancing the customer experience inevitably results in heightened sales, translating to increased revenue for your company.
The presence of loyal customers, who have relished superior experiences with your company, stands as an asset.

Engaged Employees
Elevating the customer experience directly correlates with increased employee engagement. In a customer-centric organization, employees tend to exhibit higher levels of loyalty and alignment with company objectives.
A survey finds that companies excelling in customer experience boast 1.5 times more engaged employees. This not only enhances morale but also contributes positively to the overall employee experience.

How to Build an Unbeatable Customer Experience?

Explore effective methods to formulate an outstanding customer experience strategy, aiming to enhance customer satisfaction, diminish churn, and boost revenues.
1. Adopting Headless Commerce
To stay ahead of the competition, online retailers and other companies are transitioning their stack from monolithic to headless commerce. It is a modern approach for eCommerce that decouples the storefront (frontend), and business logic (backend) and implements API in between for communication. Application Programming Interface plays an important role as a communicator and helps in exchanging of data flow between these two layers.
From boosting page loading to express and secure checkout experience; everything is possible with headless. Hence, this adaptation provides businesses with another opportunity to build an unbeatable customer experience.

2. Integrating Modern Commerce Tools
In today’s market, if you still rely on traditional tools and think you can build a great customer experience then you are on the wrong side. Shift to modern commerce tools and make your ecommerce store stand out of the crowd.
Analyse your business needs and requirements and see which tools suit your business.

3. PIM
Product Information Management proves to be a great tool for businesses that want to enhance their product information. Integrating PIM in your ecommerce can help you to ensure the accuracy, and consistency of product information, and streamline your workflow across various channels.

4. DAM
In today’s market ecommerce is not just selling products, they are selling experiences. This is where, digital assets management comes into play. All the product images, videos, and descriptions are centralized and managed through DAM.
From streamlining digital assets to brand consistency, DAM plays a crucial role in your ecommerce journey.

5. OMS
Order Management System is not just a tool that helps you to manage your orders but also helps you to provide a superior customer experience.
Integrating OMS in your ecommerce can provide your customers with a seamless shopping experience across various channels, order details and live tracking information, accurate inventory information, faster order delivery through smart order routing, and many more.
In today’s competitive market, the only difference between you and your competitors is how well you are satisfying your customers throughout their buying journey from ordering to the final delivery of orders.

6. Customer 360
For retailers, it is important to understand what 360-degree customer view shows. Thus, here is a complete roadmap for the working of Customer 360:
Customer 360 customer experience works under three phases: past, present, and future. The past activities would include product/service activity, product views, campaign, process, and interaction history across all channels.
In the present, it helps you to understand the present factors such as who are your targeted customers, their shopping habits, recent orders placed by them, etc.
By understanding the past and present behaviours of your customers, you can categorize them in upselling opportunities, cross-selling opportunities, or any other pattern as per your choice.
Thus, through the customer 360 experience you can easily understand the past behaviour of your customers, and through this vital information customer service team can work on the present scenario so that they can serve customers with various ads, and different forms of content they are most interested in. This helps in finalizing the future roadmap of your business and generates better ROI.

7. DXP
A digital experience platform or DXP is a combination of tools to ensure end-to-end customer experience and improve and measure brand presence.
According to Gartner, DXP is an integrated set of core technologies that support the composition, management, delivery and optimization of contextualized digital experiences.
It helps brands and retailers by providing an architecture to digitalize business processes, and operations, deliver connected customer experiences, and gather actionable customer insight.

8. Analytics
When you are into ecommerce, analytics can help you to map out the customer shopping experience more effectively. Analysing your customers' insights can help you to personalize your business according to their demands and interests and make better offerings.

9. Chatbots
Integrating AI-based chatbots can help you improve customer experience by providing instant solutions for their queries. In ecommerce businesses, integrating AI-based chatbots can help you handle your customer queries by providing instant solutions, 24/7 customer support, automating tasks, providing better recommendations, etc.

10. AI Product Recommendation
AI-based recommendations system can do magic for your ecommerce system. AI-based product recommendations use algorithms to fetch customers' data and provide product suggestions to them based on their past purchases, browsing history, and search queries they make while shopping online.
Nowadays, businesses are implementing AR models to build an unbeatable customer experience. Through AR customers can try their product virtually how it looks to them or which product suits best as per their interests best.
So, AI product recommendation and AR are the future of commerce.

Provide a Seamless Shopping Experience Through an Omnichannel Approach
When we talk about the omnichannel approach, the main aim is to provide a seamless experience to customers across various channels. Through the omnichannel approach, you can segment your customers and create personalized experiences based on their needs and preferences across various sales channels.
As a retailer, integrating an omnichannel approach not only helps you to build an unbeatable customer experience but also helps you to drive traffic, sales, and a better ROI.
Data Enrichment
In ecommerce, data enrichment can help you improve customer experience by enhancing the quality of products. Your product will also have better visibility across different channels.
The 80-20 rule also known as Pareto Principle states that if you focus on 20% of data enrichment (improving product data through analysing resources and using ecommerce software), it can result in 80% more sales, better engagement, and higher ROI.
You can also create detailed sales funnel and marketing strategies to connect and engage better with your customers.

Conclusion
Crafting an unbeatable eCommerce customer experience is a multifaceted task that requires a blend of user-centric designs, personalized interactions, and seamless navigation with responsive customer service.
Businesses can meet and exceed customers' expectations by prioritizing customer journeys, adopting innovative technologies, as well as continuously refining their approach based on feedback.
In the highly competitive world of eCommerce, businesses that are committed to delivering an unparalleled customer experience will be able to foster brand loyalty and build long-lasting relationships.