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A convenient truth about customer experience

Customers do think that they go online to ensure the best deal. But … That’s only part of the truth.

Image: Bradley Hook

We’re moving towards a digital world where customers don’t consider price the main driving force for purchasing online, nor the biggest differentiator. Instead, there are three trending factors which are clearly becoming deal-breakers for customers in the digital space today:

1. Convenience

In the online shopping business, convenience has already proven the winner. When a customer is doing online purchases, you need to assure that the experience goes as smooth and easy as possible. The price used to drive customers towards online platforms; nowadays, convenience leads to loyalty. If they can click and buy a product without going through complicated flows, they’re more likely to use the same platform the next time, as well.

Think of large players like Amazon for online purchases. They don’t always sell products at the lowest price, but you always get a good experience when buying products. It’s fairly easy to think of something you want to buy, go to an online platform and wrap up the purchase within seconds, without even considering searching which vendor is offering it at the lowest price. The whole process must be convenient, from finding a product to opening the package – which will get delivered a few hours later, at your doorstep.

When approaching customers, behave like a butler. If you are focusing on selling clothes and the customer recently bought running shoes, it‘s a bad idea to focus on targeting the same user with the best match of running shoes − even if the match would be better than the shoes he just bought. Serve the customer in the way he prefers. Don’t focus on a specific area, but provide a full experience.

2. Content as a Service

We see this shift also in tooling and frameworks. Taking convenience and customer experience as the starting point eventually leads to content as a service: You’re not depending anymore on authors creating and publishing content directed to large audiences. Instead, you evolve a service-oriented model where content is delivered on demand. This is how you can deliver a personalized journey for every single customer.

The natural consequence of Content as a Service will introduce the concept of headless commerce platforms. They enable a seamless integration and experience on different platforms, without the user even realizing where the origin resides.

3. Optichannel

Multichannel delivery already sounds like a buzzword. But understood correctly, the concept should rather be called optichannel: In an optichannel delivery, you are not simply present on multiple channels, but on the right channel, at the right time. This is how you enable a convenient flow that will service your customer in every situation.

These three trends in customer experience will enable you to focus on serving relevant, qualitative content − which will lead to engaging customer journeys, and  eventually, to the much desired customer loyalty.