Consumers' affinity toward certain brands goes beyond price and products. In reality, it won't be the product that most people remember from a shopping transaction, or even how much they paid for it, but rather the experience provided.
In its 20th Annual Mystery Shopping Study, Astound Commerce found that some retailers are, unsurprisingly, better at customer experience (CX) than others, and recognized seven retailers (B&H, Gap, L.L. Bean, Lancôme, Moosejaw, The Home Depot and Zappos) that excel in customer service through an assessment of "must-have" website features and behavior based on engagement with available touchpoints including:
1. Accessibility of 1-800 number on site
2. Overall customer service/help destination page score of 2.0 or higher on a 3-point scale
3. Three or fewer days to receive package
4. Five or fewer clicks to checkout or if greater than five clicks to checkout has one-click capabilities
5. The ability to move an item from the cart to a saved list for future access or save items in the cart for later
6. Overall customer service experience on customer service call was a 2.0 or higher on a 3-point scale
7. Answers email question within 24 hours, correctly and with a tailored response
"Service is the quickest route to retention," said Lauren Freedman, senior vice president of digital strategy at Astound Commerce. "Shoppers expect efficiencies, accessible information, competency and timely information that allows for quick decision-making, avoiding any obstacles along the customer journey. In today's challenging retail environment where short-term thinking often prevails, we hope retailers remain vigilant in their customer service investment and execution."
Check out more 'experience' stats below:
44%
Shoppers are more interested in brands tailoring content for coupons based on location (44 percent) and images (31 percent) than emerging technologies like virtual reality (7 percent) and augmented reality (6 percent).
(Episerver, 2017)
81%
The majority (81 percent) of consumers said they have looked up inventory on a retailer's website before visiting the store and 80 percent are less inclined to visit a store if a website does not provide current product availability (up 24 percent from last year).
(Consumer Trends, 2017)
70%
A cause of frustration for retailers, 70 percent of surveyed shoppers use brand or retailer sites to research their purchase before navigating to Amazon to complete the transaction. (PowerReviews, 2017) 27% Roughly a quarter (27 percent) of B2B organizations plan to spend at least $2 million in the next fiscal year on their commerce systems to improve digital experiences. (CloudCraze, 2017) 65% After experiencing fraud or a data breach, 65 percent of consumers indicated they would stop shopping with a given merchant.
(ACI Worldwide and Aite Group, 2017)