For online platforms like Amazon, customer satisfaction and retention trump everything. While major brands are great at getting new customers, the best ones know how to keep people coming back. That’s why eCommerce customer satisfaction and experience are what separates good companies from the ones with staying power.

eCommerce companies provide arguably the most fast-paced, communication-intensive services. That’s why keeping the customer feeling like they are being listened to is core to the experience. An increase in customer satisfaction is considered a tangible benefit for any customer retention strategy.

Let’s look at how eCommerce platforms can best approach their customers using a firm grasp of customer experience optimization, which is necessary for helping customers stick to your brand post-purchase. This article will discuss some strategies and approaches for developing a customer experience transformation for the most important customer-facing aspects of the business.

First, the article will dive into how to strategize communication. Next, we’ll talk about customer retention. Finally, we’ll elaborate on the role of SEO as a long-term strategy in customer service.

Customer Engagement Strategies for eCommerce

First, the basics: Customer engagement is the act of building an emotional connection with a brand. Making an emotional connection with a platform can be more difficult because most customers prefer an online store only as much as the practical value it provides. However, the best platforms manage to tap into emotional needs the customer doesn’t know they have.

Customer experience agencies recommend numerous strategies for keeping tabs on customer needs:

Data & Automation

One of the best ways is to automate the end-user experience to suit your customers using data. Customer experience research suggests that 66% of consumers expect companies to understand their needs. Implementing long-term customer tracking and algorithms to best understand how to suggest products to them is one such way.

With the use of smart demographics, you can also add like-minded customers to a list and target them with products they may want to purchase. This can be implemented with emails or even a suggestion box within the platform.

A great way to do this more effectively is eCommerce automation and consumer needs tracking. This entails setting up a system that keeps track of new products and alerts the customer base or potential consumers. Automation also goes hand-in-hand with tracking and algorithms, alerting customers of new offers instantly.

Customer experience automation is another strategy that can help improve the client base’s experience. Examples include:

• Customer-telephony integration (CTI): lets businesses and call centres re-route phone calls to the right department
• AI chatbots: Speeding up customers’ or sales leads engagement
• Customize dashboard and accounts: Let the customer easily add their personal details

eCommerce Customer Service Tools for Communication

Types of customer service tools that can help with most aspects of strategy:

• All-in-one customer service tools: omnichannel solution for phone, email, live chat, and social media
• Help desk customer service tools: centralise messages and emails
• Live chat customer service tools: makes chatting with customers far easier while also simplifying communications
• Social media and search engines customer service tools: tools like Mention or google notifications can keep track of your brand online
• Knowledge base customer service tools: a place to store all your queries so customers can easily brief themselves on the business
• Call centre customer service tools: Chatbots and eCommerce customer service call centre services should be a must. Customers will always need help with orders and have queries or comments. As an organization grows it can outsource eCommerce customer service to lighten the load on its operations. These calls and chatbot data should also be used to make improvements to the company’s processes.

Improving Customer Retention for eCommerce

Customer retention is a crucial part of any eCommerce platform. This involves finding new ways to engage existing or new customers by shifting your business proposition. One of the core ways to engage new customers is through remarketing and retargeting.

Remarketing toward existing customers can be done in a number of ways:

• Social media ads reminding them of the platform
• Messages on personalized accounts or their dashboard (if such an option is available on the platform)
• Email marketing and retargeting platforms e.g., retargeter, mailchimp, etc.
• Forums or social media pages dedicated to the platform
• VIP membership perks or frequent user discounts can help rekindle engagement

There are a number of strategies a company can implement to drive this effect. Widely, one can divide these strategies into cognitive, affective, and conative appeals. For an ideal strategy, elements of all 3 should be employed for maximum effect.

3 Levels of Engagement

Cognitive strategies for eCommerce can include:

• Price factors: decrease prices, increase discounts, special offers, etc.
• Appeals to quality of products/services: best delivery options, high-quality goods etc.
• Statistics: reassure the buyer that you are the best option with logical, statistical arguments
• Ease-of-use: 55% of customers rate “easy access to information and support” as a crucial USP

Affective strategies utilize emotions to get their point across. These may seem less likely for eCommerce but there are a few you can employ.

• Make customers feel at home: 73% of customers rate “Friendly staff and great service” as a reason. For returning to businesses, provide a great customer helpline and have representatives ready to help with the customer journey.
• Personalized experiences: Give them unique experiences and the ability to tailor their own experience.

Conative strategies are action-inducing propositions. Conative-level engagement should include:

• Special offers: unique versions of a good
• Limited-time offers: utilizes FOMO to make people buy
• Trial periods or good return policies: give users a reason to test the product to entice them

SEO and Customer Experience

While SEO may seem unrelated, it is a crucial step toward good customer service. After all, the first thing most customers do when they need help is to check Google. As a result, keeping track of possible search queries can bring customers to your site.

It can also help deter customers from potentially irate buyers with the same problems. For example, if a product is difficult to use (“how do I connect [brand] speakers to BlueTooth”), you need a page with clear and concise instructions. This will also prevent customers from leaving bad reviews due to such issues.

It’s why it’s important to get ahead of these issues. SEO tactics include:

• Check long-tail keywords associated with your products: People may be entering longer search terms into Google such as “how to register my credit card on [name of platform]” or “how long are delivery times for [platform]”
• Another way is to go to forums like Reddit and look within community pages: Find a community of users or users of a similar product and see try to answer their most frequently asked questions
• Send out surveys or conduct interviews: ask your customers for feedback directly. You may even have an existing email list of buyers already
• Optimize the page for your own questions: Make sure your page is the first place they go for questions
• Customer Experience Media and Content: From infographics showcasing your products/services features to YouTube videos and tutorials, you can give customers further information and the guidance they need in more ways than just using plain webpages. YouTube videos can easily access the front page of Google while images utilize the benefits of image SEO.

Looking for an agency to help with eCommerce customer acquisition? Promoguy provides a range of services for eCommerce platforms and stores.