How Customer Experience Can Make Or Break Sales

The festive season is over, but it would seem the season for online shopping is neverending.

The number of online shoppers continues to rise. The global e-commerce market was worth $13 trillion in 2021 and is expected to rise to as much as $55 trillion within the next five years, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 27.4% between 2022-2027.

The jaw-dropping figures should come with no surprise, considering that nearly 7 billion people in the world own a smartphone, and internet penetration continues to grow globally, with over 60% of the world’s population already connected with over 170 million connected in 2022. 

What's Behind The Growth?

When COVID-19 hit, people were grounded in their homes as mobility in most parts of the world was restricted and physical shops closed. During this time, e-commerce provided an alternative and convenient way of shopping, pushing digital sales upwards, and the trend continued to be driven by an increased preference for hassle-free shopping along with rapid urbanization in many parts of the world.

Apart from that, online shopping festivals, such as Amazon. Inc's AMZN Prime Day and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd's BABA Singles' Day offer massive discounts, inviting many to join the digital shopping bandwagon. According to research by GlobalWebIndex, 86% of people aged 16 and older have bought products online during such festivals.

Agility In The Digital World

Businesses looking to capitalize on the growing digital landscape need to pay particular attention to the seemingly less apparent drivers of business growth, particularly customer experience (CX). Having robust marketing campaigns and keeping enough stock in your inventory can drive potential customers to your e-commerce store, but it's the customer experience that can persuade them to buy and more likely turn them into regular customers.

The number of people persuaded by experience to click the 'buy' button is astonishing. Research shows that customer experience can cause almost 75% of online shoppers to proceed through the checkout. More than half of business executives agree that unimproved customer experience can cause significant revenue and market share losses.

Businesses that do not prioritize customer experience can entangle themselves in a web of frustration in dealing with abandoned sales carts, low website traffic and reputation damage through word-of-mouth. On the other hand, having a solid customer experience can lead to business growth. Look at Amazon, for instance: if you ask the founder of the largest e-commerce store, Jeff Bezos, it is a focus on customer experience that pushed the company to its mountaintop. In the Amazon CEO’s words, “If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell six friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000.”

Benefits Of Customer Experience

Customer experience increases customer satisfaction which can bring a ripple effect on revenue. In today's world, where everything seems instant, customers look for a convenient and immediate experience at every touchpoint whenever they interact with brands. According to a 2022 study by ACA, 83% of customers trust a company or brand if they provide an excellent customer service experience.

Frustrated customers will likely switch brands, negatively affecting a company's revenue growth, and a large number of customers are willing to abandon their brand over poor customer experience. The ACA study found that 74% of customers are ready to switch brands if they discover better customer services elsewhere. 

Customer experience also contributes to creating a robust business-client relationship since continuous positive customer experience can translate to long-lasting, loyal customers. 

Word-of-mouth is a powerful weapon; it can make or break a business. Good customer experience can improve word-of-mouth marketing through positive reviews, comments, and recommendations. Did you know that word-of-mouth marketing alone contributes $6 trillion of annual consumer spending, plus drives 13% of consumer spending? Those figures prove how influential word-of-mouth can be to the success or failure of a business.

Outsourced Customer Experience Services To The Rescue?

Whenever a business faces an increase in customer requests, one of the effective ways of handling it would be to outsource customer experience services to specialist companies such as TDCX Inc. TDCX. These suppliers can assist in fast scaling up the customer support workforce to maintain service levels and client satisfaction.

TDCX prides itself on providing 24/7 interaction hubs accessible in its regional centers, which cover several continents, including Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Through performance audits and data-driven strategies, TDCX assists organizations in enhancing the customer journey while also assisting them in establishing their brand and fostering customer loyalty.

The company says it is helping its clients, including some of the world's best brands, achieve customer experience goals by harnessing technology, human intelligence, and their global presence. 

This post contains sponsored advertising content. This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be investing advice.

Featured Photo by John Schnobrich on Unsplash