3 Ways Retailers Can Build Resilience Through Customer Experience
September 7, 2021
How do you maintain customers’ trust when things don’t go to plan?
Customers are at the heart of any company, and customer experience (CX) has remained a key element of long-term customer loyalty and future success.
With customers and customer service teams facing disruption and uncertainty, there is a vital need to maintain resilient, responsive CX strategies.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, retail businesses have experienced disruption that has strained internal processes and customer relationships. Under pressure to survive, adapt and expand amid difficult times, many have found it hard to continue delivering on their consumer promises.
But we should not assume that COVID-19 is a one-off disruption before a return to normal. Businesses continually navigate through challenges and turbulence, and business-as-usual cannot be the way to approach and build customer experiences.
We’ve seen organisations responding to uncertainty with CX innovation are prioritising three core initiatives:
1. Understand the evolving needs of your customers through data
Everything starts with your customer. Bring together existing and new omnichannel data sources about your consumer habits to truly adapt to their needs.
Are you seeing more engagement through SMS or your website chatbots? Phone calls or messenger? By adopting a data-driven approach, you can shape your digital efforts around a seamless customer experience that are responsive to customer journey changes.
2. Upgrade your technology stack for flexibility
To ensure the resilience of your CX strategy, the technologies that underpin it must be resilient.
It’s crucial to invest in technology that: (1) gives your employees effective tools to do their jobs; and (2) provides your customers with a seamless experience when engaging with your business.
The trick is to focus on solutions that allow for automation and rapid restructuring.
Automation removes friction from your employee operations and streamlines your customer’s engagement.
Rapid restructuring allows you to flex your CX capabilities in response to changes in the customer journey.
3. Improve collaboration across business units
Every interaction that customers and prospects have with your business is part of your CX, whether that involves marketing, sales, or customer service. This means that cross-team collaboration is fundamental to delivering a great customer experience.
Beyond employing great people and building a collaborative culture, the most resilient retail organisations embed the right tools and processes. Collaboration tools give your teams access to communication channels from a single application such as Microsoft Teams, on any device. They can use video, screen sharing, chat channels, customer profiles, and document management —all in one complete solution.
It turns out that your employees prefer an omnichannel experience too!
Now is the time to outmanoeuvre uncertain futures with responsive and resilient CX
We are living through testing times for businesses, but teams that use this as an opportunity to innovate and rethink their customer strategies will foster companies that are resilient in the long run.
Need some help building your CX tech strategy? Discuss your options with our team today by reaching out through the channel of your choice…