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Take A Fresh Look At Customer Experience To Drive Success In 2018

0aaDave Campbell LogMeInIt’s been a tough year for retail, with more than 20 well-known brands filing for bankruptcy. With 2018 right around the corner, many retailers are continuously working on defining and refining strategies in-store and online. This means taking a fresh look at old problems in contrast with new opportunities. For many it’s time to hit the reset button and develop a customer-centric, digital-first approach for today’s omnichannel world.

To stay competitive and drive growth, retailers need to shift their strategies to better meet the needs of their customers. This means focusing heavily on improving the digital customer experience and creating a consistent experience across touch points — both in-store and online. Specifically, understand how new technologies, tools and strategies don’t just drive purchases, but create lifelong customers.

Strike A Balance Between Flashy Technologies And Helpful Tools

With intriguing virtual and augmented reality experiences, along with robots entering store floors, retailers in 2017 sought to learn how they might be able to use new, “flashy” technologies to set themselves apart. While these technologies are useful in creating interactive and fun digital experiences for customers — and can cause a lot of buzz to help with a new product or campaign launch — they’re not exactly what will drive customers to continuously come back to a web site or mobile app to browse and complete purchases.

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In 2018, it will be important for retailers to find a balance between technologies that create short-term hype and ones that are actually helpful to customers, which together will create a more fluid customer experience. Going a step beyond VR, retailers can add value to CX by embedding additional technologies that create a holistic and seamless experience.

For example, retailers can look to incorporate AR components within a VR experience to allow customers to “pick up” items or “try on” clothes, or even empower them to connect with a virtual customer assistant through chatbot technology within the experience. The best digital experiences in 2018 will be those that integrate all of these innovative technologies with smart tools that are meaningful and promote efficient, intuitive CX.

Improve Customer Service Process To Ensure Consistent Support

Another key strategy to improving retail experiences in the new year will be transforming customer support processes. A lot of retailers still force customers to wait on hold or manually search through a web site to find the answer to a simple question on shipping process or return policies — this simply won’t fly anymore.

Today’s shoppers expect to find fast and easy answers no matter which channel they’re on — from social media to website to SMS. To support these new needs, retailers must ensure this information is easily accessible and up-to-date across touch points. By creating a knowledge base, brands can store all of the insight customers might need and make this information readily available on every digital platform their shoppers interact on. Inputting this information into an automated technology like a virtual assistant will also allow the retailer to quickly dissect customer queries and pinpoint where support might be lacking or inefficient.

For example, if an influx of questions come in regarding a new one-day shipping promotion, but the knowledge management system hasn’t been updated with this information, the bot will immediately alert the manager to the problem and seamlessly prompt them to update it. As an added layer, this information can also be made available to support agents that are assisting customers via live chat, social media, on the phone or even in-store — ensuring they have the insight they need to effectively handle customer issues.

Not only does this updated support strategy empower customers to get answers to their questions as quickly as possible, it also ensures every communication from the brand is consistent and accurate, regardless of which channel the customer is on or who they are speaking with.

Ensure A Fluid Customer Experience Across Channels — Both In-Store And Online

Some argue that brick-and-mortar is dead, but recent data shows that more than half of shoppers prefer to visit stores before making online purchases. As we move into 2018, retailers must not solely focus on digital customer experience. While this is certainly a good starting point, they also will need to understand how they can translate the strengths of their online presence into their storefronts.

It is critical that retailers ensure customers encounter a consistent brand experience, whether they are in-store, on the web site or on the brands’ Instagram account. Leveraging data collected from their digital presence and through customer communications on these channels, brands can start to gain an understanding of what is important to their shoppers and ensure these components are available where it makes sense. If customers respond well to a virtual assistant on the web site, the retailer should consider implementing in-store kiosks that allow them to self-serve on simple questions they have while shopping at the brand’s storefront.

Ultimately, success in the new year will require retail brands to be better about creating holistic and seamless customer experiences. And this means becoming smarter about digital, physical and where the two might intersect.

There’s no doubt that 2017 was a trying year for the entire retail industry, where brands were enticed with new technologies entering the market and tasked by their leaders to stay ahead of the curve. In 2018, brands will need to reset and refresh their plans — ensuring every technology they invest in and every strategy they implement goes back to one question: will this build a loyal customer?


Dave Campbell is Vice President of Product Marketing for the Customer Engagement and Support business at LogMeIn, which includes LogMeIn Rescue, Bold360 and GoToAssist. He joined the LogMeIn team in 2010 and has managed and led product direction for multiple LogMeIn businesses including: remote access, IT management and customer engagement. Prior to joining LogMeIn, Campbell was responsible for product marketing at Symantec for its Information Management business including backup, archiving and E-Discovery.

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