Explore Newsletters from ECT News Network » View Samples | Subscribe
ECTNEWS.COM
Mobile CRM
E-Commerce Minute
Tech News Flash
ECT News Network Weekly
See all CRM
See all Enterprise Apps
See all Social CRM
CRM Buyer
Next Article in Trends
Logical CX Now Vital to Retail Brand Building
By Jack M. Germain September 14, 2021 5:00 AM PT Email Article
Enterprise IT Lead Generation Services
Fuel Your Pipeline. Close More Deals. Our full-service marketing programs deliver sales-ready leads. 100% Satisfaction Guarantee! Learn more.
Consumers are flexing their shopping muscle by pressuring digital merchants to take more seriously how they respond to customer experience satisfaction complaints.
One of the biggest weapons consumers now wield is at their fingertips. They are expressing their displeasure with abandoned shopping carts and shopping where they find better alternative CX solutions.
A pair of recent studies highlight changing shopper attitudes as the pandemic continues its stranglehold on the supply chain for most industries. Two clear-cut consumer trends have surfaced: online shoppers want more self-service options and an overall more-efficient shopping experience.
A key finding in a Frost & Sullivan survey commissioned in July by knowledge orchestration platform provider Zoomin reveals that four out of five customers believe they could resolve support queries themselves if properly equipped.
Another survey conducted in May by CRM platform company Kustomer underscored the need for continued investment in customer service and the importance of delivering consistent, omnichannel service throughout the customer journey.
"The Zoomin survey found unequivocally that enterprises must provide more intuitive and effective self-service solutions, given the significant implications on customer experience, brand perception, and even sales," Zoomin CEO and co-founder, Gal Oron told CRM Buyer.
Some 81 percent of users prefer to solve product problems on their own, he continued. However, enterprises usually fall short in enabling them to do so, as 46 percent of users found that searching for answers in technical documentation is a painful experience.
"This could have real business impact, as 84 percent of users surveyed stated that poor content experiences could lead them to switch brands," he cautioned.
Customer Expectations Changing
Kustomer released a report on the shifting expectations of retail customer service titled "Changing Consumer Expectations for Retail Customer Service."
That study — based on more than 500 consumers surveyed in the U.S. — found that 90 percent of consumers would not shop with a retailer again if they provided bad customer service and 93 percent of consumers think retail customer service should be more convenient. That response rose from 78 percent in 2019.
Both sets of research results are similar to other industry reports citing consumer pushback on merchants who do not have their customer service act together in the post-Covid environment.
Even more telling is the potential impact from shoppers under the age of 25 in the Kustomer study. Seventy-seven percent of those respondents — compared to an average of 46 percent of consumers in other age categories — said they would be willing to spend more money for good customer service when making purchases.
A large majority of Gen Z respondents think chatbots are helpful. They also prefer customer service emails and texts, while consumers ages 35 and above prefer phone and email.
"The stakes for retail customer service are becoming higher as the massive shift to online shopping and resulting increase in customer service inquiries has permanently changed the role of customer service from transactional to consultative," said Brad Birnbaum, co-founder and CEO of Kustomer.
Need To Raise the CX Bar
This heightened bar of CX expectations reveals that customer experience is the pillar upon which brand building, recognition, and customer loyalty all depend. Today's consumers see customer service as an extension of brand identity and expect both digital and in-store retailers to provide proactive, consistent, and seamless service across every available platform at every point along the buyer's journey, Birnbaum noted.
"There is no longer room for error when it comes to customer service, requiring retailers to deliver a true omni-experience to build meaningful and long-term customer relationships," he said.
Perhaps even worse for retailers, 27 percent of consumers reported either posting on social media after a bad experience with a retailer and/or posting an online review. The same percentage revealed a demand for better customer service, adding they would recommend a retailer to a friend after a good customer service experience.
Effective Omni-Experience
Zoomin's tools enable customers to self-serve. It helps retailers to offer a more personalized customer experience by transforming an enterprise's heavy trove of technical product content into an intuitive and tailored interface that enables customers to self-serve.
It does so by consolidating and personalizing product content — like community forums, help pages, and technical manuals and guides — for each user, anticipating their needs and offering them "premium, Netflix-like service.
Another piece of the better CX puzzle is an effective an omni-experience. Eighty-two percent of consumers report that they expect to be treated the same by online and in-store retail customer service, and 87 percent of consumers get frustrated when they cannot contact retail customer service on their preferred channel.
As a knowledge orchestration company, Zoomin's platform empowers users to effectively master B2B products. It provides them with relevant technical product knowledge at every channel, tailored to every stage of their customer journey, according to CEO Oron.
Pushing Knowledge Limits
Enterprises typically have hundreds of thousands of pages of technical content, such as product manuals and guides, training materials, knowledge articles, and community discussions.
Unfortunately for the enterprise's customers, this content is created and managed by many different enterprise teams, tools, and systems. That results in a fragmented, frustrating, and inconsistent experience for the user trying to get answers to questions, observed Oron.
"Zoomin takes that content and delivers it in a unified, intuitive, and personalized way, wherever end users look for it across documentation sites, customer service portals, communities, product sites, and more," he insisted.
In essence, Zoomin's platform automatically ingests, synthesizes, and indexes content from any source and then delivers it as a personalized experience to users.
"This allows users to consume any helpful piece of information from any source in any digital location within a unified experience. Unified product content ensures that all that content is up-to-date, relevant, and accessible anywhere customers are looking for it. This holds true whether customers look for it in a documentation site, customer service portal, or community forum," said Oron.
Ultimately this empowers users. They can access the information they need within an omnichannel experience. All this happens while simultaneously providing comprehensive analytics and actionable insights about what content is working and where content needs improvement in terms of accessibility, clarity, and searchability.
"This all contributes to the goal of improving production adoption, customer experience, and success," he noted. "Our technology answers two very clear expectations from the customers: the ability to self-service and smooth product adoption."
CRM Buyer pushed Zoomin's founder and CEO to discuss in more detail key factors impacting CRM issues and how to better serve B2B customers.
CRM Buyer: What is driving the consumer movement to self-serving solutions?
Gal Ormon: In-person interactions play a smaller role now. Remote self-service capabilities are a must-have feature. B2B customers have a stronger belief that they can solve problems on their own.
The pandemic alone is not responsible for the DIY revolution. A generational shift had already been laying the groundwork for the growth of this practice for some time.
The millennial generation came of age with the internet, and the rise of sites like YouTube quickly led to the burgeoning popularity of online tutorials. The "democratization of the tutorial" has given millennials a chance to find self-empowerment through autonomous adult learning.
The pandemic did, however, turbocharge this shift and a desire to self-serve has become mission critical. Those using B2B software expect to be able to navigate a product and seamlessly resolve issues — should they arise — without the need to wait to speak to a customer service representative.
How are businesses responding to this growing trend?
Ormon: Successful businesses tend to listen to their customers. Since enterprise B2B customers are clearly demanding the ability to self-serve, businesses have begun to invest in B2B SaaS solutions and harness the latest technology that will empower customers and enable that self-service.
Businesses are recognizing that once a customer has contacted customer service, they have already failed to deliver the standard of experience today's customers expect. They know that there is a significant issue in their current processes that need to be addressed. Customers are saying loud and clear that they want an intuitive seamless experience.
What do you see as the most significant finding in the Frost & Sullivan survey results?
Ormon: One of the most eye-catching observations we gleaned from the survey results is that product content and self-service are so intertwined with a product's branding and overall user experience that it plays an important role in the sales cycle.
An astounding 99 percent of users involved in purchasing say that a vendor's technical content is a primary or secondary criterion in the decision to purchase.
Jack M. Germain has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2003. His main areas of focus are enterprise IT, Linux and open-source technologies. He is an esteemed reviewer of Linux distros and other open-source software. In addition, Jack extensively covers business technology and privacy issues, as well as developments in e-commerce and consumer electronics. Email Jack.
Get Permission to License or Reproduce this Article
More by Jack M. Germain
Please sign in to post or reply to a comment. New users create a free account.
This Digital CX Tool Drives Repeat Customers, No Website Required
How to Build a CX Business Case for Your CFO
How to Avoid the Cost of Churn With Better Customer Experiences
Sophisticated CRM Now at the Core of Customer Success
How to Rebuild Trust After E-Commerce Blunders
Digital Clienteling Platform Breathes Life Into Live Commerce
Consumer Activism Will Steer Brand Focus in 2022
Freshworks Brings New Tech Stack To Power Startups
CRM's Pressing Platform Problems
NICE Platform Answers Call for Hyper-Personal CX Tools
Call Center Culture Can Make or Break Your Customer Experience
Windows 365 No Deal for Non-Biz Linux Users
Unsupported IoT Devices Are Cyber-Trouble Waiting To Happen
30 Years Later, the Trajectory of Linux Is Star Bound
This Year in CRM
The Great Sales Methodology Debate, Solved
Fixing Customer Service Will Require Better Tech
Dreamforce Observations
Lenovo Steps Forward With a Vision To Redefine Personal Computing
The Esports Evolution: Out of the Basement, Into Arenas
TikTok Tops YouTube in Watch Time Among Android Users
E-Learning Platforms: The New Academy for Business Training and Education
Do You Need an MBA Degree for a More Prosperous Future?
The Irony of Facebook's VR Collaboration Debacle
How does the quality of customer service delivered by government compare to that of the private sector?
Government customer service is far superior.
Government customer service is slightly better.
Government and private sector customer service are about the same.
Private sector customer service is slightly better.
Private sector customer service is far superior.
CRM Buyer Channels
https://www.crmbuyer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2021/09/xl-2019-customer-experience-1-300x180.jpg
https://www.crmbuyer.com/story/better-cx-through-customer-journey-management-87203.html
Better CX Through Customer Journey Management
Three-Part Evolution
https://www.crmbuyer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2021/07/xl-2019-iot-hacking-1-300x169.jpg
https://www.crmbuyer.com/story/solarwinds-hackers-still-targeting-microsoft-focus-on-support-staff-87188.html
SolarWinds Hackers Still Targeting Microsoft, Focus on Support Staff
Automated or Human, Consumers Demand Smart, Speedy Service
How to Ride the 'Consumer Wave' to Better Customer Experiences
https://www.crmbuyer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2021/09/xl-2021-smartphone-voice-1-300x174.jpg
https://www.crmbuyer.com/story/how-natural-language-understanding-smartens-customer-interactions-87223.html
How Natural Language Understanding Smartens Customer Interactions
How Consumers Now Define a Good Customer Experience
B2C Marketers Plan To Double the Volume of Digital Messages
https://www.crmbuyer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2021/09/xl-2021-sales-process-1-300x174.jpg
https://www.crmbuyer.com/story/making-sales-safe-for-process-87258.html
Making Sales Safe for Process
Sales Cycles and the Slacking of Salesforce
Intrigue Funded to Develop New Attack Surface Management Platform
https://www.crmbuyer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2021/07/xl-2021-duckduckgo-email-1-300x174.jpg
https://www.crmbuyer.com/story/duckduckgo-readies-feature-to-strip-trackers-from-email-87210.html
DuckDuckGo Readies Feature To Strip Trackers From Email
Customer Data Platform: Build It or Buy It?
Amazon Sidewalk and Why Marketing Expertise Matters
https://www.crmbuyer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2021/10/chess-300x156.jpg
https://www.crmbuyer.com/story/zohos-surround-strategy-87308.html
Zoho's Surround Strategy
Salesforce Season
Grinding Data Into Information
https://www.crmbuyer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2021/09/xl-2017-crm-1-300x174.jpg
https://www.crmbuyer.com/story/crms-virtuous-circle-87190.html
CRM's Virtuous Circle
What Post-Pandemic Recovery Means to Sales Pros
Get Your CRM Ready for Some Good News
https://www.crmbuyer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2021/10/task-management-300x156.jpg
https://www.crmbuyer.com/story/crms-levels-of-abstraction-87295.html
CRM's Levels of Abstraction
Next Normal, Too Soon?
https://www.crmbuyer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2021/08/nso-group-pegasus-300x156.jpg
https://www.crmbuyer.com/story/were-late-closing-the-barn-door-on-pegasus-87234.html
We're Late Closing the Barn Door on Pegasus
Chromebook Shipments Jump 75% YoY in Q2
Corporate Participation in the Open Source Community
https://www.crmbuyer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2022/01/salesforce-tower-new-york-city-300x156.jpg
https://www.crmbuyer.com/story/dreamforce-nyc-was-un-crm-like-and-thats-okay-87386.html
Dreamforce NYC Was Un-CRM-Like and That's Okay
Salesforce Is No Longer Just a CRM Company
Where Does Oracle Go From Here?
More from ECT News Network
E-Commerce Times
LinuxInsider
TechNewsWorld
RSS / XML Feeds
Search ECT News Network
Reprint Information
Copyright 1998-2022 ECT News Network, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Existing ECT News Members
Enter your Username and Password to sign in.