When asked what they saw as the number one opportunity in ecommerce marketing today, 30% of brands said ‘More accurate consumer targeting across retailers.’
Brands also cited three other key opportunities: ‘Improved user experience’ (22%), ‘Voice search advertising’ (14%), and the closer alignment of digital marketing with merchandising teams (8%).
In our recent Era of Ecommerce research report with Catalyst and Search Engine Watch, we found a number of interesting insights on the ecommerce landscape today, what opportunities and challenges exist, and how marketers are — or are not — rising to meet them.
https://www.clickz.com/how-to-improve-ecommerce-performance/220283/
When it comes to the customer experience, consumer comfort levels with artificial intelligence can vary greatly depending on how the technology is applied. As we shared in a recent ebook, consumers often think AI is ‘creepy’ when it utilizes information they did not directly provide. In other circumstances, however, AI is seen as useful, particularly when it makes recommendations based on past interactions.
In a recent survey conducted by Interactions, we looked at how AI impacts the customer experience in order to better understand how companies can best apply this technology to their benefit. One takeaway from the research that was pretty clear: consumers prefer to interact with conversational AI. In fact, 79% of respondents said that one of the most useful capabilities of AI in providing a positive customer experience is the ability to use conversational words or phrases, as if they were talking to a human, rather than speaking “robot talk”. Additionally, 70% said they prefer interacting with a virtual assistant that has a human-like voice or personality as opposed to a computer-generated voice.
http://customerthink.com/3-revenue-driving-benefits-of-conversational-ai/
At its core, conversational experience is an easy-back-and forth with a customer on a specific channel such as chat or voice. The customer is able to speak or type naturally and ask spontaneous questions — without having to navigate cumbersome IVRs, thank you very much. In short, said Jim Freeze, CMO of virtual assistant provider Interactions, customers are able to talk or type to a virtual assistant exactly how they would if they were speaking with a human. Or put another way: “The idea is to move away from forms and buttons to a process that enables an exchange that resembles what we have in a 1:1 conversation with a friend,” said Ajeet Kushwaha, director of bots and automation at customer engagement software provider Freshworks.
https://www.cmswire.com/customer-experience/what-is-a-conversational-experience/
Voice of the Customer (VoC) programs enable business leaders to gather the critical customer feedback they need to address customer concerns and shape the future of their products.
Traditional VoC programs are one-on-one interview based and can generate volumes of unstructured customer interview data. Making that information actionable is where the rub is, according to Maxie Schmidt-Subramanian, Principal Analyst of Customer Experience at Forrester.
https://www.cmswire.com/customer-experience/how-ai-is-impacting-the-voice-of-the-customer-landscape/
Jamie Dickinson, retail sales director for UK and Ireland at Datalogic, reveals the four areas retailers should be focusing on in 2019 to improve customer experience.
https://www.retail-week.com/retail-voice/four-ways-to-revolutionise-cx-with-data-capture-tech/7030182.article?authent=1/
More forward-thinking travel organisations are taking it one step further and setting themselves apart from the myriad of competitors out there and they’re doing this by way of personalised customer experiences – better known to travel marketers as ‘personalisation’.
https://mopinion.com/combining-customer-profiles-with-user-feedback/
https://www.business2community.com/ecommerce/how-b2b-ecommerce-marketers-can-use-the-voice-of-the-consumer-to-boost-sales-02133114/
A few years back, it seemed forecasters everywhere were predicting the demise of the call center as self-serve digital channels accelerated up the steep curve of early customer adoption. More recently, with the advent of automation in the form of Intelligent Virtual Assistants, natural language processing and other artificial intelligence-based tools, the extinction of the call center was revisited.
It is true that digital interactions are increasing. According to this 2018 McKinsey research, 48% of all customer care interactions will be digital by 2020.1 But another study states that a majority of consumers ranked speaking with a human on the phone as their preferred communication channel with a business.2 When you peel back the onion, it’s clear that digital channels and call centers need to work in concert to optimize customer engagement.
http://customerthink.com/the-value-of-cross-channel-voice-of-the-customer/
“We want to give our customers all the tools they need to reach their goals on our online platforms. Be it from tracking their orders to ordering their preferred sneakers, their expectations need to be met online. Therefore we’re focusing heavily on providing self-service and online assistance when and where our customers need it. The customer should have multiple options to find answers to what they’re looking for.”
https://mopinion.com/customer-success-story-de-bijenkorf/
Customer experience (CX) professionals have it so easy today. In the past we relied on surveys as our primary source of customer insights. Now with so many options for connecting with customers, CX professionals have it made!
But can so many options actually make it more difficult? How do you keep track of the options? How do you determine which are best for you? How do you pull everything together into one cohesive voice?
On second thought, maybe today’s CX professionals have it harder than I thought.
https://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=128311/