You’ve taken your business online – it might have been a long-term plan or it may be in response to the impact coronavirus is having on your bottom line. Regardless of the reason, knowing your customer and providing them with an excellent experience is your key to success.
A few things make up that customer experience – from your payment system to your website functionality and how well you know your customer.
Having an app, website or digital shopfront that loads quickly, is easy to navigate and has intuitive functionality is a must in today’s digital business environment and will keep your customers happy.
A payment system that’s seamless for your customer is something they will appreciate and talk about. CommBank has several solutions depending on your need. One example is the digital payments platform called CommBank Simplify that helps you sell your products online.
Much like your website, how customers experience your payment system comes down to the one you choose and how you integrate into your operations. However, knowing what your customer wants, needs, thinks and finds irritating takes a bit more effort.
Kate Morris founded one of Australia’s first online beauty retailers, Adore Beauty, 20 years ago and says that knowing your customer is paramount. Rather than make assumptions about what customers want, she says businesses need to gather evidence and the best place to do that is customer feedback.
“I see so many businesses that will blast out their communications from an email address that is noreply@thisbusiness.com. I think it’s the height of rudeness to suggest to your customers that you don’t want to hear from them from whatever channel they choose,” Morris says.
“Every channel that we communicate with our customers on comes with a mouth, but it also comes with ears. Every piece of customer feedback is really valuable, people are telling you what they want from you. Not to listen is a mistake.”
She says being a digital business means you have access to many data points that provide valuable information about your customer. “In most cases you’ll have more data than you could ever hope to use,” she says. “There’s almost always data points that are easy to isolate. The key is to pick the pain points that are affecting the highest number of customers.”
The pain point that affects a large number of your customers is the sticking point you need to fix. A good analytics system and strategy will help you identify that sticking point.
Being able to capture high-level metrics means you can truly inform your business decisions. The key is to ask the right questions of your data. What's the goal of the app user? Where on your website or in your app do users travel to get to their end point? Is there a common point on the journey at which they abandon their search?
Analysing that customer journey from beginning to end will give you the full picture – of the pain points and what resonates with them.
The key is what you do with that information. Use it wisely and you’ll improve your business and enhance the customer experience. And then you do it all again next week because serving your customer is all about constantly learning, adding and iterating.
