How Contact Centers Can Help Improve And Personalize Online Customer Experiences

The last decade or so has seen a major shift from people shopping in traditional, physical stores to shopping almost exclusively online. While shopping online may offer convenience and sometimes cheaper pricing, there is still one area where brick-and-mortar stores often have an advantage: personalized customer service. In her recent article, Margarita Hakobyan discusses the challenge of personalizing the customer experience online versus in a traditional store. The online experience has the disadvantage of not having people physically present to greet or help customers and make them feel like they’re in a welcoming environment. However, she provides the following ways to make the online customer experience more personal:

• Utilize social media to reach a broader range of customers and ensure consistency between the social media channels and your website.
• Make sure your presentation and communication reflects your customer demographics and your customers’ expectations.
• Offer people customized discounts and specials using past customer experiences and patterns in transaction history.
• Videos with subtitles can be a great way to engage customers and potentially offer instruction to reduce the need for service calls.

How Contact Centers Can Help Improve and Personalize Online Customer Experiences

Hakobyan’s article pointed out some great ways that companies can improve their online customer experience. The areas contact centers can assist companies in their online presence include multichannel capabilities such as email support, live chat support, and social media customer service. Many people still prefer traditional customer service through phone calls, while others prefer emailing companies and receiving a response within 24 hours. Live chat support and social media help the rising number of people who want instant communication without making a phone call. In addition, these channels are becoming more important as customers are demanding that businesses interact with them on the communication platform of their choice no matter what the time of day, month, or year.

Live chat support on a company website can benefit brands by increasing sales and reducing shopping cart abandonment. This is due to service by agents who are trained to provide a customer experience that’s proactive or reactive depending on customer needs. These agents are capable of delivering sales, up-sells, and cross-sells or support when necessary. Live chat support agents provide personalized customer experience by responding to website users immediately and using high-quality CRM software to use past customer transactions and interactions to deliver relevant and effective assistance.

When it comes to social media, the role of customer service agents is to protect the brand and respond to customer feedback. Social media provides personalization by giving customers immediate responses in a casual environment. This includes taking customer complaints, praise, and general inquiries. If customers complain about a company on social media, it’s possible for it to snowball and create more problems that can be damaging to a brand. Having a company social media presence enables companies to interact with customers and try to correct any negative experiences they’ve had in the past.

This blog post is based on an article from CustomerThink. To read the original article, please click the link below:

4 Ways to Personalize Your Customer’s Shopping Experience – Margarita Hakobyan