Transform the Customer Journey with Conversational Commerce

Today’s customer journey includes up to 140 touchpoints online and offline, all of which influence your customer’s decisions to buy and re-purchase. When it comes to a customer’s relationship with your business, from awareness marketing to purchase, loyalty and advocacy, their individual experience is key to unlocking growth opportunities. In today’s increasingly depersonalized world, this makes the art of conversation all the more important.

Customer experience is the new flagship store

Following the pandemic, shoppers have shifted even more of their purchasing activity to online channels. Retailers have been quick to adapt, and have deployed resources and attention to being able to capture the magic of the in-store experience and put it in a virtual world. To be able to do this effectively, mapping out the customer journey becomes critical to delivering the right engagement at each touchpoint.

The right solution for both customers and businesses is one that guides customers through their customer journey smoothly, while providing personalized and consistent experiences through conversational commerce. Your customer should be able to engage with you online in the same way they would expect to be treated upon walking through the door of a brick-and-mortar store; from being greeted warmly to help with making selections, and even assisting them with the payment process.

What is Conversational Commerce?

Conversational leverages real-time engagement methods such as messaging, video and voice, to maximize the value of every touchpoint by engaging with the customer.

• Conversational support – providing quick, personalized answers to queries
• Conversational engagement –proactively reaching out to customers before they need help, using data to see when they are stuck on something
• Conversational marketing – getting real with your customers; talking to them like a friend, and recommending products and services you think they’ll love

In short, conversational commerce means always being available to support, guide, and upsell your customer through conversations – just as you would do in person at a store.

Mapping out the customer journey

Mapping out your customer’s journey can identify any gaps – whether between channels, service departments or devices – and gives you the big picture of your brand experience from end to end.

By gaining valuable insights into customers’ feelings, expectations and pain points, this exercise can help you to better provide an empathetic and personalized experience. Perhaps most importantly, it can help prevent any leads from slipping through the cracks at different stages, by drawing attention to key decision points being made across online and offline touchpoints and channels.

4 steps to strategically plan the customer journey with the right engagement

Step 1. Create target personas

What kinds of customers does your business attract? What keeps them awake at night? What motivates them to buy your products? Knowing their behaviors and needs allows you to better target them, and also gives you the information you need to elevate their experiences when they interact with your business.

Find out more about creating the best personas from CX expert Neil Patel.

Step 2. Identify customer expectations and sentiment

Now it’s time to understand how customers expect to feel. What causes them to want to stick with you on their journey, and what would cause them to leave? You may even be able to identify such decisions based on records of previous calls or chats – and by considering such ‘post-mortem’ data, you can analyze and predict their behavior.

This is made much easier with customer engagement software such as CINNOX, which provides you with unparalleled insights into customers’ thoughts and behavior patterns based on conversation history and other notable activities. With a full dashboard of key information centralized in one convenient interface, CINNOX provides you with the tools you need to gain a deeper understanding of customer expectations.

Step 3. Define the lifecycle with the right engagement

Next, you’ll need to map out the lifecycle of a customer journey based on how customers interact with your business, then plan the right engagement for each stage:

Brand awareness: Here, potential customers discover your brand and products through digital and offline advertisements. Utilize web links and QR codes for live chat and web calls to instantly establish a customer relationship – and ensure you are reachable at every online and offline touchpoint.

Consideration: This includes potential customers reading reviews and going to your website to learn about your products, services and prices.
At this stage you may choose to offer a personalized demo using video calls, or attend to their questions with an enquiry widget on your website. You can even follow up with an SMS featuring product information to secure their purchases.

Purchase: This is where customers make a decision to buy. For this, you can embed a web link to initiate a chat or call in a confirmation receipt, to keep the conversation going and create more repeat purchases, in addition to offering ongoing support.

Customer service: Customers will inevitably seek support when they use your products. You should consider this stage an opportunity to build brand affinity, rather than seeing it as just a necessary burden. One way to do this is through sticky routing, which can ensure customers get the right agent at the right time for the right enquiry. You also want to provide agents with access to all omnichannel chat history and customer information in one chat room, so that they always have the right context.

Retention: Keep customers coming back, whether through loyalty and reward programs or outstanding service – bearing in mind that SMS remains the top channel of choice for engaging customers through loyalty program offers.

Ready to transform the customer journey with CINNOX?

CINNOX enables you to conveniently maximize ROI across the entire customer lifecycle.

• Centralise your customer’s preferred channels for easy engagement and personalization across channels
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• Enable smoother customer support with weblinks and QR codes to quickly launch live chats and web calls from any offline/online touchpoint
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• Focus on customer service and let CINNOX do the tedious work through routing and smart management tools, to efficiently handle an increase in enquiries
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• Rich messaging to share and receive images, files, and videos
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• Advanced security standards, encryption and password policies
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• 24/7 support worldwide in multiple languages