Customer Satisfaction: Why this is crucial for your 2022 e-commerce plan

by Sam Paternoster

The Covid-19 pandemic has seen many industries become saturated with new start-ups, primarily in e-commerce. Small businesses have had to alter their operation and find new ways to stand out from the crowd. Investing in customer satisfaction early on helped Shiptheory to stand out, and the extraordinary reviews speak for themselves!

Improving customer satisfaction within a small business can be a daunting task when there are a hundred other things to do everyday. Here we give you some practical tips on how to improve customer experience for e-commerce businesses.

We'll be running through:

  1. Customer service
  2. Communicating with customers
  3. Engaging content
  4. Delivery and fulfilment options
  5. UI ease of use

What is customer satisfaction?

Let us start from the beginning. In its simplest form, customer satisfaction is a way of telling if your service/product meets a customer's expectations. Many factors can go into this, such as price, delivery speed, customer service, and even how easy it is to navigate your website.

Customer service

Quality customer service plays a huge role in customer satisfaction, and advancements in technology have shifted the expectations customers have towards customer service. Fast and instant results have become the new normal. Technology such as chatbots, self-service, and live chats are in place to help meet these new demands and improve the overall customer experience.

However, these methods are slightly out of reach for small businesses with limited resources. Instead, small businesses can take advantage of the customer services that large marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay offer. This removes a lot of the heavy lifting while also providing high-end customer service, which will improve overall customer satisfaction.

Effective communication with your customers

A study highlighted on Statista (2019) indicated that email support is the preferred method of communication for customer service channels. This will differ depending upon the type of business you run. Businesses that require a period of account set up should invest in top-notch phone support, whereas other businesses can lean on chatbots or email to sort out small queries.

Having the correct communication channels in place is vital to ensure your business can meet the customers' expectations, therefore ensuring any issues and queries are resolved promptly before they escalate into negative feedback or churned customers.

Post consistent & engaging content

As it has always been – content is king. Having relevant content available to your customers and website visitors is a sure-fire way to pique their interest and increase engagement. This level of engagement can help bring the customer closer to the brand and develop more of an affiliation with the company. Some of the best brand-based e-commerce companies have achieved tribes of delighted customers with their unique voice, coming from a specific viewpoint delivering consistent content with a human touch.

Engaging content is a cornerstone of forming brand relationships with customers. The more exciting and informative, the more satisfied and likely customers to return to your business for information and support.

Delivery/fulfilment options

As discussed, technology has sped up nearly all major business processes and led to greater customer expectations. The same can also be said for the delivery/fulfilment process. Customers expect fast and cheap delivery options while also being conscious of environmental factors. As a result, businesses have started to put more resources into the delivery process as it can now be used as a USP.

Achieving this naturally as a small business is challenging as large amounts of warehousing and financial resources are needed to make it a viable competitive option. This, however, is where 3rd party fulfilment services can be utilised. Many significant online marketplaces such as Amazon have their optional fulfilment services in place (Amazon FBA). Fulfilment services allow businesses to send their products to third-party companies with the infrastructure and financial capabilities to offer fast & cheap delivery. For a fraction of the price, small e-commerce businesses can now compete with competitive delivery options and costs.

Being able to offer the best delivery options amongst your competitors can drastically affect your customer satisfaction. As shown below, free delivery has a significant impact on consumer buying behaviour & thoughts. Data such as this further emphasises how important streamlining the fulfilment process is to boost customer satisfaction within a small business.

UI Ease of Use

The importance of having a convenient UI is often undermined when it comes to customer satisfaction. If users find a UI challenging to navigate and unintuitive, they are more likely to exit the page they're on. This is more aimed towards improving the all-around customer experience, which will play an essential role in whether they make a purchase or not.

An area that is commonly overlooked is how a business's UI will translate over to mobile devices. Less space is available when it comes to mobile UI'. Information needs to be kept short and snappy to prevent cluttering the screen. Alongside this, a tip for businesses is to remember where customers will most likely be naturally tapping and swiping.

This illustration gives a good overview of where to place essential features such as the checkout button, call to action buttons, and links leading to other important pages. Remember that having the customers' experience and well-being in mind is priority number 1 when optimising your UI. It is one of the most significant factors influencing a customer's initial thoughts of your business/brand.

To Conclude...

The expectations for customer satisfaction - and ways in which a customer can publicly voice their discontent - has boomed over the past decade to the extent that it is now vital for businesses to compete. Smaller companies can utilise various aspects previously discussed in a bid to improve customer satisfaction. This can give them an ideal USP to compete within their market against bigger, more established businesses. To wrap up the points above, small businesses should look to make their customers needs the centre of all operations, whether this is through customer service, delivery options, or tailoring content towards specific customer bases.

Guest Post from Khaos Control. Find out more information on how the Khaos Control Cloud and Shiptheory integration can save you time, here.