The world of eCommerce and the online experience is changing - and it’s time for businesses to either take note and catch up or get left behind.
In this new context, customer expectations are higher than ever. Particularly when it comes to their experience on eCommerce sites, users have no patience for any kind of friction or poor user experience (UX) - and they’ll bounce and go to your competitor’s site without batting an eyelash if your pages fall below their expectations.
Here’s how to avoid that, what to look out for, and how to actually meet customer expectations today.
The Online Experience Today
If you want to make a conversion or create a loyal customer on an eCommerce site today, you have to give your audience an exceptional customer experience. For most users, this requires an intuitive experience with a strong level of personalization and customization.
Here’s a glimpse into customer expectations and priorities today:
79% of consumers want brands to demonstrate they care before considering a purchase
87% of consumers think brands need to do more to provide a seamless experience.
80% of consumers are more likely to do business with a company if it offers a personalized experience.
Customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator by the year 2020.
The good news? At this point, most companies recognize these realities and prioritize customer experience as a result, using things like analytics, testing, and AI technologies to positively influence their customers’ emotions and turn them into loyal return customers.
The Solution: AI-Powered Self Service
What is the one thing that you should ditch in this new context? High-friction elements like old-school knowledge bases and static FAQ pages.
Now, at this point you might take a quick pause and be thinking Is a FAQ page really that bad? It’s good to have all of my company’s relevant information in one central page, and it could be useful to someone, right?
Wrong. Here’s why static FAQ pages don’t make sense today:
According to one survey, the two most satisfying aspects of a customer service experience are not having to repeat themselves (39%) and having their problem resolved on first contact (24%).
91% of those surveyed would “use a single, online knowledge base if it were available and tailored to their needs.”
53% of people stated that it is important for them to resolve their own product / service problems rather than rely on customer service representatives. That number grew to 60% for those aged between 18 and 34.
Only 37% of users try to use self-service options “because those options are perceived as “inaccurate or incomplete”
The majority (66%) of adults feel that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good online customer experience.
The main takeaways here: people want to help themselves, they want businesses to be of service, and they will use the solutions that you provide if truly believe they’ll be worthwhile and that they’ll provide an easy path to support.
SEE ALSO: Enhance Customer Service Experience Using Self-Service
Now, forcing a user to leave the page in the middle of their shopping experience to answer a question or get help is anything but complete, intuitive, and worthwhile - and it will make users dubious (at best!) about your business and your customer service capabilities.
That’s why you’re majorly behind if you’re relying solely on a static FAQ for self-service - and why such pages have to be replaced with more seamless, powerful, AI-powered customer experience solutions.
A great go-to solution option? Smart self-service.
AI powered self-service solutions should completely replace these static FAQ pages, especially when it comes to frequent, repetitive questions and low-value customer inquiries, which make up approximately 80% of customer questions today.
For these kinds of questions, in particular, AI-powered self service like AnswerDash can proactively solve customer’s problems without requiring human interaction and, even more importantly, without forcing them to leave the page or go through a multi-click process. Instead, it gives them relevant, personalized information at their point of need. This is a real customer service game-changer, and it won’t go unappreciated in the eyes of the consumers.
For more information about AI-powered solutions or to get started with AnswerDash predictive Q&A, contact us here.