How Data Analytics Can Take Customer Satisfaction Up a Notch

Naziba Ali

Content Editor

Data analytics can help increase customer satisfaction levels

In eCommerce, customers call the shots. They can swiftly compare prices across multiple stores and choose to vote with their wallets.

This is exactly why the world's most successful businesses place such a high premium on customer satisfaction. And, there is only one thing that will assist you in doing it right – customer data.

In the increasingly cutthroat world of e-retail, the key driver of success is centered on building a deeper understanding of consumer behavior or measuring and analyzing customer interactions. In essence, this is what data analytics is all about.

“Consumer data will be the biggest differentiator in the next two to three years. Whoever unlocks the reams of data and uses it strategically will win.” – Angela Ahrendts, Former Senior Vice President of Retail, Apple Inc.

Still skeptical that data analytics is the best arsenal since the inception of online shopping?

In this article, we will walk you through 4 ways your customer support team can leverage data to take customer satisfaction and sales — up a notch.

  1. Hyper personalized Marketing
  2. Personalized Shopping Experience
  3. Data-Driven Product Development
  4. Sophisticated Customer Support
  5. Streamlined Delivery

Customer Satisfaction Analytics: Technology Is Just An Enabler

Companies are building data analytics capabilities to sift through the goldmine of consumer data that will help them cater better to customers.

But what exactly does Data Analytics entail? Is it just about the fancy tools and dashboards?

The answer is a no.

Before the advent of the Internet, businesses would take resort to surveys to determine what products customers would be interested in buying.

Fast forward to today, businesses are now able to predict consumer behavior by analyzing past purchases, search history, or even social media profiles, thanks to data analytics. For example, if a person searches for animal-related items such as fish or birds, it may lead to the purchase of pet supplies.

But, here’s the thing: Simply understanding customer preferences or shifts in their behavior is not enough. You have to act on it.

In other words, you have to make data-driven decisions. The goal is to turn data into information and information into insight.

“Data is what you need to do Analytics. Information is what you need to do Business” - John Owen, a theologian.

However, businesses often get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data they must collect.

To put it in perspective, modern-day customers come in various shapes and sizes - everyone has a unique set of desires and demands. A group of consumers may be interested in the product features, while another group may be drawn to the business because of the excellent customer service.

And as a business owner, you cannot trade off one for the other.

In the next section, we highlight the key metrics that will help you depict the bigger picture.

Data (And Metrics) Is Only As Good As The Questions You Ask

Asking the right questions is the precondition of selecting your metrics.

Regardless of how sophisticated your IT is, your data will not deliver meaningful insights unless you ask the relevant questions.

“When working with brands to help them better leverage their data for marketing, we always make it a point to first develop a framework for what we want to get out of our data. Only then can we capture, analyse and get relevant insights for our needs,” says Donald Chan, founder of marketing tech blog MarTech Wise.

Speaking of customer satisfaction, there is tons of information available online that only serves to complicate the task of evaluating customer satisfaction. But, all you need is to focus on three primary questions.

  1. Are customer expectations being met?
  2. Was the shopping experience convenient?
  3. Will customers recommend you?

If the problem lies outside the questions you ask, then you will have incomplete data that will count for nothing. Keep your measurement parameters open and you’ll have a much greater variety and depth of information to understand your consumer base.

Now, let’s take a look at the metrics that are essential to gauge customer satisfaction in certain stages of the customer lifecycle.

Conversion

Gaining all the necessary information and being delighted with your brand's customer experience, the prospect makes a purchase, officially converting into your customer.

However, customers may ditch their cart halfway through. So the metric to look out for in this stage would be cart abandonment rate.

There is a slew of reasons why your shopping cart abandonment rate can be high - and customers can be dissatisfied. However, determining the actual reason is not a piece of cake.

Fortunately, data analytics can help you battle shopping cart abandonment. You will know exactly where users are dropping off on the checkout funnel. For example, if a checkout page takes too long to load and shopping is dropped as a result, it will be identified straight away.

Retention

A satisfied customer who you have wowed often turns into a loyal customer And what does a loyal customer mean?

A returning one, that adds to higher customer retention and higher customer lifetime value (LTV). There you have it – the impact of satisfied customers on customer retention.

That being said, how can you evaluate your odds of keeping customers - in other words,  measure your retention rate?

Well, simply pay attention to how your customer feels about your product and brand as a whole. Carry out customer service surveys and measure your Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT). The best way to get a CSAT measurement is to ask the customer how happy they are with your product right after an interaction.

Using their inputs, you can continuously make improvements to your products and services, as well as the customer experience. This also raises the likelihood of a consumer returning and making repeat purchases.

Advocacy

At this stage, customers not only love your products, but they also rave about them to their friends and family. Being aware of the metrics and acting accordingly is what makes the difference between an average eCommerce business and a successful one.

The central metric of Advocacy is the Net Promoter Score - how willing your customers are to recommend your products or services to others. Based on their ratings, you can categorize customers into three groups:

  • Promoters:  Most loyal customers
  • Passives: Customers that are satisfied with your brand but not happy enough to be your brand ambassadors
  • Detractors: Dissatisfied customers

To convert passives and detractors into promoters, ask your promoters to name one reason they are so satisfied. Additionally, passives can provide you with excellent feedback on what you can improve as well.

Following that, using text analytics, determine the most frequently used keywords in your NPS survey. Once you've identified the events that contribute to customer satisfaction, focus your efforts on recreating those experiences to increase promoters and growth.

Now that we’ve covered the eCommerce satisfaction indicators, it’s time to move on to the application side of things.

Improving Customer Satisfaction With Data Analytics

Hyper personalized Marketing

It only takes customers a couple of seconds to decide whether they like your marketing message. Provide something relevant and you’ve got a satisfied customer. Miss the mark, however, and they’re gone.

Previously limited to targeted offerings, personalization now encompasses the entire consumer experience. This means that customers expect personalization throughout their interactions with a store.

And hyper-personalized marketing is a big part of it — serving customers the right messages and offers based on their actual behavior at the right time on the right channel.

Over time, Amazon has shaped its customization efforts through the use of advanced analytics. The brand now shows customers related products when they are shopping for an item, suggests bundles of related products when the customer is checking out, and so on.

Naked Wines welcome new visitors with an entirely different home page and navigation menu. This level of personalization is geared to onboard them as customers and members of their wine club.

Personalized social media campaigns are also a great way to boost customer satisfaction. KLM, the Dutch Airline is popular for its campaign, in which they surprised passengers with personalized gifts by analyzing the data on their social media.

According to McKinsey & Company, successful personalization programs yield 20% higher customer-satisfaction rates, a 10-15% boost in sales conversion rates, and an increase in employee engagement of 20-30%.

Here are 2 steps that will guide your way to successful digital personalization.

Use behavioral data to find where the value lies

The core of personalization is acting on behavioral data. The first step is to group clients with similar habits and needs. For example, mothers who solely shop a brand for their children.

The next task is to understand the customer journey for each segment. Marketers can do this by gathering data such as frequency of site visits, most visited category pages, the channels customers are most active on, their purchase history, their location, and so on.

With platforms like MyAlice, you can effortlessly manage all your customers' data - contact details, demographics data, and purchase history, from one dashboard. And the best part is you can try MyAlice for free. Try signing up and see what it has to offer!

Plan in advance to react quickly to customer signals

Personalized marketing is a two-way street in which the customer sends signals—information about his or her needs and intentions—via behaviors such as purchases, web browsing, and social media posts. The organization responds to the signal by sending a timely message - a trigger - to each consumer.

You can create a library of trigger messages- images, offers, and titles that correspond to specific signals. These sorts of personalized triggers are 3x more effective than blast messages.

A study by MarketingDive revealed that consumers are 40% more likely to consider products that are suggested based on data they've shared with a brand. Thus, providing a personalized experience is a big part of satisfying customers.

Personalized shopping experience

Amazon continues to raise the personalization bar with innovative offerings to individual customers. For example, Amazon Prime Wardrobe has recently launched a personal shopping service exclusively for Prime members.

Customers complete a survey about their styles and fit preferences, and a team of stylists provides personalized recommendations from more than half a million items. Small and medium e-retailers are also attempting to keep up with the personalization trend.

Shopify surveyed buyers leading up to Black Friday and found that 59% welcomed personalized product recommendations while 78% of millennials have an even greater appetite for it.

The most effective recommendations allow shoppers to jump to associated complementary categories. For example, when a shopper on Bandier’s site views a tank top, they’re also shown recommendations of matching shoes and pants.

You can also create personalized bestseller lists to drive click-throughs. LeSportsac is a striking example in this regard.

For many years, the company's main selling point was its minimalistic "deluxe" items. However, Google Analytics data revealed that a significant percentage of their traffic comes from Hong Kong, where customers prefer bolder designs.

Resultantly, they introduced Trending In Your Area, exposing their Hong Kong clients to a wholly unique collection of products:

Data-driven product development

Nike has taken personalization all the way to the individual product by allowing customers to configure their own clothes and shoes. The company recently launched a 3-D sneaker-customization platform that allows shoppers to generate real-time, shareable snapshots of finished footwear.

“Today’s consumers do not buy just products or services — more and more, their purchase decisions revolve around buying into an idea and an experience.” - McKinsey

On a similar note, the swimwear brand Kaikini realized that swimwear fit can be as tricky as bras and introduced a fit quiz to help customers select the best size or style.

In fact, the brand took the personalized experience one step further by adding custom-made swimwear to its lineup. On the product page, customers can build suits by plugging in their own measurements and preferences (like more or less coverage).

The Kano Model can really come in handy when you’re trying to develop new product features. The goal is to load up on features that bring excitement, performance, or meet basic expectations.

But, how do you actually know the amount of delight that individual features will bring to customers? This is where you need real-time intent data. Intent data will provide insight into subtle clues about what’s important to your customers right now and in the coming days.

In the case of Kaikini, the fit quiz is the Must-Be feature while custom-made swimwear is an Attractive feature.

Sophisticated Customer Support

One industry that hasn’t typically been at the forefront of the data revolution is customer support. However, with many businesses now realizing that support isn’t always a cost center, the demand for actionable data has been on the rise.

So, how exactly can you leverage support data for improved customer satisfaction?

Well, over the years, AI-powered chatbots have emerged as an efficient way to streamline customer service conversations. AI bots can automatically add to a customer profile by progressively seeking more information during customer interactions.

  • Collecting Customer Feedback: Chatbots help boost customer satisfaction by getting feedback through polls and surveys. You may, of course, use email and social media to solicit responses to survey questions.

But chatbots are more likely to succeed in this regard. Because of the chatbot's conversational form, respondent fatigue is less likely to occur.

  • Creating personalized experiences: Chatbots are extremely effective in personalization too. You may have the assumption that this is the only type of communication that chatbots are good for:

"Welcome to Swag Kicks. How can we help you?"

But that’s not true. A chatbot is capable of this too:

“Hi Raphael, welcome back! Did you get a chance to wear the shoes you purchased last week? We’re sure they looked great on you. What brings you here today?”

Modern chatbots are thus capable of understanding emotions and other facets of human communication. A well-trained chatbot can learn from previous conversations and purchase data and improve the quality of its responses.

Streamlined Delivery

Businesses can use data analytics to improve the customer experience all the way up to delivery day. Predictive analytics helps merchants and their shipping partners assure on-time delivery as more customers seek next-day and same-day deliveries.

In 2013, Amazon came up with ‘Anticipatory Shipping’ - a predictive analytics model that would predict your purchase and send the product to your nearest warehouse. Then, Amazon would wait until the actual purchase. Amazon believed that this would drastically cut the delay from the time of purchase to the actual delivery and boost the overall company sales.

Thanks to Amazon, customers have also grown to expect real-time delivery updates. According to My Customer, 82% of consumers say that it’s important for them to receive updates during every stage of the fulfillment and delivery process.

Order tracking thus helps to alleviate anxiety by giving customers an ongoing touchpoint with the retailer. It helps to boost reassurance and satisfaction.

Customer Satisfaction Will Always Hold The Leash

In the competitive world of eCommerce, exceeding customer expectations is crucial for standing out in the market. And without the use of analytics, this is nothing more than a far-fetched dream.

With the right data and the right strategies, you can learn more about your customers, how they experience your brand and what improvements you can make. Make the required changes and continue monitoring the metrics. As you keep measuring and taking action, your customer satisfaction will continually improve.

Do you find yourself chasing down new customers because current customers aren't sticking around, and you need to keep your eCommerce business afloat? Is it a sustainable strategy to run your eCommerce business?

We hear you saying no because it actually isn't. It's time you need to focus on Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).

In this competitive narrative, you can't really go far by keeping on investing in getting NEW customers rather than keeping your OLD customers. What you really need to concentrate on is maximizing your revenue from your present customers. And this is where customer lifetime value comes into play.

According to Tim Cameron Kitchen - CEO of Exposure Ninja, "In order to increase your customer lifetime value, you need to pull two levers. One, increase the number of purchases. And two, increase the purchase value of each customer. And of course, a good business will have a combination of both of these levers."

We want your business to have high customer LTV. So we noted down a series of pointers that you could follow to increase your customer lifetime value and higher profits. Before we dive into the strategies, let's start with the basics.

What is Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)?


According to Omniconvert, "customer lifetime value (CLV) shows how much revenue a business can expect from one customer compared to how long the company predicts that customer will stay."

Customer lifetime value is an important metric for eCommerce brands to measure the average accumulating total of their purchase for some time.

Lifetime value helps you determine if your business will scale the ROI from marketing. It also helps you evaluate the retention strategy depending on how low or high your LTV is.

How To Increase Customer Lifetime Value

You can increase your customer lifetime value by either increasing your Average Order Value or Average Purchase Frequency. An increase in either of these metrics will rise Customer Lifetime Value. Apart from that, let's take a look at the other ways to increase CLV.

Improve Your Customer Support

Treating your customer right is the core to increasing customer lifetime value. According to Tim Han, an international speaker and author from success insider - "treating your customers like family is the key to recurring customers."

Now we're not telling you to turn a blind eye to their red flags and keep on supporting them. But we definitely recommend you to go a bit above to give them special treatments. In fact, according to research from PWC,  86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience. So enhancing your customer support is an absolute must.

A solid customer support strategy includes attention to the customer pre, mid and post-sale. Your customer support should cater to your customer at every stage of their buying journey. A great way to make sure your customer's queries are always answered in no time is by using an AI-powered chatbot. Having a live chat available can turn a customer question into a sale or complaint into a resolution. We recommend you check out MyAlice as their chatbot can actually automate your entire selling process from start to finish. And the best part is, MyAlice is completely free to sign up!

You need to make sure your customers are returning again and again for the delightful experience you provide.

Send out occasional gifts

Who doesn't like free stuff? Especially when it comes as a surprise from a place you shopped from. We find ourselves leaning towards shops that offer great discounts or free goodies in most cases. And that's because this is a psychological trick that all of us fall for.

Lippincott's creative consultancy provided a scientific and psychological-based study called the "Happiness Halo" - proving exactly that. In the "Happiness Halo," the author stresses, "Appeal to customers' reason and they're yours for a day. Appeal to customer's emotions, and they're yours for a lifetime."

And nothing is more solid than sending gifts to appeal to your customer's emotions. It shows them that you care about them more than just a means of getting some sales.

We're not telling you to send out gifts 365 days a year to every customer for every purchase. But rather, identify your loyal set of customers and potentially loyal customers, and then send out occasional gifts to show them you care.

Nudge Your Customers into Subscriptions

One of the most popular ways (that works) of increasing the number of purchases of your customers is by bumping them into subscriptions. They're one of the new trends of e-commerce. And they can be lucrative enough that we even see big names like GoPro getting into the subscription realm they previously didn't opt for.

You can nudge them into a subscription by displaying a subscription-biased pricing option of your product.

This basically means you will show the pricing option of a one-time purchase on one side. And on another, the pricing option is based on subscription. However, you need to show your customers how the subscription pricing will be more effective and profitable.

This will incentivize them to opt for the subscription rather than going for a one-time purchase.

Another way of getting your customers into subscriptions is by showing the subscription as the default purchase method. And if customers want to go for a one-time purchase, they need to click on that purchase method.

You can do to level up the subscription game by giving them an option to allow your customers to customize the time frame and the amount of product for the subscription. This way, they will not have too much stock of the product based on their lifestyle. And they are less likely to cancel the subscription altogether.

Integrate Add-ons and Upsells

Another great way to increase the average order value of your customers is by adding add-ons and upsells. Big names like GoDaddy GoPro have been using this pricing strategy for years now, which has helped them generate more sales.

Everything that you throw at your customers before and after purchasing the products is for one thing - increasing the order value.

And therefore, there's an increase in customer LTV. Some of your add-ons and upsells features may seem annoying to your customers. But it's a genius idea for your business.

Since you are competing in a very competitive and price-sensitive space, If you want to maximize your customer acquisition, you need to maximize the value of every customer you get through the door.

By doing so, you can save the money that you would have otherwise spent on getting new customers. So you can now invest it in other business activities. Like - marketing. Which will help you build market share without increasing the price of their core product.


— Introduce Premium Versions

Introducing a line of premium versions of the same product can incentivize your customers to opt for better options. But, you need to make sure you can present it in a manner that demonstrates why the premium versions are better than the regular ones.

That way, customers who always want the best of everything are more likely to opt for the premium purchase. The pricing of the premium product will also be higher than the regular, which may be a problem for some of your customers. In such a case, you can introduce split pay for that.

Now split pay is absolutely everywhere and another massive trend of e-commerce over the last few years. One of the biggest players in the split pay market -Klarna, claims to increase the average order value by up to 58%.

Split pay will help you get more sales for your premium products and end up increasing the average order value for your customers.

Drawing Conclusion: Loyalty Brings Revenue

The right customer lifetime value model can boost your company's growth and progress in many ways. It puts more money in your business's wallet by lowering customer acquisition costs and saving money on marketing and sales activities.

Delivering a great deal of value, understanding the customers being in their shoes, prioritizing customer service are what they need to come back to you again and again.

Learn More:

  1. How Customer Service Can Help Sustain Your E-Commerce Business
  2. How To Get Repeat E-commerce Customers: Encourage Them To Return For More

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