Disconnected Data Leads to Disconnected Experiences

An eCommerce brand is only as good as its data

Heightened eCommerce competition means shoppers have higher expectations from the brands they purchase from. It’s the experiences that brands provide that can set them apart today and take a shopper from being a one-time purchaser to a lifetime brand advocate.

Shoppers understand what great customer experiences feel like. Characteristics of exceptional customer experiences include:

• Seamless: It’s simple and easy, from discovery to purchase, to make a purchase. The messaging, branding, and timing are all consistent — the brand is the point of contact and communicating personally throughout the buyer journey, online and offline.
• Personalized: The brand remembers important information, like product preferences, past purchases, birthdays, and more, from all the channels a shopper has interacted with.
• Engaging: It’s more than just easy to shop — it’s fun. The brand evokes a feeling of exclusivity, excitement, or anticipation that makes the experience worth remembering (and returning to).

On the flip side, shoppers also recognize terrible customer experiences. In fact, they often stick out as even more memorable than the good experiences, because good experiences are what shoppers have come to expect.

Characteristics of negative customer experiences include:

• Bad timing: Shoppers receive an email promotion or an abandoned cart reminder with a discount incentive after they’ve already made a purchase, leaving them disappointed and feeling like they overpaid.
• Generic messaging: The lack of personalization is a huge turn-off for shoppers. Especially when it comes to incorrect information, like ineffective recommendations or suggestions for products already purchased, shoppers have little patience for a brand that doesn’t care to tailor the experience to their needs and interests.
• Inconsistency: A brand should provide a customer experience that’s inherently consistent across all channels and communications. Ensure your communications don’t offer contradictory promotions and your brand isn’t unrecognizable as soon as a shopper leaves your site. As the adage goes, consistency is key (and inconsistency is the precursor to churn).

A bad experience is a disruption in a shoppers’ day — and it’s caused by disconnected data that’s siloed in point solutions.

Better experiences are powered by interconnected insights

A platform provides a single source of truth for the data collected from each of its solutions. That means data points collected via reviews (sentiment), data collected via your loyalty program (behavior), data collected via your SMS marketing channel (engagement), and more, are all integrated to provide one comprehensive view of a customer.

These complex insights better inform a brand’s marketing strategy, laying the groundwork for better, more informed, and more seamless customer experiences at every interaction point.

Conclusion

• Good customer experiences are a necessity: More eCommerce competition means brands have to provide better experiences to stand out from the competition, and good experiences are seamless, personalized, and engaging.
• Disconnected data leads to lost revenue: When data is disparate between point solutions, customers are left with fractured, negative experiences, resulting in higher churn and lower LTV.