Welcome to the CX hell!
How was your last shopping experience? I asked the question in my non CX expert bubble. And guess what the most common answer was…If your guess has something to do with emotions, you got it right. About 2/3 of the answers included words like “made me nervous, felt excited, I was disappointed, I was satisfied”. So emotions. And this is what CX exactly is.
What is CX
CX is how you make your customers feel after an interaction with your brand. Regardless if it is online, offline or omni-channel.
Let’s go banana shopping
Think about your last shopping. Mine has been an online grocery shopping. And how I felt? Hmmm. Happy not to do it more than once a week.
Imagine that you want to buy a kilo of bananas. You need minimum 20 clicks to get them to your front door. Adding any additional item to your basket requires minimum 4 but probably as much as 6-8 further click depending on the number of pieces you want from the same product. Sounds wired. Yes, it is. So let’s check out how would these retailers score in CX!
CX score-card
There is a bunch of different definitions what makes a CX great. But more or less, there are 5-6 common parameters you can use to track and measure CX.
Effort
By this we mean how easy, fast and convenient the whole customer journey is to take. We are not talking only about the shopping itself, but about the entire process we are able as a brand to influence. Back to my online grocery experience, the shopping itself require more or less similar amount of time as doing it in person, unless I want to buy the very same products each week. It is neither as fast nor easy as I would expect.
Expectation management
Each customer has its own expectations and it is up to us as a brand to manage them. It includes communicating clearly the key aspects and terms of our service relevant for the customers and delivering on our promise. Online groceries tend to promote themselves besides being fast as a safe and reliable option to physical store visit. However, this is often not the case, at least based on my experience. What upsets me the most is when I order 30 items, but at the end I receive only 24 without warning.
Transparency
It meansgiving the customer trackable information not only during the shopping itself, but the whole process, including delivery, payment, returns, exchanges and much more. If you as a brand are aware that it is the shipping what drags down your CX score, it’s time to focus on this. So how are online grocery retailers doing in this aspect? Well, in my experience those using their own shipping service have currently an advantage over those relying on 3rd party.
Personalization
It doesn’t mean bombarding customers with personalised emails. It requires empathy, true work with data, engaging machine learning and AI. But putting yourself in the shoes of your customers, thinking with their head and heart is a must. I truly love when a brand is talking right to me and when is able adding a true value. Apart from being able to re-order my previous shopping basket, grocery retailers stop here for the time being.
Problem solving
In an ideal situation, you as a brand are able to predict a bunch of problems your customers might encounter during their journey. Taking a proactive approach will be appreciated by the customers. If this is not possible for any reasons, fast and professional response helps you to earn credit and improve CX. Online groceries are delivering extremely well in this in my opinion. Not disputing missing or low-quality items when reported by the customer and offering replacement and often extra shopping credit immediately.
So how did banana shopping score in CX?
All in all, there is a long way to go for the online groceries in Slovakia in order to be able to talk about an amazing CX. Nevertheless, this article was intended rather than making you familiar with the groceries, giving you a first impression on what CX is and what are the key aspects your customers consider. If you found this article helpful, stay tuned as more to come, including tips and tricks to get CX right!