How can retailers and e-tailers step up their customer communications game this holiday season?

After two years of celebrating the winter holidays with masks, social distancing, and small gatherings, many customers are looking to this year with the hope of it bringing back some normality. This strong, shared emotion, intensified by the holiday spirit, can be a great opportunity for retailers to build trust in their brand. Retailers are geared up for the biggest annual shopping season – they have been preparing for months for the high volume of traffic, transactions, and customers expected this December.  

This year more than ever, it’s clear that those that deliver outstanding customer experiences (CX) at this key time will secure loyal customers that recommend the business, come back for more, and have long customer lifetime value (CLV). With mobile ecommerce expected to account for 6% of all global retail sales by the end of this year, they need a strong e-commerce strategy in place, and the right level of visibility, to successfully play in the online arena. This, combined with added pressures from the holidays – e.g. more customer service calls and support requests – intensifies the need for solutions to simplify customer communications so that they can operate efficiently, and provide a seamless CX.  

With 83% of shoppers stating that convenience is even more important now than five years ago, how can retailers empower themselves to remain successful in a highly competitive global market, and not miss out on the revenue opportunities of the winter holidays?  

If you are in this business and you want to make the most of the seasonal e-commerce opportunities, you can start by addressing some of these questions: 

• What is your current online marketing strategy? 
• How are you using digital marketing to communicate your value proposition?  
• What channels do you use to engage with customers? 
• What is the level of consolidation of the channels used? 
• Are you missing any e-commerce opportunities due to channel limitations?  
• How do you leverage communications technology to improve your CX? 
• What technology are you using, and what is the level of integration with your other systems? 
• How cost effective are your marketing and customer support operations?  

Answering all these questions can help to get your core digital strategy right, and turning to CPaaS may be the answer if the ultimate goal is to improve your customers’ experience whilst optimizing business processes, through the unification of your communications channels. Orchestrating global campaigns across different channels from one single platform can get costs down and simplify your outreach strategy during the season (and going forwards).  

In the current, digitally-driven retail world, automation has proven to be essential for providing seamless service delivery. Here are some ways in which CPaaS can help guarantee consistent communication, service delivery enablement, and customer support so that you maximize the festive sales for your retail business: 

• Maximize your conversion rates and ROI – Send reminders and real time alerts to decrease abandoned carts, and steer engagement with limited-time promo codes.  

• Optimize campaign operations – Send high-volume campaigns to your global customer base in a timely and secure manner. Simplify your business communications strategy by consolidating your channels, and getting an end-to-end view and control of your campaigns from one single platform.
   
• Leverage e-commerce opportunities – Reach customers on their favorite channels. Announce product launches or propose alternatives to out-of-stock items on any digital communication channels – from SMS and Voice to RCS, WhatsApp, and more.
   
• Build valuable relationships with customers – Use personalization and campaign performance insights to create unique brand interactions. Email customers with alternatives to a returned item, or a complementary product after they’ve made a purchase.
   
• Optimize your support services – Cut costs and optimize your agents’ performance by reducing inbound queries with automated delivery notifications, and the use of emerging technologies such as chatbots and IVR.  

Even though online shopping saw the largest growth in 2020, the numbers haven’t fallen back to pre-pandemic levels.  

The way in which brands engage with customers (how, where, and why they interact with them) has also become key to how a customer rates their experience with them – and providing great CX is needed to nurture loyal customers and healthy brand relationships.  

Customers are looking for tailored, simple e-commerce experiences. Businesses need a comprehensive, global solution to meet all of these customers’ demands for personalization, and seamless communications.  

Like in any relationship, you need -and most importantly, your customers expect- effective and transparent communications, the kind that CPaaS can seamlessly integrate into your business via APIs, plugins, and more.  

BICS CPaaS runs on our fully owned global network, which enables retailers to reach their customers anywhere in the world in a secure and reliable way – ultimately building customer trust and loyalty. Our comprehensive Campaign Manager allows them to orchestrate global campaigns without writing a single line of code.  

Retailers can make complex communication flows seem simple through one of the most comprehensive solutions on the market, which allows them to easily: 

• Create, preview, schedule, and send large SMS campaigns – with the option to split them into multiple bundles 
• Send personalized campaigns using predefined message templates 
• Share and track shortened URLs in the SMS, including smart URL links for multimedia content 
• Send test, flash, and unicode messages 
• Authenticate users with Verify 2FA 
• Bulk upload contacts, and batch schedule campaigns to be received at different times e.g. depending on the customers’ location (the intervals prevent the bulk traffic from hitting the server in one go, and ensure the campaign is seamlessly executed)
• Manage sender IDs and opt-out lists  
• Access account balance and pricing per destination 
• Access live campaign progress, campaign reports, and campaign history 

Is your retail business ready to deliver better experiences to your customers, no matter where they are, or what stage they’re at in their purchase journey? Talk to one of our experts to find out more about BICS CPaaS for retail.