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It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to build and maintain a dynamic web site that works flawlessly every moment of every day for every customer. Between implementing new content, changing technology, managing internal stakeholders, and designing for customers who have different objectives, learning styles, and backgrounds, you could never produce a 100 percent error-free site. After all, to err is human. And it’s no big surprise that online customers experience problems from time to time. We’ve all encountered them, whether it is difficulty logging into an account, adding an item to a shopping cart, navigating through a site, or getting a confusing error message. Yet, with the proliferation of message boards, blogs, and social networking sites, one poor customer experience can take on a life of its own, potentially damaging your brand and bottom line.
A 2007 Harris Interactive® poll on customer behavior reveals a high level of consumer intolerance for e-commerce failures and the “double threat” that these failures present to online businesses. This survey illustrates an alarming rate of web site issues — with nine out of 10 consumers experiencing difficulties online. To make matters worse, the same survey reports that 42 percent of consumers abandon their transactions when they experience online road blocks or simply switch to a competitor. In addition, the same survey uncovers a second threat to your business. Customer service centers are ill equipped to respond effectively to the needs of online customers. This poor level of service triggers a second wave of customer abandonment. Of consumers polled, 49 percent of those who contacted customer service after experiencing an online issue did not have the issue resolved, and a whopping 52 percent stopped doing business with the company as a result. Between web site glitches and bad customer service, an estimated $50 billion in potential consumer transactions are at risk throughout the remainder of this decade, in just the retail and travel industries alone.
While many companies believe they are delivering adequate online experiences, their customers are in pain. Why do most organizations miss the mark? According to Forrester Research, only 12 percent of respondents in a recent survey take a disciplined enterprise-wide approach to improving online customer experience. In other words, only few e-businesses are truly changing company culture by mobilizing the entire company around what matters most to the customer. Instead, the common scenario is that each department works in its own separate silo to solve online customer issues. IT folks look at online problems one way. The marketing department approaches these issues from a completely different viewpoint. And the contact center is left to interface with customers without sufficient information about the web site or common online customer issues.
Improving online customer experience requires organizations to have one view of the online customer and to utilize a common language when discussing customer experience. An effective Customer Experience Management (CEM) solution captures and records what each customer is doing and seeing in real time on every page and across all site visits. In doing so, a CEM solution gathers quantitative experience information about true customer behavior — information that is foundational to effective web site optimization efforts.
Often organizations use a CEM solution tactically to answer the “why” questions about their web sites: Why did so many customers abandon the credit card application on the second step rather than the first step? Why are customers searching for products multiple times and still not adding items to shopping carts? A more strategic approach is to convert this powerful customer experience data into a common language and use it to build a customer experience competency across your enterprise.
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