As the driving influence behind their startup or SMB, entrepreneurs often feel things could be moving faster than they are. Apart from the macroeconomic issues of inflation and interest rates driving up business costs, it is internal issues that are hindering the business from gaining speed.
One of the key traps SMB owners fall into is trying to race the big boys on their track. That track is a volume game, and it isn’t a game SMBs can win. In implementing e-commerce strategies, it isn’t possible to mimic the big boys by making the customer experience “technology-first.”
The problem is that customers then see no difference and they flock to the big company websites.
For example, research by Amazon in 2021 showed that Amazon continues to be the first place consumers look for product information, with 75% of consumers saying they check prices and product reviews on Amazon before making a purchase. Consumers feel they will get a better deal. If SMBs choose to copy the experience, the consumer will treat the whole market as a commodity and select the best deal, not the best experience.
And yet, experience does matter — it is just the consumer isn’t seeing any difference. Research shows that millennials, for example, definitely prioritize experience over “things.”
As SMB owners, entrepreneurs should be all about the human experience. That is where they have the advantage — knowing and providing personal, individual service to customers.
E-commerce, to date, has favored technology first, and customer service second.
Entrepreneurs can’t afford the bespoke systems, so they cobble together dozens of dis-related SaaS solutions and plug-ins — and then they get caught in the time and money wasted getting these systems to talk to each other, all the while customers are getting frustrated because they can’t seem to find business’s information or show any proof the business cares about them or knows them.
I commissioned a significant amount of research on this topic and found SMBs can recapture the high ground on customer experience by finding a single system that can do it all.
This single-system philosophy — where there is one source of data about the customer, which enables entrepreneurs to personalize their experience and communicate with them as an individual — is what they have been looking for. If they can provide a better experience, customers will buy from them. They will keep buying and stay loyal for longer.
I coined a new phrase for this new single-system concept: Customer Commerce. Customer Commerce can be seen as a solution to the time- and money-wasting issues entrepreneurs have been facing.
The approach to implementing Customer Commerce is as follows:
- Choose a single platform, single source of truth, system. This will deliver a better experience for the customer and streamlined ease of data access for the business’s staff.
- Choose a system that integrates all the functions of CRM, stock management, point-of-sale, finance and dispatch. This way, the business’s team will be able to handle all customer interactions and find data more easily.
- Choose a system that has capabilities for multiple stores, in multiple regions — allowing for scale and expansion without adding time and costs to the business.
- Having implemented a Customer Commerce platform, redeploy staff to higher-value customer-facing roles and improve front-of-house customer experience even further.
The outcome will be entrepreneurs releasing the brakes on their business and improving customer experience and operational profitability.
Mikel Lindsaar, CEO and founder of StoreConnect, is an experienced technology entrepreneur whose mission is to infuse small and medium-sized businesses with the power to implement a successful Customer Commerce strategy whilst scaling to meet growing demand.
Small businesses are often driven by a purpose to help their customers, not just to make money. However, they can’t waste time and money setting up their business on a platform only to repeat the process by changing platforms when they want to scale, nor do they want to waste time figuring out how to integrate multiple platforms. They are seeking to provide a seamless experience for their customers, and this is possible using StoreConnect.
StoreConnect (built on the world’s No. 1 CRM, Salesforce) gives clients a complete, powerful, configurable Customer Commerce solution where they can manage their website, online and in-store sales, provide amazing customer service, run all their digital marketing campaigns, and have up-to-date detailed metrics, reporting and full understanding of their customer.
Did You Know: StoreConnect was awarded Salesforce’s 2021 International Partner Innovation Award of the Year for the Retail sector and is changing the ease with which small businesses are run.
