In the past few years, we’ve been talking to customers about the issue of time. We’ve become acutely aware of the time that is being wasted on traditional e-commerce solutions.
SMBs are wasting enormous amounts of their team’s time, using a multitude of systems to cobble together an overall system to run their e-commerce business effectively. This time is being wasted making multiple systems talk to each other. It is also being wasted in trying to find the correct, up-to-date information on customers. Patchwork web and cart plug-ins only add further complexity and stress.
Wasting staff time is costly, and it impacts the business’s bottom line.
However, when businesses start wasting customers’ time, they move into a whole new universe of pain.
Customers who feel their time is being wasted by companies who don’t understand their needs, can’t find their information or put them on hold to “check another system” will go elsewhere to satisfy their needs and wants.
If a company churns through customers, its acquisition costs rise, its lifetime customer loyalty statistics fall, and it ends up in a world of pain when it comes to trying to scale the business. Business owners know that multiple systems also introduce multiple places where something can go wrong. Research around the globe shows that e-commerce is not working, with climbing rates of cart abandonment and product returns at all-time highs.
Customer Commerce is the solution to these woes. Customer Commerce can offer a scalable, affordable solution and move the business to a single system, where any staff member can find data on any customer and know it is up to date and correct. There will be no need to pay staff to get disparate systems to talk to each other.
Best of all, customers will love the fact that the company knows them, understands their needs and wants, and can answer any query they have quickly and correctly. In short, their experience will be far superior to the current “e-commerce” way of doing business.
The State of the Connected Customer shows us that providing this outcome for customers is going to be bZeneficial for SMBs:
- Eighty-eight percent of customers say good customer service makes them more likely to purchase again.
- Nearly half of customers — including three-fifths of millennials — are willing to pay extra for better customer service.
Happy customers become loyal customers, shooting a company’s lifetime customer value, NPS scores and retention rates through the roof.
Spending less on humans trying to make computer systems talk to each other will drive down staff costs.
Beyond the basics, Customer Commerce solutions also offer the ability to launch multiple stores, for multiple brands and across multiple time zones and languages. It allows real-time stock management and integration with POS systems. Meaning, a company can reach further into global markets both online and bricks-and-mortar, without adding any complexity to the Customer Commerce system that will be powering its business to the next level.
Prioritizing the customer and treating customers’ time like your own by moving to a Customer Commerce solution is the way forward for SMBs.
Mikel Lindsaar is CEO and founder of StoreConnect, 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.
Did You Know: StoreConnect (built on the World’s Number 1 CRM, Salesforce) 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 — with a manageable price tag. StoreConnect is Time. Well spent.
