Experience Without Engagement Takes E-Commerce Only So Far

Could proactive, real time engagement convert more of your visitors into customers?

The e-commerce environment is increasingly fragmented and complex, giving visitors multiple purchasing opportunities and pathways to pursue. And with conversion rates in the 2% to 8% range, it is clear most organizations are not fully capitalizing on the visitors that do make it to their sites.

Many visitors need and expect help from a knowledgeable sales representative, just like they would get in a physical store environment, to feel confident about their buying decisions. However, most companies don’t want to spend resources helping customers that they hope will buy anyway, or they think they can’t afford to help a customer with a low-priced product.

According to the 2017 Digital Trends Report survey conducted by Econsultancy and Adobe, marketing managers tend to be most concerned with creating valuable, personalized experiences for customers while also providing clarity and building trust. In fact, 96% of those surveyed point to data analysis as a core element of their approach to customer experience. However, in analyzing this data, most have missed a group of high-potential shoppers who still need live sales support at critical moments in their buying journey to complete their experience and maximize their spending. With the right approach, these customers can add significant lift in revenue and profitability.

The 11th Annual Accenture Global Consumer Pulse survey provides further evidence that traditional customer service and sales techniques are far from a thing of the past. While digital-only purchasing experiences are widely prevalent, the survey found that 65% of U.S. customers feel that in-store buying offers a more personalized buying experience. Similarly, the study revealed that 77% of U.S. customers prefer to deal directly with people when they need advice. This is too large a proportion of consumers to ignore.

The digital aspects of the e-commerce experience have been the focus of all the energy and investment—and for good reason—but for many e-commerce environments, an important piece of the puzzle is missing: providing potentially high-value customers with access to live support when they need it and ensuring that they have the information they need to move to a well-informed purchase.

This disconnect between the desire for a personalized, direct customer service experience and the realities of the digital-only journey has a critical impact on e-commerce revenue. At MarketLinc, it has been our experience that we are able to capture up to 20% more revenue by proactively engaging site visitors with live sales help.

For a segment of e-commerce visitors, an experience devoid of live engagement is not sufficient to guide them to a successful purchase decision. The solution is to engage customers with effective and impactful sales assistance at critical points in the buying journey. To profitably engage visitors in a way that drives incremental revenue requires harnessing the power of big data, advanced analytics, micro-segmentation, sophisticated engagement rules, optimized messaging, and accurate attribution reporting to know what’s working and what isn’t.

When businesses connect their customers to real-time human support, they move closer to the personalized, targeted experience indicated by the Accenture study. Reaching out and bridging the divide between digital-only isolation and real-world connection provides a distinct advantage that moves online shoppers closer to the ideal balance of convenience and connection.

The basic concept here is quite straightforward and simple: What isn’t simple is ensuring human engagement within the e-commerce environment is 100% accretive to the business. The challenge is knowing which visitors can be profitably engaged, how to effectively engage them, and having the attribution reporting to accurately measure incremental revenue lift at a micro-segmentation level. And you need to be able to execute on all of this in real time.

Many things have changed in our digital world, but the power of a human-to-human experience is as valuable as it ever was for many customers. Advanced technology and data analysis aren’t the only factors that drive success. Businesses that can leverage these powerful solutions in concert with a customer-centric sales experience can significantly increase revenue and customer loyalty. In today’s e-commerce environment, it is vital to target the segment of consumers who need live sales assistance and to do so in a strategic way that turns revenue lost into revenue gained with maximum ROI.