There are three critical elements every online holiday shopper expects this year. If you don’t meet them, they likely won’t buy with you, not now in the holiday season, or in the new year either.
Chances are if you are shopping for the holidays, you are buying at least in part online. Per USA Today, this year’s Cyber Monday booked $3.45 billion in sales, representing 12% growth for Cyber Monday sales in 2015. Capturing this business becomes a crucial point to remain competitive moving forward, whether you sell rootie-toot-toots or rummy tum tums.
A survey by CFI group, global leaders for providing customer feedback, conducted a holiday retail report sponsored by Radial, an Omni channel commerce technology and operations provider. The report found three features online shoppers deemed most critical to earning their business:
- Many return options, including in-store and shipping options; 87% said having multiple return options would make them more likely to buy a product online
- Loyalty Programs with special promotional offers; these incentives influence 93% of customers to sign up.
- Effective security alerts, with accurate fraud alerts; 67% of shoppers said they would either never shop there again (27%) or would be reluctant to buy there again (40%) after their legitimate purchase was tagged as fraudulent.
(To download and read the CFI Group’s the full report sponsored by Radial, please click here.)
Meeting Expectations Isn’t Always Enough
These results show us what the customers say their expectations are for their online shopping experience. Customers expect easy return options, real incentives for bothering to sign up for a loyalty program, and that you know the difference between them, a loyal customer making a legitimate purchase and an imposter. Underestimate the importance of these expectations at your peril as they have a significant influence on the success of your Customer Experience.
But here’s where meeting expectations can get a bit dodgy. Sometimes, even if you meet these expectations, it might not be enough. Some brands have a certain reputation for going above and beyond in customer service. If expectations were met but not exceeded in an interaction with this type of brand, then the customer could still feel disappointed. They feel unsatisfied with their experience because it wasn’t extraordinary enough.
However, it could also be that even though these three features are what the customers say they want, they aren’t what they really want. For example, the incentive for the loyalty program could be a good discount. However, if the members discover there are other ways to get that discount, then it isn’t an incentive. It doesn’t feel exclusive. That means that even though customers say they want a real incentive, what they want is a real incentive that ONLY members of the loyalty club can get. It is the job of the organization to find out what those things the customer wants—and then make sure they get them.
Understanding What Affects Customers Behavior is Imperative
It all comes down to having a better understanding of what influences customers to do what they do. The principles of behavioral economics, which is the study of how psychology affects human behavior concerning buying decisions, provide this knowledge. My latest book, co-authored with Professor Ryan Hamilton, includes seven imperatives to help you achieve this understanding. The sixth imperative is: Accept that apparently irrelevant aspects of your Customer Experience are sometimes the most important aspects. Understanding how your customer makes decisions is an important part of identifying these seemingly irrelevant aspects of the Customer Experience.
Expectations are something you can count on at the holidays and the rest of the year too. Per online shoppers, these three things are on their list, and they are checking them twice. But it’s up to you to get the understanding you need to discover if you are delivering holiday magic to their online experience or presenting them a lump of coal.
Learn more about the psychology behind customer behavior and other compelling concepts for business, in our latest bookThe Intuitive Customer: 7 Imperatives for moving your Customer Experience to the next level (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
If you enjoyed this post, you might be interested in the following:
Industry Secrets Leaked: Predicting Customer Behavior
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Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world’s leading Customer experience consultancy & training organizations. Colin is an international author of five bestselling books and an engaging keynote speaker.
Follow Colin Shaw on Twitter @ColinShaw_CX