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iadvize

Blended human and digital customer service tops investment focus for retailers

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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Capabilities that bridge the online/offline customer experience gap prove a key investment focus for UK retailers over the next two years.

That’s according to the latest report from iAdvize, which polled 50 senior UK retailers in its ‘Blueprint For The New Digital Store Associate In The Age Of Conversational Commerce’ report.

It says that with 40% of UK shoppers now wanting human interaction in the online buying process, customer service functionality that blends human and digital touchpoints made up four out of the top five investment priorities for retailers over the next 24 months.  

Almost two thirds (64%) of UK retailers plan to invest in live messaging capabilities with customer service agents – either through online messaging or chat functions.

In app customer service agents (37%), social media influencers (21%) and online brand ambassadors (19%) also featured in the top five investment focuses when it came to customer service. 

In the same way retailers are looking to deliver human interaction in online encounters, retail businesses also plan to use in-store staff to answer digital queries. Over half (58%) of the retail leaders polled as part of the research wanted to digitise store staff by giving them online capabilities, while two-fifths (40%) said they plan to use store associates to engage in digital conversational commerce when store footfall is light. 

Stuart Gordon, UK Country Manager at iAdvize, said: “Retailers realise that store staff need access to quality customer, stock and order insights in general, but even more so if they are going to make a valuable contribution to the online customer journey, successfully closing the customer experience gap.

“There is a growing realisation within bricks-and-mortar retail that physical stores need to focus on what pureplays cannot do, rather than trying to compete on their home territory of price, friction-free convenience and ease of delivery.  And that means unlocking human capital to offer quality insight, delivered with ‘emotional’ human interaction.”

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay 

Conversational marketing

Conversational customer relations to take centre stage in 2018?

 960 640 Stuart O'Brien
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New research for iAdvize indicates that conditions are ripe for so-called ‘conversational marketing’ to drive customer engagement across multiple industries in 2018.

The term is used to describe the use of messaging apps (staffed by both real people and chatbots) by companies as a means of communicating with customers, as opposed to telephone and websites.

iAdvize analysed how different UK sectors are using conversational marketing and the kinds of response and conversion trends they are experiencing.

In terms of conversion rate, the cultural goods industry takes the lead with 27.9% of visitors supported via messaging who finalise their order, slightly ahead of general retailers (22.3%).

Websites selling cultural goods are also the ones obtaining the best satisfaction rate  at 93.9%.

On average, it takes retail agents 11 minutes and 31 seconds to handle a chat conversation, with average retail messaging contact turnover of €52.70 per chat.

However, when it comes to gross return on investment, the transportation sector reaches the highest average turnover per contact at €354.10. It seems the sales agents are within transportation are the most responsive among the sectors studied, with an average 1st response given within 26 seconds.

It’s also the transportation sector that boasts the lowest conversation closing time. After the last message of a visitor, agents end a conversation within 2 minutes and 55 seconds, iAdvize says allows them to help other new customers who need their advice. In comparison, the average closing time across all sectors is 5 minutes and 23 seconds.

Finally, it’s the food industry which is most successful in terms of handling time (AHT) with an average handling time of 7 minutes and 46 seconds.

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