How to Improve the Customer Experience

You know that combining quality products with exceptional service is a recipe for success. It creates a competitive advantage that delivers immediate and long-term benefits, including happy customers who keep coming back and who bring others with them! 

This person-to-person chatter about businesses is known as word-of-mouth (WOM) advertising, and it’s a surefire method for bringing in even more customers. Electro IQ, a platform that provides expert-verified electronics, science, and technology data, notes that:

• 83% of shoppers trust friends and family recommendations
• 58% of consumers use social media to share their positive experiences with a business
• 82% of marketers use WOM to increase brand awareness
• 64% of marketers see WOM as the best marketing strategy for any business

What this tells us is that the customer experience (or CX) can make or break your business, so how exactly do you deliver exceptional CX? We have a few suggestions but before we dive in, remember that customer experience isn’t a one and done deal. It’s an ongoing relationship that needs your constant attention and care. Think of it as a garden. You can’t plant seeds once and expect them to grow. You have to nurture them, prune them, and water them regularly. 

Once you embrace this you’ll be ready to implement these six key strategies for creating a smooth, seamless, and cohesive relationship between your product business and your customers.

6 Key Strategies for Improving the Customer Experience

Real-Time Inventory Visibility

According to Cin7’s Consumer Research Report 2024, staying stocked up is a key factor in consumer spending and confidence. Fifty-four percent of shoppers told Cin7 that they would pay more for items that were guaranteed to be in stock and available immediately for delivery or pick up and 94% indicated that item availability influences where they shop. As a product business, your inventory is one of your biggest assets, and managing that asset effectively begins with knowing the answers to these five ‘W’ questions: 

1. Who is ordering your products?
2. What products do they want?
3. Where are your products located?
4. When do your customers want the products?
5. Why should your customers choose your products over those of your competitors?  

A comprehensive inventory management system (IMS) can help you answer these and other inventory-centric questions quickly and easily by providing sophisticated order management features and updated and real-time inventory visibility across all channels. With accurate inventory and customer data, you’ll avoid major pitfalls (such as promising what you can’t deliver or running out of stock), and in the process, calm the 91% of shoppers that get frustrated when items aren’t available while stopping the 71% of shoppers who will abandon their order when just one item is out of stock from doing so. 

Keeping on top of your inventory as well as understanding your customers inside and out will help you make smart business decisions that will ultimately earn your customers’ trust. 

Efficient Order Management and Fulfillment

Cin7’s research discovered another hot button issue for consumers: shipping. Shoppers expect fast, reliable shipping, with 71% reporting feeling frustrated when shipping delays occur and 80% saying that shipping times influence where they shop.

To ensure customer shipping expectations are met, you need to automate slow, error-prone manual processes with the automation capabilities provided by the right IMS. Automation will help you smoothly coordinate your fulfillment centers and communicate your product shipping and tracking information directly to your customers. 

Meeting—and exceeding—your customers’ demand for efficient ordering and fulfillment processes produces an unforgettable CX, forging strong bonds between you and your customers.

Accurate Demand Forecasting

Like a bee drawn to a flower for its sweet nectar, customers are drawn to your business for your specific products and, hopefully, for your exceptional customer service. But things can quickly take a sour turn if your products aren’t available when they enter your door or order online. Meeting customer demand is an—if not the—essential function of your business, and avoiding stockouts is key to keeping customers happy.

In the past, demand forecasting was often a guessing game. Using historical data, market conditions, and expert advice, businesses tried to figure out customer product demand over a certain period. The predictions stemming from demand forecasting were (and are) vital to businesses working hard to optimize their inventory.

Now, some modern IMS’s simplify demand forecasting with machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) functionality, offering fast, reliable insights for determining what your customers want and when they want it. By keeping your bestsellers in stock, your warehouse operations will run like a well-oiled machine, and, perhaps more importantly, you’ll be anticipating and satisfying your customers’ unique needs.

Seamless Returns Management

There are few—if any—people in this world who haven’t had to return an item to a store. From the wrong fit to poor quality to a change of mind, return reasons vary but the results of the return process shouldn’t. In other words, your customers should be able to return your product without jumping through hoops. An easy, transparent returns process helps turn a potentially negative experience into a brand-building opportunity that enhances customer trust and satisfaction. 

Integrated Sales Channels

In addition to inventory availability, shipping, and returns expectations, customers want sales channel options. These options include visiting a physical store, scrolling online, or checking out social media, and customers expect that they can use these sales channels interchangeably. This requires businesses like yours to deliver fully connected, work-together-seamlessly sales channels.

BigCommerce puts it this way: “This integration means customers can start shopping on a mobile app, check inventory at a local store, and complete their purchases in person while maintaining consistent pricing, promotions and service quality. The strategy transforms brick-and-mortar locations into hybrid spaces that complement digital channels through features like in-store pickup, mobile checkout and access to digital product information.”

Consistency across all sales channels builds confidence and loyalty, letting you check vital CX boxes in the process.

Responsive Customer Support

CX is predicated on fast, responsive support for orders, shipping, and returns (which automation can provide), but customers want to interact with people who care about them, their needs, and their wants. Such personalized care serves to connect your customers to your business and makes them feel truly valued. Emotions play a huge part in the decisions we make every day, and feeling appreciated goes a long way towards encouraging customers to come back for more.

As technology continues to expand its reach and effectiveness (up to and including responding to customer service requests and questions), it’s important that you don’t let the many benefits of automation negate the importance of the human touch. 

Real-World Scenario and How Cin7 Helps

Let’s say that your product business is doing great, with products flying off the shelf. You’re happy, and your customers are happy. But what happens if you run out of your product? Nobody’s happy.

You need a robust IMS for all-in-one inventory visibility that syncs inventory across every sales channel. The IMS must offer efficient order management that automates and centralizes order processing, reduces errors, and speeds up fulfillment and provides an AI-powered demand forecasting tool that gives you predictive insights so that you stock the right products at the right times, helping you reduce lost sales in the process. 

You need Cin7.

Our comprehensive IMS delivers the inventory, order, and demand forecasting capabilities you need to keep operations running smoothly and customers fully satisfied. Cin7 also equips you with automated and streamlined returns management, allowing for easy tracking and quick refunds. And our seamless omnichannel integration unifies e-commerce platforms, marketplaces, and physical stores into a single, comprehensive solution. 

For Yuvi Foods, implementing Cin7 has been a transformative, CX-improving experience. Kush Naidu, founder and managing director of the Australia-based specialty foods brand, tapped Cin7 as Yuvi Foods’ IMS with the goal of making it the core of their business operations as well as to digitize order processes.

Naidu says they’ve met their goal, and it’s been an inventory and customer support game changer ever since. “We can tell customers, ‘That’s not in stock, but there’s an order in the system coming,’ and that’s important.”

With Cin7’s inventory visibility, efficient order management, accurate demand forecasting, seamless returns, integrated sales channels, and responsive customer support, you have the tools you need to offer your customers outstanding CX. To learn more, contact us for a free demo.