As retailers gear up for Black Friday, what can they do to deliver a great retail customer experience and encourage sales?
Our digital first culture is shaping expectations – for personalised experiences that delight and engage – whether we’re chatting to family and friends or booking a restaurant, rescheduling a delivery, or making an online purchase.
Our smartphones are beside us constantly – and we expect businesses to let us choose exactly where, how, and at what pace to engage with them. We also want to make our digital transactions as simple and as efficient as possible.
This means that the pressure is on for organisations of all sizes and across all sectors to move from one-way interactions to the seamless, two-way personalised experiences we have all come to expect.
As retailers gear up for Black Friday, what can they do to deliver a great customer experience and encourage sales?
Finding new ways to engage with customers on mobile — particularly through chat via text/SMS or rich messaging apps such as WhatsApp — needs to be a critical part of any Black Friday strategy.
According to our research, which saw us poll 1,000 people across the United Kingdom, 79% of consumers would consider purchasing a product from a company as a result of a marketing message received via text/SMS or WhatsApp, with notifications of a sale, one-time discount or a back in stock alert being the most likely messages to attract attention.
In addition, one in three of us would prefer to contact customer service via text/SMS or WhatsApp, which highlights the need for businesses to adopt a full multi channel presence.
With current research also suggesting that 48% of people are on their phone between four and eight hours a day, with seven in 10 of us checking any unread notifications in less than five minutes, WhatsApp and other rich messaging channels offer one of the quickest ways to engage with customers.
Just as brands have worked to make emails personalised, they can now create highly targeted Black Friday experiences through messaging. Rather than simply sending out a generic discount code to everyone, consider sending images of products your customer has browsed recently, offering the same discount based on their personal preferences.
In the quest to enhance brand awareness and convert average customers to engaged customers that keep coming back for more, bringing their friends, and recommending you to others, text/SMS and other rich messaging can really shift the dial.
Deliver and delight with an excellent retail customer experience
Black Friday 2022 and the holiday shopping beyond will once again prove testing for many retailers. Those that move from reaction mode to focus on customer engagement across multiple channels, using customer data to inform an on-demand and frictionless customer experience, have a very real chance of standing out from the digital crowd.
That’s exactly what is covered in our webinar, Black Friday: Tips to boost sales and build customer buzz. Held in collaboration with UK ecommerce association IMRG, hear from industry experts as they break down the key statistics from our 2022 Digital Shopping Habits survey and discuss the secrets to a successful Black Friday.
Sign up to watch the webinar via the button below.
Mary Henry
Mary has extensive experience in communication, PR and journalism - most recently across SaaS businesses. A keen researcher and storyteller, Mary is highly skilled in making complex concepts accessible, and in putting customers at the heart of her communication. She has supported all kinds of businesses to tell their brand, product and people stories - from global multinationals to start-ups across retail, travel/leisure, banking/finance, government and educational institutions.
