May 7, 2021
Social skips its way through the whole customer journey, impacting various touchpoints, from awareness right through purchase into advocacy. More importantly, you need to map the journey, in detail, if you hope to be able to deliver a consistent and much-needed customer experience.
And you do need to meet customers’ ever-growing expectations. Peoples’ behaviour has shifted and is more demanding of easy and frictionless interaction with brands. We are more inclined to abandon a basket when too much is asked of us, we are more likely to bounce from a product page and back to social surfing if the content is not relevant to the post we looked at.
Mapping the social journey is complex. It needs data insight, an awareness of how people move from one channel to the next, and an ability to keep the map and its touchpoints flexing as audience behaviours change. Where to start?
Well broad insights, industry data and sector research can really help point us in the right direction. So, here’s some great insight we think is useful when thinking about how your customers behave across the customer journey:
More fragmented journeys, but also more connected
People use search engines (52%), social media (43%) and customer reviews (37%) to research products the most.
84% of content sharing happens outside, on ‘dark’ channels like email, instant messenger and text.
There is business value in knowing the customer journey really well
74% of people use social media to guide buying decisions. For instance, before they’ll add a product to their baskets, they check peer reviews and comments.
74% of consumers are at least somewhat likely to buy based on experiences alone.
Consumers will pay a 16% price premium for great customer experience.
29% of social media users are more likely to make a purchase on the same day of using social media. And people who are influenced by social media are four times more likely to spend more on purchases.
81% of consumers’ purchasing choices are influenced by their friends’ posts on social media.
The disconnect between brands and their customers
80% of companies believe that they deliver outstanding social customer service, while only 8% of their customers say that they agree.
And audience expectations can be much higher than you think with 90% of customers expecting an “immediate” response to their support questions (10 minutes or less).
You need to cast your data net wide to understand your audience
96% of online conversation is unbranded, brand agnostic, research and scarily, 96% of unhappy customers never even let the brand know at all.
A good experience matters a great deal
71% of people who have had a good social media experience are likely to recommend the brand to others.
Marketers recognise the need for better brand experiences
81% of marketers expect to compete mostly (or entirely) based on customer experience.
83% of senior marketers feel that unimproved customer experience presents them with considerable revenue and market share risks.
Experience delivers results
Data shows a three times greater return with brand leaders in customer experience outperforming experience laggards when it comes to stock performance.
New functionality, formats and tech are driving consumer interaction through the journey
70% of customer interactions will involve emerging technologies by 2022, including chatbots.
Over 300,000 chatbots are currently active on Facebook Messenger to help consumers get quick answers to questions.
Content commerce is a growing trend. when asked if they would be open to purchasing products from Instagram if offered direct checkout, 58% of people are open to purchasing if Instagram offered direct checkout and 35% consider shopping via live stream appealing.
Of course, none of these stats beat proper social intelligence data that is specific to your sector, your business and your audiences. But it does spotlight the opportunities to investigate critical touchpoints and improve the customer journey.
And if you want to know how to take your journey map to the next level and deliver better customer experience, then do join the webinar this Thursday with the Co-Op, Business EQ and Sprinklr you get to hear how best to approach experience and ask questions. Get your guest pass at https://bit.ly/CXonSocial