Building great customer experiences

When it comes to building great customer experiences, there’s a lot for marketers to consider. We’re in ‘the age of the customer’, a time when businesses without a digital maturity model could fall behind.

Once upon a time products, services and their information were in the seller’s control. Nowadays the customer has choices. They have the ability to access hundreds of options in a matter of seconds. Technology gives power to the customer. And with that power, comes the need for marketers to build great customer experiences.

If you’re wondering, ‘What is customer experience?’ check out our blog post for an introductory guide.

Why is building great customer experiences important?

Customers have control over the buying process. The marketer should give every customer something extra. Marketing personalisation lets marketers treat each customer to a personalised experience. The reason marketers are focusing on the customer experience is because it gets results.

Some benefits of building great customer experiences include:

• Higher engagement
• Improved conversion rates
• Increased customer loyalty
• Improved brand perception
• Better return on investment

These benefits rely upon improving the interaction between your company and its customers.

Building great customer experiences with Sitecore

Sitecore 8.1 enables brands to use all customer data to provide a personalised experience, even to anonymous users of digital products. Real-time visitor tracking in Sitecore can identify browsing patterns. There are a number of Sitecore features that help build great customer experiences:

• Sitecore CMS – The Sitecore content management system (CMS) is feature rich and user-friendly. Content for users to engage is vital to building great customer experiences. With good Sitecore implementation, your CMS can be tailored to suit your content management style. Add content quickly, without any coding, to save time and produce more.
• Sitecore Experience Database – (xDB) Collect and store customer data from across your Sitecore installation in one place. Sitecore will use the data to personalise every aspect of the user experience and track their interactions. Further personalisation and marketing automation features, like the Email Experience Manager, feed off the customer data stored in xDB.
• Social media integration – The Sitecore architecture is built for easy integration with other systems. Enabling customers to sign in to your site with their social media logins can improve data collection as well as ease of use. Sitecore can also display your social networking activity such as blog feeds, polls and company updates. Sitecore makes it easy for users to share your content across social media.
• Cross-channel automation – Great enterprise website design needs to be mobile responsive to make sure that it meets the needs of modern users. Regardless what device a user previously used to access your site, Sitecore will keep track of their interactions. Sitecore will make personalised product recommendations across devices.
• Device detection and Geolocation – New Sitecore device detection features make building great customer experiences easy. Each visitor’s device data is stored in Sitecore’s profiling database (xDB). Sitecore IP geolocation helps identify users’ locations. It works with device detection to target local users with personalised content.
• Analytics – Sitecore websites have analytics features built right in. Use path analysis, testing and goal tracking to analyse user journeys. See the pages users visit and track emails they’ve responded to. Google Analytics and Sitecore Analytics work great side-by side. Sitecore is excellent for tracking individual user journeys. While Google is great for evaluating paid search and SEO. Learning a users’ behaviour helps you to personalise their experience.

How Kagool use Sitecore to help our customers build great customer experiences

We’ve helped our customer Fairtrade in building great customer experiences. We began with a complete website rebuild, which focused on getting more customer interaction. Moving to Sitecore gave them the flexibility to integrate with existing customer data. They also saw the benefit of social media integration and improving mobile user experience.

We’ve also created Sitecore microsites for Welsh Water, leading to better communication with customers and cost savings. Welsh Water needed a members’ microsite that would operate within their existing Sitecore installation. This gave them better access to customer data and helped streamline the user experience.

We migrated British Gypsum to Sitecore from an outdated CMS. This digital transformation project included the ‘White Book System Selector’. This is now a trusted online resource for builders, architects and designers finding the right products and tools for their job. Users can access the specific product specifications and download what they need faster.

What can Kagool do for you?

At Kagool, our team is made up of talented Sitecore developers, digital marketers and Sitecore SEO experts. We’re a top UK Sitecore partner with a Sitecore MVP. Our digital expertise helps our customers get the best from Sitecore features while building great customer experiences.

We believe it all starts with good Sitecore implementation. So if you’re an existing Sitecore customer, talk to us about Sitecore optimisation and get more from Sitecore.

If you’re new to Sitecore, ask us about a free Sitecore demo. Or find out more about Sitecore pricing.