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The world of retail and ecommerce has always been very competitive and challenging, even before the coronavirus happened. Consumers want the very best and will look elsewhere in most cases, after the smallest inconvenience or a negative experience.

While we won't overlook the added challenges that COVID-19 has brought for retailers, even that will not be enough excuse in the face of impatient shoppers with high expectations. Talking of challenges, here are a few of the issues many retailers have had to grapple with, in the wake of the coronavirus;

• Inventory shortage risks that could arise from possible disruptions to the global supply chain due to flight restrictions in certain countries and regions of the world as a response to the COVID-19 outbreak.
  
• Delays in customer shipments that may also occur due to a variety of reasons due to the current crisis.
  
• Reduced in-store visits as more customers may prefer shopping online to reduce public exposure to ensure social distancing, etc.

Whatever the case may be for your business, you’ll need a solid response to ensure business resilience, ensure smooth operations, complete with responsive customer experience and support.

Leveraging Customer Experience to Unlock Growth

Take this infographic from Unicomcorp, for example;

This infographic shows the grim situation that may play out when a retail business decides to neglect their customer experience, and the COVID-19 situation is unfortunately not an exception. While customers will likely share happy experiences with others, they are often more likely to share negative experiences with even more people.

While the coronavirus might bring on additional operational challenges, keeping customer services at close to 100% will not just make a difference; it can be the key to growth in this sector and at this time.

Leveraging Customer Experience to Win at Retail & Ecommerce

Customer experience is key across every industry.

If there’s a single industry where customer experience matters the most, it would no doubt be the retail and ecommerce sector. According to Statista, global retail sales in 2019 stood at $24.78 trillion. In the US, this industry is the largest private employer with about 29 million people directly or indirectly.

Graph showing retail sales since 2018 (Image Credit: Statista, 2020)

The ecommerce aspect of retail is also a key aspect for retailers to consider.

That sector, according to Oberlo, raked in $3.5 trillion in sales in 2019. While this represents a little over 14% of total retail sales, growth in this sector has been steady over time. Analysts expect this to rise to about 22% by 2023.

Graph showing ecommerce sales since 2017 (Image Credit: Oberlo)

The problem for most retail and ecommerce businesses is that they lack the deep pockets of large companies like Amazon and Walmart to assemble a stellar customer support team. There are dedicated and professional customer support agencies like One Contact Center for those who need to outsource support services.