This is a guest post from Ken Tantsura, the Vice President of Innovations at Customertimes.

Over the past eight years, customer acquisition costs have soared 222%. No wonder brands have to prioritize customer satisfaction and retention—especially since repeat customers spend 67% more than newcomers. How to get your customers to become your brand’s biggest fan? Is it all manual labor or can we address the biggest CX-challenges with some smart tools?

As every company in the market is actively looking for ways to improve customer experience and satisfaction, it’s about time to see how cutting-edge technology can streamline these processes. Ken Tantsura, the Vice President of Innovation at Customertimes, shares how to address customer experience struggles by leveraging the power of AI.

Reduce churn by implementing predictive analytics

Four out of five of your customers never return to your shop. The e-commerce customer churn rate sits around 80%, stunting revenue and raising acquisition costs. The good news is you probably already have the data to fix it. Tools for predictive analytics can draw actionable conclusions from a customer’s purchase history, engagement levels, and service interactions—and tell you whether the person’s likely to churn.

Once you’ve identified the unsatisfied customers and their issues, go all-out and personalize the customer experience to aid retention. For instance, if a customer’s engagement suddenly decreases, a well-targeted discount code on their favorite products can reignite their interest. Sometimes, all it takes is a proactive approach to stop your potentially loyal customers from finding a better deal elsewhere.

Drive conversions by utilizing dynamic content personalization

With a little help from AI, you can analyze visitors’ behavior as they browse your store—the pages they view, or products they buy—and tailor the content they see in real-time. If a customer has spent hours mulling over sporting goods, you want those items to be front and center the next time they visit, ideally, with a personalized promotion to sweeten the deal.

Ensuring customers see the products and offers they’re most interested in, your e-commerce company can far surpass the average online conversion rate of just 2.5%, with top-performing stores convincing twice as many customers.

Reduce returns thanks to virtual try-on technology

Of those customers you convert, 18% will return the goods, leaving you out of pocket. Web shops selling fashion items are paying the highest price: a quarter of all purchases are sent back. What’s to blame? Most of the time, it’s a mismatch between expectations and reality. Well, that’s often entirely avoidable.

Reliable virtual try-on technologies utilize augmented reality for your customers to try on outfits from anywhere. This way, a person can check out how a product looks on them before committing to a real-life purchase. The tech for this has been readily available for years—so it’s only a question of adoption. While many brands remain hesitant, those willing to set the trend will be rewarded with higher conversions and fewer returns.

Increase customer satisfaction with AI-powered support

Day or night, most consumers expect a response to questions or queries within an hour. If you miss the deadline, you’ll likely lose the sale. Thankfully, advancements in AI have led to the development of e-commerce chatbots that can take on the role of customer service agent when your human operators are unavailable.

These systems are now more than capable of handling common inquiries such as order tracking, basic troubleshooting, and pointing customers toward store policies, or escalating complex issues beyond their capabilities—and without delay. Receiving five-star service, customers who feel listened to and taken care of are far more likely to leave satisfied… but not before making a purchase.

Enhance engagement by personalizing your loyalty program

Traditional loyalty programs lack personalization, and if they’re not engaging, what’s the point? To fulfill their intended purpose—encouraging shoppers to return and spend—they need to leverage data such as purchase history, browsing behavior, and demographic information to offer each customer tailored rewards and incentives they care to receive.

There’s no value in offering eco-friendly shoppers a planet-polluting reward when they want sustainable gifts and discounts on green goods, for instance. In anything, the wrong offers make customers lose interest faster. If you want customers engaged with your brand and eager to spend, you can’t treat personalization as a luxury good; it needs to come with every visit, browse, and purchase.

As AI is here to stay, using it to improve customer experience beyond expectation can give your company exactly that much-needed competitive edge, be it by reducing returns, fighting customer churn, or enhancing engagement. In a crowded e-commerce market, customer loyalty is everything. Let the machines boost it for you.

This is a guest post from Ken Tantsura, the Vice President of Innovations at Customertimes.

About Ken

Ken Tantsura is the Vice President of Innovations at Customertimes, a leading digital consultancy helping businesses overcome their most complex technological challenges. 

With over 15 years of experience in the IT industry, Ken has consistently demonstrated his ability to combine deep technical expertise with strategic vision, leading diverse teams to achieve transformative outcomes. At Customertimes, Ken shapes the strategy and oversees the full lifecycle of the company’s product portfolio, driving innovation and delivery for flagship solutions such as CT Mobile, CT Orders, and CT Vision. In addition, he leads the Digital Engineering Practice, with a strategic focus on Automation and VR/XR technologies. He drives advancements in RPA and LLM-powered AI Agents to streamline processes and deliver cutting-edge solutions for clients. In VR/XR, Ken is spearheading the development of immersive training solutions and expanding the company’s expertise into the industrial Metaverse, positioning Customertimes as a leader in this transformative space.

Ken is driven by a mission to develop innovative solutions that revolutionize business workflows with modern, tech-forward approaches. A lifelong learner, he is particularly passionate about leveraging advancements in artificial intelligence and VR/XR to deliver exceptional value to customers and stakeholders.

Find out more about Customertimes here and feel free to connect with Ken on LinkedIn here.

Image credit: Photo by Nadine E on Unsplash