Top 4 CX Challenges in the Consumer Electronics Industry and How to Handle Them

The Consumer Electronics industry in India, which was valued at $10.93 billion in 2019, is expected to reach $21.18 billion by 2025, clearly indicating that the expected growth is humongous. Most of the growth can be attributed to the constant changing and upgrading lifestyle of individuals, increased demand from households, and easier access to credit facilities. Apart from this, there is also a hike in the demand from the rural market as the government continues to invest significantly in electrification and access to the internet.

Consumers now have multiple options to choose from and this has led to multiple growth challenges for consumer electronic companies. The final buying decision for any appliance is dependent on multiple factors including initial awareness, ease of purchase process, online reviews, past experiences with the brand, its value, and much. Hence, the companies have to protect their existing market share and also plan to grow in the face of such uncertainty. CX is going to play the role of key differentiator here and hence, the need for investing in a great customer experience across the buying journey is more important than ever. Companies are forced to rethink and recreate their CX strategy across the various touchpoints in the customer journey right from creating awareness to promoting loyalty and explore the adoption of disruptive technologies to maintain a competitive edge.

Do you know – Worldwide spending on CX technologies is expected to reach $641 billion by 2022 (As per the IDC report).

In this blog, we’ll cover a few of the key challenges that companies are facing and their solutions.

• Driving Customer Loyalty:

Considering the fact that most consumer electronics companies sell more than one product, for brands to get maximum revenue from each customer, they’ll have to ensure customers consider them first before going to a different brand. How can companies do that? By promoting customer loyalty. Unfortunately, most consumer electronics companies in the industry are struggling when it comes to driving customer loyalty.

A recent McKinsey study showed that the average loyalty of customers for the industry is less than 20 percent which is considerably low.

How to tackle:

Today companies cannot buy customer loyalty just by giving offers or discounts but instead, they need to focus on delivering great service and effective communication. In fact, in a recent survey conducted by Vernacular.ai, over 80 percent of the respondents mentioned that the above two factors play a critical role when buying from the same brand.

Here are a few steps they can you can take to drive customer loyalty-

• Proactive communication strategy especially in cases of services, replacement delays, warranty, etc
• Transparency while resolving customer queries or servicing their products
• Using customer data like customers’ feedbacks to make necessary changes to your products and services.

• Enriching Retail Touchpoint CX:

Retail touchpoints still are very important and can’t be ignored. In fact, about 75 percent of consumers still prefer to visit an exclusive brand outlet (EBO) or a multi-brand outlet (MBO) to evaluate and compare brands. On average, customers visit two EBOs before making a final purchase and the reason is that live demos, physically viewing, touching, and experiencing products are important and influential at the moment of purchase. Few challenges faced by customers in finding a brand outlet and knowing more about a product from the store are:

• Finding the nearest brand outlet – Most of the information available on the website or google searches is scattered and outdated.
• Schedule an appointment – Consumers usually need to schedule a visit manually by speaking with the store owner.
• Effective Communication – There are very limited channels that consumers can use to communicate with store owners.

How to tackle:

To solve the above problems, companies need to create a simplified mechanism for customers to get all relevant information at ease.  It has to be something that’s suitable for both, tech-savvy and less tech-savvy individuals.

• Superior Post Sales Product Servicing Experience:

One of the biggest nightmares for customers is to get their products serviced. Where most companies promise to service within a few days, the process ends up taking weeks together and this delay not only creates frustration among users but negatively impacts their brand perception. The reason for the same is, a lot of brands have outsourced their servicing to third-party companies. This has created a communication gap.

How to tackle:

To provide their customers a seamless service experience, companies need to streamline the process. They should first try to make it easy for the user to schedule a service request. One method to do this is by using a single number for scheduling a service appointment, updates, and learn other information as multiple numbers can create confusion and make the process even more cumbersome.

• Driving customer-centricity:

In the mission to increase their sales, consumer electronics companies have forgotten the importance of being customer-centric. The customer experience provided by most brands post-sales is significantly deteriorating as they take after-sales service as a cost and keep cutting the corners. Brands often forget that a bad experience in claiming a warranty directly impacts key metrics like lifetime value (LTV) and retention.

Today, for brands to succeed, they need to line up their organizations in accordance with the customer’s needs across the various touchpoints. They are required to create those “WOW” moments that customers may cherish for the future. Getting a product replaced/repaired or claiming a product warranty without any hassles with minimum brand interaction is a few of some examples.

Here are few advantages of a customer-centric approach-

• Increase in the CLV – Customer Lifetime Value
• Edge over competitors
• Boost the number of loyal and profitable customers

To avail these advantages, companies need to thoroughly understand the behavior of different customer segments and making necessary changes to their approach.

• Voice bots and CX:

Voice bots can be used to schedule servicing/demo bookings, locate nearest retail outlets, knowing the status of a product replacement request, and much more. The implementation of voice bots in industries like banking, food & beverages, e-commerce, etc has resulted in increased CSAT scores and a reduction in call handling times.

Conclusion:

It’s crystal clear that apart from creating quality products, consumer electronics companies need to focus on the customer experience. It’s the single most important element that will differentiate their brand from the competition.

Investing in providing a great experience at every stage would not help retain more customers but enhance their overall revenue as well. It goes without saying that automation and the latest technology will play a critical role in helping them achieve these goals and balance human and automated interaction.

In case you wish to deliver superb CX to your consumers, you may book a meeting with us to understand how we have helped consumer electronics companies reduce their customer support costs by up to 75%  or you may reach our sales team @ 9643303884

Author Profile

Varuna Raghav

As a CX and marketing specialist, Varuna Raghav has more than 15+ years of experience to her name. Her enriching input has been valuable to the brands and organizations she's worked with.

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🔗 Tags: Top 4 CX challenges in the Consumer Electronics Industry, Top Consumer Electronics industry in India

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