Happy customers come back for more and recommend businesses to other people. So it’s not surprising that companies are spending time and money on getting customer experience right.
Thanks to the last few decades of globalisation, it’s easier than ever to enter global markets and seek these happy customers in far-reaching corners of the globe.
While this can increase potential profits, it’s easy to overlook the fact that buying decisions and purchasing journeys might happen in very different ways, as your customer base becomes more diverse.
Going global
The challenge is tailoring the customer experience to each international market. Many of the fastest growing countries in the world are emerging economies, where fewer people have access to computers, with mobile purchases being more common.
For instance, some consumers have leapfrogged traditional banking and gone straight to mobile banking. Consumers who don’t have a bank account can now pay using mobile wallets.
In Africa, the M-Pesa mobile phone money service provides financial services to over 42 million people – more than the population of Canada. People use the app to send and receive money, make bill payments and receive their salaries.
In 2020, these consumers carried out over 12 billion transactions.
Getting the technology right
Appealing to every customer across diverse international markets, and getting the experience right for everyone, is tricky. Self-service apps for things like banking, loan applications and travel check-ins must work well on multiple platforms and with varying standards of internet connection. Connections between the web store and logistics systems must be unfaltering.
If consumers want to find out more about a product or service, they’re much more likely to want to speak to someone in their native language. Cloud-based voice solutions can help with this, letting businesses provide local inbound numbers from a centralised system. Calls then route to agents closest to the consumer. This means agents are more likely to speak the same language as the caller and have local knowledge of products and supply issues.
Globalising ethics
One thing that consumers around the globe have in common is concern about the ethical credentials of companies they buy from. Almost 9 in 10 (85%) of ‘future ready’ businesses say customers increasingly demand that brands act ethically or have a purpose.
But that social contract between consumers and the businesses they buy from is different depending on where you are in the world.
Consumers in Europe, for example, may have environmental concerns at the top of their agenda. They want to know about your carbon footprint. By contrast, in emerging markets, corporate social responsibility is often more focused on access to education or reducing poverty. For example, India made corporate social responsibility (CSR) mandatory in 2014, with businesses encouraged to invest their profits in areas such as education, poverty, gender equality and hunger.
The global marketplace is a massive and growing opportunity for ethical businesses. Cloud-based digital solutions are helping businesses give customers the best-possible experience wherever they are.
