Creating a memorable customer experience strategy is no longer optional.
Customer experience (CX), as an integral part of your business strategy, is a must.
It’s how you win over competition, win over your customers’ hearts, and make sure your eCommerce doesn’t just survive in the current European context, but thrive.
Here’s your A-to-Z guide to building a customer experience strategy that’ll turn your eCommerce into a success.
It's a pretty wild space out there in European eCommerce, and competition is fiercer than ever. Not only are there a lot of competitors in virtually every niche imaginable, but cross-border eCommerce has become very popular, which means you're not just "fighting" against locals, but businesses in at least a handful of other countries. In 2024, cross-border eCommerce in Europe has grown by more than 30% YoY.
The real winners aren't the ones with the biggest names, though. They are the ones who know what customers want -- and deliver it to them flawlessly.
So... what do customers want from their e-shopping providers, really?
Convenience, lower prices, and faster service remain top priorities for eCommerce customers across Europe, according to a recent study from Nexi Group. Sustainability in eCommerce is a rising power too, with more than 50% of respondents saying they'd like to see merchants reduce their packaging. In some countries, this expectation is even stronger, like Italy (66%) and Austria (62%), for example.
Creating exceptional customer experiences presents significant challenges that can derail even well-intentioned efforts. Cross-border or not, eCommerce in Europe can feel like a battlefield mined with rising customer expectations.
It's not a battle you have to lose from the get-go, though. Au contraire, understanding these obstacles is the first step to not just overcoming them, but gaining a real competitive edge too.
Here are some of the high-level issues you should consider fixing if you want to build the perfect customer experience for your e-shop.
One of the most pervasive barriers to excellent customer experience is organisational silos.
When marketing doesn't communicate with sales, when customer service operates independently from product development, and when data lives in disconnected systems, the customer suffers. They're forced to repeat information, experience inconsistent messaging, and navigate a fragmented brand identity.
Breaking down these silos requires cultural change, integrated technology platforms, and a unified commitment to putting the customer at the center of every decision.
Many organisations struggle with customer experience because they're working with outdated or incomplete tools.
Legacy systems that can't integrate, analytics platforms that provide data without actionable insights, or customer relationship management software that creates more work than it eliminates all contribute to a subpar experience.
The right toolkit needs to be comprehensive, integrated, and designed to support the entire customer journey rather than isolated touchpoints.
Perhaps the most frustrating challenge is what happens when personalisation goes wrong. We've all received emails addressing us by the wrong name, product recommendations that make no sense, or "personalised" messages that are clearly mass-produced.
This "impersonal personalisation" (as we like to call it) occurs when companies focus on the mechanics of customisation without understanding the context, preferences, and genuine needs of their customers.
It's personalisation in name only, and customers can spot it immediately.
In other words, using "Dear [Name]" in your newsletters is all fine and well, but it won't really create rapport with your customers, nor will it "get" them just when they're ready to buy. Proper personalisation incorporates market research, segmentation, and brilliant copywriting and design. It's an investment, sure, but one that will pay off. And soon.
Investing in customer experience isn't just about making customers happy—though that's certainly a worthwhile goal. A well-executed CX strategy delivers measurable business outcomes that directly impact your bottom line.
Customers who have positive experiences become loyal advocates who return again and again. In an era where acquiring new customers costs significantly more than retaining existing ones, loyalty becomes a competitive advantage.
A strong CX strategy builds emotional connections that transcend price comparisons and feature checklists, creating relationships that withstand competitive pressure and market fluctuations.
The revenue impact of customer experience is well-documented and substantial. Satisfied customers spend more, purchase more frequently, and are less price-sensitive.
They upgrade to premium offerings, explore additional product lines, and maintain relationships over longer periods. Each improvement in customer satisfaction translates directly to revenue growth, making CX investments some of the highest-ROI initiatives a business can undertake.
Do keep in mind that customer satisfaction and customer experience are not always one and the same. Here’s a guide explaining the difference between customer experience vs customer satisfaction (and why this is important).
Happy customers don't keep quiet. They share their experiences with friends, family, and increasingly, with thousands of followers on social media.
This organic advocacy is more trusted and more effective than any paid advertising campaign. A strategic approach to customer experience transforms satisfied customers into a marketing force, generating referrals, positive reviews, and social proof that attracts new customers and reinforces your brand reputation.
Creating exceptional customer experiences requires specific capabilities and approaches. These aren't hidden secrets—they're proven strategies that leading brands implement consistently.
Every interaction with a customer should be informed by complete knowledge of their history, preferences, and context. A unified customer view consolidates data from all touchpoints into a single, comprehensive profile.
When a customer contacts support, the agent should know their purchase history. When they receive a marketing email, it should reflect their browsing behavior. This unified perspective eliminates friction, prevents frustration, and enables truly relevant interactions.
Strategic automation enhances customer experience by ensuring consistency, speed, and scalability. Automated workflows can trigger timely communications, route customers to the right resources, and handle routine tasks that don't require human intervention.
The key is implementing automation thoughtfully—using it to eliminate pain points and free human resources for high-value interactions, rather than creating robotic experiences that frustrate customers.
Genuine personalisation goes far beyond inserting a customer's name into an email template. It means understanding individual preferences, anticipating needs based on behavior, and adapting experiences to match each customer's unique context.
Done right, personalisation feels natural and helpful rather than intrusive or creepy. It requires sophisticated data analysis, thoughtful implementation, and constant refinement based on customer response.
Today's customers move fluidly between channels—researching on mobile, purchasing on desktop, seeking support via social media, and receiving products at their doorstep.
An omnichannel approach ensures consistency and continuity across all these touchpoints. The experience should feel seamless whether a customer engages via email, phone, chat, social media, or in person. Information should flow between channels, and the brand voice and values should remain constant regardless of medium.
Exceptional customer experience lives in the details. It's the follow-up email confirming an order, the packaging that protects a product and delights upon opening, and the accurate tracking information that reduces anxiety. It's especially evident in the final stages of the customer journey—the last mile that can make or break the entire experience.
This is where solutions like Postis become invaluable. As a last-mile delivery solution, Postis addresses one of the most critical touchpoints in the customer journey: getting the product into the customer's hands in a way that's transparent for them and for you.
The delivery experience can either reinforce all the positive interactions that preceded it or undermine them entirely. Real-time tracking, accurate delivery windows, professional handling, and responsive communication during this final stage ensure that the last impression is a positive one, completing the circle of excellent customer experience.
Creating a strong customer experience strategy requires careful planning and a focus on every touchpoint in the customer journey.
Understanding your competitive landscape is essential before crafting your own strategy.
This kind of competitive intelligence provides context for your own strategy and helps you set benchmarks for success. Don't aim to simply match competitors—seek to identify where you can deliver meaningfully better experiences that create genuine competitive advantage.
Create a comprehensive map of every interaction a customer has with your brand, from initial awareness through purchase, onboarding, ongoing use, and potential advocacy or churn.
Document each touchpoint, the channels involved, the emotions customers experience, and the pain points that emerge.
This mapping exercise reveals strengths to amplify and weaknesses to address. It also illuminates connections between touchpoints that might not be obvious, like how a confusing checkout process might lead to support calls, or how excellent onboarding reduces future service requests.
The customer journey map becomes a foundational document that informs all subsequent strategy decisions.
Go beyond assumptions and gather real data about what your customers need and want. Conduct surveys, interviews, and focus groups.
Analyse support tickets to understand common problems. Review social media mentions to gauge sentiment and identify recurring themes.
Make sure you distinguish between stated preferences and revealed preferences by examining actual behavior alongside feedback. Look for patterns across customer segments and identify where needs differ between groups.
Also, remember that this research should be ongoing rather than a one-time exercise, as customer expectations evolve constantly.
Empathy maps help teams develop a deeper understanding of customer perspectives by documenting what customers think, feel, say, and do in specific situations. More even, empathy maps also help break down internal silos by creating shared understanding across departments.
Create empathy maps for your key customer personas and critical journey stages, and ask yourself questions revolving around the human nature of your customer interactions:
By visualising the customer's emotional and cognitive experience, teams can design interactions that address real needs rather than assumed ones.
Establish specific, measurable definitions of what success looks like for customer experience. These goals should connect to business outcomes while remaining focused on the customer.
At a bare minimum, define target metrics for:
Do make sure these goals are realistic but ambitious, and that they're communicated clearly across the organisation. Everyone should understand not just what you're trying to achieve, but why it matters and how their role contributes.
Translate your strategic vision into concrete tactical goals with allocated resources. Determine what investments are needed in technology, training, process improvements, and personnel to deliver on your customer experience ambitions.
To get your budget approvals on the table, remember to:
Remember when we talked about impersonal personalisation being a major issue in building great customer experiences?
That's precisely why it's important to develop the capabilities to deliver experiences that feel uniquely relevant to each customer. Implement systems that capture and use customer data ethically and effectively.
Some of the things you can do here include:
The goal is to make each customer feel understood and valued as an individual rather than as a demographic segment or transaction. This personalisation should feel helpful rather than invasive, and customers should have control over their data and preferences.
Audit every customer touchpoint to ensure it delivers a positive, brand-consistent experience:
Remember that one poor experience can undermine multiple positive ones, so every touchpoint matters.
Empower customers to find answers and solve problems independently by building robust self-service capabilities.
For example, you could:
These technologies should provide immediate assistance for straightforward needs while recognising when issues require human intervention.
The key is balance: self-service should be an option, not a barrier. AI chatbots are excellent for answering frequently asked questions, providing order status updates, or guiding customers through simple processes.
However, human interaction should always be readily available for complex issues, sensitive situations, or when customers simply prefer speaking with a person.
The best approach offers multiple paths to resolution, allowing customers to choose the level of support that matches their needs and preferences.
Customer experience isn't owned by a single department—it's a company-wide responsibility. Everyone from product development to finance to operations plays a role in shaping customer perceptions.
To that avail, work to:
When customer experience becomes a shared priority rather than a departmental initiative, meaningful transformation becomes possible.
Implement systems to gather customer feedback continuously across all touchpoints (and then more systems to make sure you actually use said feedback too).
Here are some tips you could use for this:
Remember, feedback collection is only the first step.
The real value comes from analysis and action.
Create processes to review feedback regularly, identify patterns and priorities, and translate insights into concrete improvements. Close the loop by communicating back to customers about changes made based on their input.
When customers see that their feedback drives real change, they become more engaged and invested in your success.
Strategic technology implementation amplifies your ability to deliver excellent customer experiences consistently.
The right technology enhances human capabilities rather than replacing them, handling routine tasks efficiently while freeing personnel to focus on high-value interactions that require judgment, empathy, and creativity. Choose tools that integrate well with existing systems and that your teams will actually adopt and use effectively.
Building a customer experience strategy is not a one-time project but an ongoing commitment to understanding and serving your customers better every day.
The challenges are real, and the biggest ones are not external (i.e., rising customer expectations).
The biggest obstacles are internal: siloes, not working with the right technology, lack of processes, and, ultimately, a lack of organisational-wide focus on delivering exceptional CX.
The work is hard, but the rewards are massive: loyal customers who drive higher revenue, advocate for your brand, and provide the foundation for sustainable growth.
As you develop your own customer experience strategy, remember that perfection isn't the goal.
Continuous improvement is. Start with understanding your customers deeply, set clear goals, implement changes systematically, measure results rigorously, and remain committed to evolving as customer expectations change.
The companies that win on customer experience aren't necessarily those with the biggest budgets or the most advanced technology—they're the ones that genuinely put customers at the center of every decision and consistently deliver on that promise across every touchpoint.
In a world where products and prices can be easily matched, customer experience becomes the ultimate differentiator. The question isn't whether to invest in customer experience strategy—it's how quickly you can make it a competitive advantage for your business.
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