The Value of a Better Customer Experience With HCL Commerce 9.1
When talking with customers, the conversation quickly shifts to a discussion on how current events have accelerated the transformation to digital for doing business. Before the pandemic, most companies’ online sales represented 12-20% of their revenue. Today it’s not unusual to hear +70% online, or that digital sales are breaking all records and outselling their stores. What is surprising is that even as markets open up, with stores opening for consumers, there is no trend to return to where we were!
Our goal at HCL Commerce has always been to help our clients beat their competition. As we collaborated with customers and partners, the topics of faster, better experiences with highly relevant search results always rose to the top. Our research even before the pandemic showed that companies who create exceptional customer experiences set themselves apart from their competitors. Although less clear at that time, the ability to flex at will to handle the increase in transactions was equally important.
It became obvious that helping our clients build and manage ‘World Class Experiences’ would be a continuing theme across our releases. Simply put, it’s that ‘being measured against the best last experience’ mantra that we have heard before. Companies are now focusing on the customer experience as it delivers clear value to the business:
- A client in the electrical distribution business calculated that every 1% increase in response times delivered another $3M in additional annual revenue
- No wonder the business users at another automotive client were excited when they improved site performance by nearly 30%, resulting in significant increases to demand!
- Or the retailer who was able to change their operations to be able to push changes and innovations every 2 weeks to help differentiate their brand, even through peak season.
I know from my own experiences as a consumer, practitioner and marketing professional, that I value simple intuitive experiences, fast responses and a frictionless journey to complete the purchase or the task. Which perhaps explains why more and more, customers are buying based on the experience and not based on product.
In fact, 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience.
What has become clear is that these organizations need a platform that allows them the ultimate flexibility – the freedom to choose the right approach for any situation. Whether that’s getting to market faster, expanding to incorporate third party solutions or building the perfect, differentiating experience from scratch and all done on with modern, container-based approach that facilitates time-to-market, scalability, simple upgrades/updates and optimized customizability.
HCL Commerce 9.1 delivers a complete commerce platform to help you address the changing digital commerce landscape, now and into the future. Built on a foundation that helps you Accelerate, Amplify and Assemble your perfect customer experience, HCL Commerce 9.1 provides you the speed, power, simplicity, reliability and scalability you want, with industry leading technology that helps lower your total cost of ownership.
New capabilities include new React-based Storefront accelerators, one for B2C and one for B2B, separate to keep the SPA design as lightweight as possible and amazingly fast. With enhanced business user tooling, CMS capabilities and a new embedded search engine with a common data platform, we have the foundation for building world-class experiences in the shortest possible time. The momentum for innovation continues through the next 2 releases and beyond. To learn more, join us at our Customer Summit or read our article on what makes a ‘World-Class Experience’.
