How digital is transforming customer experiences for FMCG brands

For years, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) brands have generated sales offline successfully without the pressure of technology. Today, there’s a massive disruption in how businesses reach and sell to consumers as well as ways in which consumers want brands to communicate and sell to them. So, the real call is to allow offline to coexist with online.

Sure, the FMCG brands have included e-commerce in their list of sales channels. But 2018 data from Statista revealed that online sales of FMCG brands accounted for 5.1 percent of total FMCG sales worldwide. With a predicted 10 percent reach by 2025. They’ve also implemented digital marketing strategies, which reportedly amounted to a whopping $60 billion spend in 2018. However, this investment didn’t deliver the expected ROI. 

Consumers are more unpredictable than ever before. But funnily enough, this means they are more informed and cautious in their buying behaviour, according to this article. So, what does all of this mean for FMCG brands? The simple and short of it is that they need to do more in order to meet consumers’ ever-changing needs, demands, and expectations. 

The more in this regard is a significant focus on customer experience (CX).

What is the customer experience?

Customer experience shouldn’t be confused with user experience; how a customer interacts with a product. Put simply; the customer experience refers to how a customer feels about the brand or a business after interacting with their product or service offerings.

Why should FMCG brands care about customer experience?

They should care because their survival depends on it. When consumers receive positive experiences while interacting with a brand, they make sure to tell others about their experience. This can either be through reviews on brands’ pages or on their personal accounts. Such reviews are regarded as free word-of-mouth advertising for the brand. Positive customer experience can also encourage brand loyalty and continued conversions. 

How digital offers frictionless customer experiences

Digital can offer customers hassle-free experiences to a certain extent. It’s possible for friction to occur when a customer uses an online platform or app. Friction is anything that stops a customer from completing a purchase. For example, if a customer is trying to shop for groceries and during the checkout process, they find out that the delivery costs are rather exorbitant. It is classified as friction if they discontinue the shopping purely because of the delivery costs. 

Therefore, it is important for FMCG brands to reduce friction to ensure positive customer experiences. A lot of that rests with understanding consumers’ needs, demands, and expectations. In the world of digital, consumers are looking for:

Convenience, the key-player

Convenience has proven to be the top player for these consumer needs, demands and expectations. Consumers want to shop for their groceries online through effortless user experiences, and have the food delivered to their doors without any problems. This means the brand’s e-commerce website needs to be fully functional and performing without glitches. It’s, therefore, important to work with experts in e-commerce web design in South Africa to ensure success in delivering convenience to your customers.

Added value

Customers are always looking for value, not only from the products and the services they buy but also from the brands they buy from. This article explains that South African customers shift their spending towards grocery stores that offer them saving opportunities and personalised promotions.

Targeted omnichannel support

Consumers want carefully targeted omnichannel support. This means they want brands to be accessible in all of the platforms they are part of. This makes it imperative for the brands to have a presence across all digital and social platforms. If a consumer searches for a specific FMCG brand and it becomes difficult to find it, they will simply move on to the next brand. Ultimately, all brands need to have active omnichannel support.

Harnessing digital power

Consumers know what they want, and they know how to search for it. Digital has given them that power. FMCG brands also have an opportunity to use digital to meet consumer demands, and customer experience is at the heart of these demands. Now that you’re all caught up on how digital transforms customer experiences, it’s time to harness the digital power to grow your FMCG brand. Speak to experts like us, here at Rogerwilco. We have proven experiences in harnessing digital to help brands grow.

See our 2020 Digital Customer Experience Report for South Africa.