Retail TouchPoints staff
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from the Retail TouchPoints website.
While shoppers typically prefer to receive messages from retailers via e-mail (especially for record-keeping), they’re warming up to text messages and push notifications.
Thirty-six percent of shoppers prefer to receive order updates via text message while 34 percent like to receive texts about customer service issues, according to a survey from Narvar. Only 15 percent said they prefer text for promotions and product recommendations.
Shoppers prefer text messages to be sent when the importance of the situation warrants the intrusion:
- Seventy-three percent of shoppers consider messages containing order tracking information to be “very important";
- Forty-six percent say customer service messages are “very important”; and
- Eighty-four percent say more communication is critical if the purchase is an expensive one.
Among generations, 43 percent of Millennials (aged 21 to 29) prefer to receive order updates as text messages versus 39 percent of those aged 30 to 44; 32 percent of shoppers aged 45-59; and 28 percent of shoppers 60 or older. The survey showed consumers want to know about package delays or postponed delivery dates quickly.
Overall, 38 percent of shoppers said they want to receive information from retailers via multiple channels.
The survey found 79 percent of shoppers have used text, messenger apps or voice devices, and 74 percent indicated they have used live chat when shopping. Of those who have used these new technologies, 38 percent could not identify if they were using artificial intelligence and only 10 percent knew the communication was not from a human.
Of the 12 percent that own a voice device, 29 percent have used it to shop while 41 percent plan to shop with it in the future. Still, 55 percent of Millennials prefer to talk to a person to resolve a problem, not so far off from the 72 percent of those 60 or older that do.
With the many new communication tools, Narvar wrote that retailers need to “navigate nuanced communications” to best serve customer needs. Amit Sharma, CEO of Narvar, wrote in a statement, “The technology innovation complicates what we already know — that customer communications are never one-size-fit-all.”
