How to Be Competitive in the Fashion Ecommerce Industry

Crystal Romero | Director of Content

Is your customer experience Gucci, or Sears at best?

The fashion eCommerce industry is composed of 100,000+ brands and is projected to have a global market value of $1 TRILLION in 2025. Outstanding customer support is no longer just a differentiator, it’s a prerequisite to compete in an over saturated market.

The fashion industry is dripping with creativity, but when it comes to customer support, brands often sacrifice quality to keep up with demand. This lack of quality service has a domino effect on revenue and the ability to sustain a competitive advantage.

So how can ecommerce fashion brands keep up with consumers and fiercely compete amongst 99,999+ other brands? From the ecomm metaverse to consumer engagement, we have 3 Met Gala level tips to give your CX strategy more strut and less stress.

Sell a Purse in The Metaverse

The State of Fashion 2022 Report found that 37% of fashion executives listed social commerce as one of the top three themes that will impact their business this year. It also highlighted that, “74% of consumers are now more influenced to shop via social media than they were before the pandemic, and 70% cite clothing as one of the product categories they shop for most on social media.”

The metaverse in ecommerce is the merging of the real world and the digital world together where consumers can shop, completely redefining ecommerce forever. The ongoing development of the metaverse will work to close the gap between social media and ecommerce by going beyond just rave reviews. In the ecomm metaverse, consumers will be able to actually engage with fans of a brand.

With social media and social commerce in the metaverse high up on every fashion executives list of heavy impact to their brands growth, fashion brands must deliver an immaculate social support experience. This year and well into 2030, consumers will only get more intimate and connected to one another as they shop. Quick and personalized service will become the new requirement for social support or brands will risk getting dragged to the dumpers of the metaverse.

78%-stat

Stat Credit: American Express.

Consumer Engagement is Haute Couture

Imran Amed, founder and editor-in-chief of media company, Business of Fashion, published a report pointing out that, “Consumer engagement is a new opportunity cited by fashion executives for 2022, reflecting the view that customer experiences with brands across online and offline channels are becoming even more important for brand differentiation in a highly competitive marketplace.”

Whether you're building relationships through the metaverse or through chat support, consumers in the fashion industry expect personalized interactions across all channels. And while implementing a multichannel channel strategy can be challenging, gaining and retaining loyal customers are the trophies for your triumph. Happy and engaged consumers are 5 times more likely to repurchase, 4 times more likely to refer new customers, and spend $20 more per purchase.

Amed points out that, “Fashion players will need to accelerate their use of data and analytics across business functions to develop customer insights and adjust their strategies accordingly.” With real-time data from the voice of the customer, every customer problem becomes an opportunity for fashion brands to improve CX.

A recent McKinsey survey found that companies that extensively leverage customer analytics are reporting 115% higher ROI and 93% higher profits than those who just scratch the surface. A combination of AI and machine learning can help your team flag incidents that could result in a low CSAT or customer churn before it happens.

This gives both product and support teams insight into snags along the customer journey and empowers them to intervene before incidents occur. Predictive analytics can analyze interactions based on intent, sentiment, emotion, intensity, and time of reply–giving your team endless possibilities to deliver CX perfection.

These Boots Are Made for Walking…If Customer Service Responses Are Slow

Oh. So you think you're fast? That 2 day response window is just as out of fashion as Von Dutch. Nearly half of all consumers expect that companies respond in under 4 hours.

In a Forrester survey of CX leaders, 81% of brands said that customers demand faster resolutions than they did 2 years ago. But only 30% of brands reported that their CX strategies were effective at delivering timely responses. Yikes, not very posh.

An oversaturated market forces fashion brands everywhere to match the instant gratification of shopping with instant access to customer service. Modern CX Leaders at some of the world’s biggest fashion brands are leveraging sentiment-savvy AI to stitch up their support to a higher standard.

AI allows you to respond faster due to its capacity to handle massive volume and scale alongside your business. We aren't talking about your average chatbot either (we are so tired of those, so last season 🥱); next-gen AI customer support technology delivers personalized interactions to every customer, every time. It has the power to tailor responses based on sentiment detection and a customer's history with your brand.

Preparing for the metaverse in ecommerce, enhancing consumer engagement, and implementing AI technology is how modern fashion brands compete in the ecommerce industry. Used by hundreds of CX leaders in the fashion industry, check out our AI readiness checklist to see where your brand falls.

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Topics: Blog, Customer Service, Artificial Intelligence, Fashion, Industry News, Competitive Advantage

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