Ecommerce Customer Experience: CX & CS in the Service of Profit
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Better customer experience, “optimized” customer support, a growing community of happy customers advocating for your brand.
What do all of these buzzworthy CX outcomes have in common? None of them are essential to survival. At least not as ends in and of themselves.
That might sound crass. Especially for a guide on ecommerce customer experience.
Unfortunately, most CX advice majors on metrics like customer satisfaction, resolution times, and ticket volume. All while minoring on the only thing that matters: Are you keeping more money than you spend?
This disconnect becomes even more painful for CX + CS professionals longing for a seat at the table … only to have their budgets cut and voices ignored.
To help you cross the divide, we collected direct contributions from over 20 leaders and amassed a flood of examples from DTC’s biggest brands.
Together, let’s answer three questions that connect the love with the money
Want all the CX insights and more?
Good news. Not only did we put every contribution throughout this guide into a single PDF, we also hosted a live panel — where each leader shared their one must-follow tactic or strategy.
Part 1: Definitions
Ecommerce customer experience is the enveloping atmosphere of a shopper’s relationship with an online brand — informational, transactional, and emotional. These three spheres overlap as a customer’s journey unfolds through your funnel.
Facts are binary — either true or false. Think of informational CX as the elements related to your customers, products, and brand that can be proven in a laboratory or established in a court of law.
For customers: Things like names, addresses, order history, the specific dates of life events, reviews + ratings, and first-party data — through quizzes, onsite captures, or post-purchase surveys — fall into this sphere.
These facts powers customer experience; in particular, onsite personalization, retention efforts, and ticket resolution.
In my humble opinion, customer experience isn’t just support or post-purchase touchpoints. It’s literally every interaction a customer has with your brand — the moment they first hear about you, how they navigate your site, what happens when something goes wrong, and whether they feel valued enough to come back.
The best brands don't just “do CX.” They bake it into everything.
Be a real person. The overly polished, robotic tone that most brands use creates distance. The best CX happens when customers connect with the people behind the brand. At Jones Road, our top reviews mentioned team members by name because customers remember the human connection.
Let your personality show — it makes all the difference.
Bonus tip: The bar is so damn low. Just try a tiny bit, and you’ll be ahead of 95% of your competitors.
Ridge, the “everyday carry” retailer, unifies customer information throughout its online shopping experience:
Informational CX comes alive through a savvy combination of Rivo — what Ridge calls its “homebase” — and Richpanel for support. The former provides customer-exclusive offers along with order management. The latter syncs with logged-in experiences so users automatically get personalized chat and help.
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. It sounds simple, but understanding what your customers need (and what they expect) is hard. However, it’s key to being able to find a customer friendly solution.
But more than that, we need to understand how an issue impacted the customer’s journey with the brand so that we can prevent it from impacting other customers.
Being able to see beyond the ticket in front of you to resolve the deeper issue is the most important thing that we can do in CX.
Similar to Ridge’s 30% cash back, cookware juggernaut HexClad kicks off its customer journey with a retention inducing offer — $75 off your second purchase — and manages ongoing account access via Rivo as well.
ILIA Beauty initiates its fact gathering through a two-pronged strategy: (1) a share-match quiz, augmented by additional matching products delivered in the following three-week window, and (2) a “Send Us a Selfie” page for deeper interactivity.
For products: Information is likewise true or false — right or wrong. Here, there’s a premium not only on accuracy but also clarity. The right information in the wrong place doesn’t do you any good.
Immediately after “Is it true?” come the equally important questions:
This applies chiefly to product description pages where facts about ingredients and materials, sizes and fit, shipping and return policies are paramount. Fresh Clean Threads (apparel), Glossier (cosmetics), and Heart & Soil (supplements) cater their PDPs according to the expectations of their verticals.
Despite its massive catalog, Nathan James takes a meticulous approach to product information. Detailed measurements; thorough delivery expectations; plus a near-endless gallery of rich media — including polished UGC of “real customer spaces.”
In CX, we have an oftentimes challenging responsibility to ensure that not only are we passionate about the customer’s experience, but so is every other department in the business.
How do we do that? It’s not just about being “customer-first.” It’s about tracking data to prove your impact. The brands that win aren’t “good at customer service.”
They create an end-to-end experience that turns customers into repeat buyers and brand advocates.
Given how little most people know about bidets, Tushy loads its product content with education. From ad creative aimed at the bidet curious to charts and comparisons on finding the right fit.
To help further, it hosts a compatibility checker. This five-part quiz guides shoppers through the nuts and bolts of finding the perfect Tushy.
Great CX isn’t about being perfect — it’s about caring when things don’t go as planned. It’s about showing customers that you see them, that you know they have a choice, and that you honor their decision to shop with you.
Just like with a best friend, trust goes both ways. You can tell them “no friggin’ way” when necessary, but only because you’ve built that relationship first. When you earn that trust , you can provide world-class support while still being transparent.
Great CX demands giving a shit. It’s what makes a customer choose you over five similarly priced competitors.
In an era where anyone can create and market anything, it’s what makes your brand stand out and stand the test of time. At the end of the day, I see strong CX as the ultimate differentiator between brands that endure and those that fade away.
For your brand: Company histories, founder stories, and causes you’re associated with are no less objective. These carry emotional freight. But facts undergird them.
No greater detriment to CX exists than misinformation at the core of who you are. Why? Because the same way people buy from people — not companies — people trust people … only more so.
About pages, social programs, and content frame the “what” of your “who.”
The more trust plays a role in decision making, the more vital human connection becomes. Heart & Soil roots itself in its founder (Paul Saladino, MD) across a multiplicity of content types like podcasts, books, articles, and documentaries.
Customer experience begins with how they come across us.
Maybe through social media, one of our films, or a friend’s referral — and flows into the whole ride: scrolling our site, placing an order, getting support from our health success team, unboxing their delivery, or getting an issue resolved through our customer support team.
It’s also about the community we’ve built — the broader group we’re uniting, plus those smaller ones where people share advice and support each other’s health as well as their family and friends’ health, too, who they’ve invited.
It matters that they feel part of something bigger than themselves.
Not surprisingly, ARMRA Colostrum highlights its origins as told through Dr. Sarah Rahal. Her story is the brand’s story is the customer’s story. ARMRA’s sows Rahal throughout the site, never neglecting a strong emphasis on its scientific benefits nor the commitments that drive its values.
Since 2014, Emily Weiss has grown Glossier from a blog into an online-to-offline powerhouse. Her organic legacy continues today, giving substance to Glossier’s welcome page. Its for-us, by-us ethos extends into social causes — e.g., Glossier for GOOD and the Glossier Grant.
Value lies in the eye of the beholder, namely, an online shoppers’ perceived value of your product. That value, however, never exists in a vacuum. It’s contextual — weighed against the cost of both purchasing + realizing benefits. And, it’s the bedrock of conversion rate optimization in ecommerce.
The only time anyone buys anything is when the value exchange shifts from what they have … to what they’re going to get.
Product > price = purchase
Your offer represents that equation. It includes deals and discounts, though isn’t limited purely to financial incentives.
Returning to Glossier, its offers run the gamut.
Percentage-off discounts combined with new product releases promoted via paid and custom landing pages to match.
New product pre-releases combined with free samples sent through email + SMS topped off with countdown timers to fuel anticipation.
And “Fill a Beauty Bag” deals based on specific SKUs and number of products to increase average order value.
Every conversation, every fix, and every improvement has an impact. Never lose sight of that, and never sell yourself short because what you do matters.
The best CX is not just about solving problems; it’s about making things easier before they even become an issue. Every improvement you advocate for makes a real difference for customers and the business.
Advocate for what you see, and do not wait until the numbers make it impossible to ignore.
If customers are running into friction, call it out early and push for solutions before it snowballs. Getting ahead of roadblocks is one of the most valuable things you can do to protect the experience and the business.
Brand discovery, pre-during-post purchase, unboxing, product longevity, re-purchase, community. Any touch point that your current and potential customers have is part of the experience they have with your brand.
Pay close attention to …
Be curious. Voice your opinions. Do not stay quiet. Data and systems are everything.
Pela Case also combines offers, layering a sitewide BOGO with product page + cart upsells. At a premium cost, it addresses product > price directly through an FAQ — “Why do Pela cases cost more than cheap plastic cases?” — coupled with charts for side-by-side comparison.
Drinkware maker Simple Modern rarely runs pure discounts on its DTC storefront.
Due to a large retail and Amazon presence, it can’t. Not without jeopardizing margins elsewhere. Instead, it takes advantage of seasonal moments with tiered discounts based on cart value, irrespective of SKUs.
Even more deftly, Simple Modern replicates a smaller-scale “buy more and save more” structure as its evergreen offer visible only at the cart level. Below the various tiers + savings, tightly aligned products appear — nudging shoppers effortlessly to add to cart.
Focus on building scalable systems without losing the personal touch.
As the brand grows, ensure your team has clear processes, the right tools, and the autonomy to make decisions that put the customer first. Invest in training, knowledge management, and automation where it makes sense, but never at the expense of genuine human connection.
A great CX leader balances efficiency with empathy, making sure both the customer and the team feel valued.
Of course, price is only half the equation.
For ARMRA, value comes alive through the different problems its audiences face matched with the different solutions its product solves: (1) aging skin, (2) bloating (3) thinning hair.
New customers are greeted with 30% off their first subscription, followed by long-form advertorials centered on specific solutions to specific problems.
The heart of CX is two-sided. On one, your customers; on the other, your team. While most brands emphasize the former with phrases like exceeding customer expectations or being customer-centric, it’s the latter where both breakthrough and sustainability thrive.
Illustrations abound of emotionally charged products generating emotionally charged moments.
Dad Gang boasts an army of organic influencers — actors, musicians, and athletes — who share pictures of themselves wearing the hats, unpaid + unprompted.
Still, its the every-man milestones that truly display the brand’s impact: e.g., “accidentally” inventing a new way to announce fatherhood or some fans going so far as to tattoo its logo.
For years, Chewy has famously contracted with thousands of support agents whose only job is to monitor cancellations or returns and reach out to customers who’ve recently lost pets. Some of these moments go viral or garner mainstream press. Most don’t. And that’s the point. Chewy’s care is legendary — whether it amasses millions of eyeballs or just a few.
More common — though no less powerful for profitable relationships — are mundane moments. Simple Modern sends personalized thank-you emails to mark second orders. Its app gives shoppers a reason to enable notifications, genuinely early access to sales and new releases.
Better-for-you bathsoaks, Flewd, takes a proactive approach to fulfillment. This update was sent on the heels of Black Friday — an acknowledgement that “your order hasn’t been updated by the carrier” but “we’re keeping an eye on it” and will “handle the situation for you” to soothe gifting nerves.
Perhaps the ultimate test of any CX heart is how brands respond when things go wrong.
In the aftermath of pure delight over Fresh Clean Threads bundle builder, free gift flash sale + buy-more to save-more Black Friday offer — a week passed with no shipping notification. Then, two.
Finally, I replied to my confirmation email at 6pm on a Friday, asking if it’d been sent. Not only did support respond within 24 hours, they apologized, refunded me $10, and made sure the package was expedited to arrive on Sunday. That’s how you create raving fans.
Not perfection … but wowing when you make it right.
If you’re passionate about the customer, your empathy and “doing the right thing” mindset will come automatically, so focus on learning all you can about the business and finance side. Come to discussions with your finance hat on.
Your empathy and customer-focused POV will automatically show up in how you speak and make decisions, so you’ll find the right balance to speak the language of the business needs.
Using data to show how your team’s work impacts the business goals — pulling CX metrics into a data warehouse like Sigma or Looker — can give you the tools to tie this data together with your cross-functional partners’ metrics.
This way, you can show how your work directly impacts your teammates’ metrics and goals to gain buy-in on your ideas and CX initiatives.
Part 2: Metrics
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Sound cliché? It is. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. At their best, key performance indicators (KPIs) link customer happiness to financial outcomes.
Customer support metrics provide the quantifiable data points necessary to evaluate your frontline operations. These metrics go beyond efficiency — they reveal how well your team addresses customer needs, solves problems, and contributes to the overall experience.
By tracking response times, resolution rates, and ticket volumes, you gain actionable insights into bottlenecks and opportunities.
The head of your CX strategy measures what happens when customers need direct assistance.
Ticket-to-Order Rate: Benchmarks the number of orders placed versus the number of support tickets created as a percentage or ratio.
Although decreasing ticket volume often appears as an executive-level outcome, that assumes CS interactions are inherently negative.
Heading off unnecessary requests and customer complaints certainly improves CX. Reducing the raw number of tickets should always be tempered against your most common reasons for those tickets themselves.
First-Response Time (FRT): Average (or median) time between customer support requests and the initial customer service response.
While speed isn’t everything, it’s undeniably crucial. Long wait times create frustration, erode trust, and transform minor issues into major complaints.
FRT should be tracked across all support channels — email, chat, SMS, phone, social media, etc. — to identify chokepoints and ensure consistent responsiveness regardless of how customers reach you.
Customer experience means proactively thinking about the entire customer journey and setting your customers up for success with answers to questions they don’t even know they have yet. The most important metrics are …
If your team is happy, they’ll make your customers happy.
Find ways to make your team and processes more efficient by using automation and pairing down work streams to only those most impactful.
First-Contact Resolution (FCR): Calculates the percentage of issues resolved during the first interaction, also known as one touch.
FCR is perhaps the most powerful metric at the CX-head level. Every additional touchpoint multiplies costs and frustration.
High FCR rates indicate a well-trained and well-supported team. They also reflect efficient processes (routing, automations, and macros), access to the right information (your CS platform + CRM or CDP), and a product that aligns with customer expectations.
Resolution Time (RT or TTR): Average (or median) length of time between ticket creation and ticket closure, excluding automations or AI.
Where FRT measures initial acknowledgment, TTR captures the entire journey. Lengthy resolutions, even with quick initial responses, still result in diminished satisfaction and increased operational costs.
Segment this metric by issue type, product category, and support channel to find patterns. The goal is speed + efficiency — resolving issues correctly without unnecessary back-and-forth.
Any customer support platform worth its salt includes the above CS metrics.
Among the brands who contributed to the Practical + Profitable CX Guide, the most common solutions were Gorgias, Zendesk, and Richpanel.
Because Richpanel will be speaking at our upcoming event — and because it provided anonymized data from businesses operating between $50M–$100M+ — we’ll leverage a number of its dashboards as illustrations throughout.
Where support metrics reveal service quality, marketing and sales analytics demonstrate how CX translates into revenue. These connect experiences with tangible outcomes — measuring not what customers say with their words … but do with their wallets.
From conversion through repeat purchases, these numbers tell the story of how your entire customer journey drives sales, retention, and long-term value.
The hands of your CX data convert good experiences into active, paying customers.
Conversion Rate (CVR): The percentage of total visitors who complete a desired action — most notably, making a purchase.
In conjunction with average order value (AOV), CVR tells you whether or not your ecommerce store is winning the “product > price = purchase” equation. In fact, you can multiply AOV x CRV to arrive at revenue per visitor (RPV).
Industry benchmarks vary widely. What matters is your relative performance over time and across customer segments. Breaking down CVR by device, traffic source, landing page, and demographics reveals which experiences need the most attention.
Conversion rate stands as perhaps our most important metric because it directly demonstrates how our CX efforts translate to sales. By tracking the percentage of customer interactions that result in purchases, we can quantify our team’s direct contribution to the company's bottom line.
CSAT serves as our second vital metric by correlating satisfaction scores with customer lifetime value. This approach allows us to show that highly satisfied customers spend significantly more over time, demonstrating that investment in satisfaction yields measurable financial returns.
While quality of service and efficiency metrics remain important operational indicators, our improved response times have reduced cart abandonment and increased conversion rate, directly increasing revenue.
Post-Support Conversion Rate: Calculates the percentage of customers who make a purchase after interacting with customer support.
CS interactions aren’t cost centers; they’re sales opportunities. Pre-purchase conversations address objections, answer questions, and provide profound insights to improve non-support sales + marketing. Post-purchase, they can rescue refunds or cancellations as well as spur new orders.
Along with support or agent-generated revenue, this metric connects customer service directly to the bottom line by tracking purchase behavior in the days following interactions.
Customer Retention Rate: Measures the percentage of customers who continue to purchase from a business over a specific period of time.
New customer acquisition dominates marketing conversations. And yet, retained customers are every ecommerce store’s most profitable customers. Churn rate, the inverse of retention, tracks lost customers during the same period.
Repeat Purchase Rate (RPR): Tracks the percentage of customers who return to make additional purchases beyond their first order.
Distinct from retention rate, which looks at overall customer numbers, RPR focuses on purchasing behavior. It provides a clear indicator of customer satisfaction, product quality, and the strength of your relationships.
RPR is particularly valuable when segmented by first-product purchased, marketing channel, or demographics. These identify which customer segments and product categories drive the most loyalty and profitable business.
Return Management: Collection of metrics that track the percentage of orders that result in returns, exchanges, or refunds.
Returns are inevitable in ecommerce. Excessive rates, however, signal serious CX problems. Each represents not just lost revenue but additional costs in processing, restocking, and potentially damaged inventory.
Experience is the entire spectrum of the customer journey. The center of the Venn diagram of product, brand, digital, logistics, operations, etc.
View yourself as the heart of the organization. Not in a sentimental way, but quite literally as the organ that pumps blood to every other organ (facet) of the business. Without nailing what you do, the rest simply operates in a silo.
Aggressively believe in your impact on continued growth. Fight for the resources you need to unlock the potential of the business.
At the heart of customer experience measurement lies the connection between sentiment and financial performance. These metrics capture how customers feel about your brand and translate those feelings into predictive business outcomes.
By correlating emotional responses with spending patterns, you can identify which experiences drive the greatest value. The metrics in this section reveal not just satisfaction but actual loyalty, helping you prioritize improvements that strengthen relationships and your bottom line.
The heart of your CX strategy pumps value throughout your entire organization.
Net Promoter Score (NPS): Gauges loyalty by asking how likely a customer is to recommend the brand on a scale of 0 to 10.
This deceptively simple metric has become the gold standard for measuring customer experience and predicting growth. Unlike satisfaction surveys that capture moments in time, NPS reflects the cumulative impact of CX.
Its power comes from segmentation. Promoters drive word-of-mouth growth and have higher lifetime values. Passives represent missed opportunities. Detractors actively harm your business through negative reviews and churn.
I am an eschewer of the standard NPS score! And not ashamed of it. I am a huge fan of CES. We know that “ease of doing business” is a huge driver of loyalty and satisfaction, and ease can translate across all channels but is especially critical for ecommerce — hello, reducing bounce rates!
If you have a solid CES, you’re doing most things right and can build elevated experience rather than getting the fundamentals in order.
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is fantastic for gauging customer loyalty and advocacy. It’s a leading indicator of future growth and a great benchmark to track over time.
Customer Retention Rates are a strong indicator of positive customer experiences and contribute significantly to long-term business success. It shows that your CX efforts are paying off in repeat business.
While CSAT gives you a snapshot of immediate satisfaction, retention shows you the lasting impact of your CX strategy. It’s the ultimate proof that you’re delivering value and building strong customer relationships.
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): Assesses customer satisfaction with a specific experience, usually measured through post-interaction surveys: “How would you rate your satisfaction with [blank]?”
In contrast to NPS, CSAT provides granular feedback. This allows you to pinpoint exactly where improvements are needed in the customer journey or where excellence is already being delivered. CSAT should be measured following key touchpoints such as purchases, support interactions, or returns.
Customer Effort Score (CES): Evaluates how much effort must be expended to complete actions — purchasing, resolving issues, or finding information.
CES is measured through post-interaction surveys asking: “How easy was it to [complete action] with us today?” Lower effort scores correlate strongly with increased retention and customer lifetime value.
Effort is often a stronger predictor of loyalty than satisfaction. When customers perceive minimal effort, they’re more likely to continue purchasing and less likely to spread negative word-of-mouth.
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV): Calculates and predicts the total revenue generated from a customer within specific timeframes, typically the first 30–90 days and annual increments.
LTV is the holy grain of CX.
The simplest way to justify other heart metrics is by anchoring them in LTV. For instance, cross-referencing LTV with NPS can quickly establish correlations between detractors, passives, and promoters’ relative value to your business.
An even stronger argument can be made through cohort analysis.
Dividing customers into distinct groups — number of purchases, date of purchase, or first-product purchased — allows you to create apples-to-apples comparisons that make CX metrics far more compelling.
By splitting NPS types into number of purchases, you can then compare the LTVs of …
In other words, CX profitability hinges on demonstrating the value of CX metric by metric. High NPS — or any other KPI — carries weight across departments and into the executive suite when you can say, “Even when comparing customers who made the same number of purchases, promoters are worth 38% in real dollars than detractors.”
If you’re just starting out, build a weekly dashboard of results and send it to as many people as you can every single week. Based on what questions people ask you about, continue to further expand those metrics and deprioritize the others.
Around $10M–$50M a year, you have to run cohort analyses comparing the LTVs (or just retention rates) of customers who do and do not have specific experiences — e.g., contact support, message the social team, take a specific survey, etc.
At +$50M, you have product-market fit (PMF) — demand for your widget. Now, you need to figure out how to make it the best widget and reach more people. Voice of the customer (VoC) and customer feedback is how you do that.
The difference between a specialist versus a director or above is the ability to report on volumes and deltas — week-over-week changes that translate into monthly insights and quarterly projects.
For our clients, we create custom Looker dashboards that bring together Shopify, their support platform, reviews, and surveys. From there, it’s easy to create email and Slack templates that share weekly updates on …
Instead of bringing complaints and raw numbers, you bring actionable solutions based on feedback loops to answer the question: “Is it up or is it down? Are we improving or are we getting worse?”
Part 3: Strategy
To profitably improve CX, reverse engineer your ecommerce funnel. Instead of a top-down approach, we’ll move from the bottom up.
Owned communities (for lack of a better word) thrive on recognition + exclusivity, not discounts. Highlight power users, involve them in beta testing, and bring them behind the scenes. Their advocacy creates a virtuous cycle that delivers value well beyond traditional efforts.
With over 160k members and hundreds of active conversations a day, Portland Leather Insiders Facebook Group sets the standard. Admins regularly post founder videos, giveaways, and community-only sales. Even better, its members provide detailed product feedback — the good and the bad.
Glossier hosts its closed community on the Try Your Best (TYB) platform. Access is granted after first purchase and managed through digital collectibles — online tokens inspired by the brand’s physical stickers.
Within the app, members can complete challenges, register for IRL events, unlock perks, redeem them, and interact with Glossier + other fans via “the g chat.”
Feedback, UGC, testimonials, and how-to tips can easily become your most effective marketing material at low-to-no production cost. Repurpose it across your sales and marketing funnel but always with express permission and recognizing contributors.
Most loyalty programs cost more than they return. The problem?
They’re built backward — starting with what the brand wants to take rather than what customers want to get.
Not so for ILIA VIP. On top of points per purchase + the usual fare, VIPs receive logged-in-only access to new releases, ILIA’s once-a-year sale, and refreshingly honest communication about price updates.
First, explore customer-centric benefits. Discount tiers are perfectly fine. As long as time-to-value is tight and “points” are easy to understand.
Next, set clear internal objectives. Do you want to increase purchase frequency or average order value? What order number leads to the most returning customers? Are you hoping to reduce acquisition costs through referrals?
Last, crunch the numbers. How much can you afford to invest per customer while maintaining contribution margins? This creates the guardrails for your program.
Far from a passive gap between order and reorder, post-purchase means peak attention. No one pays more attention to your brand than after giving you their money … but before getting what they gave you their money for.
Over-communicating during this window is impossible.
Every message creates a Pavlovian response: “When this company contacts me, it matters.” It’s positive conditioning that pays dividends long after the first purchase cycle ends.
Personalization doesn’t mean {first.name} in emails. It means using what you know about someone to anticipate needs and eliminate friction.
Segment your follow-ups based on product purchased — this singular data point predicts future behavior and purchase cycles, especially for consumables to trigger replenishment emails with enough lead time for shipping.
Go above and beyond — that nice box is worth a few extra dimes. When you are small, your retention rates will be artificially high as you are initially addressing your most primed customers.
As you scale, don’t be afraid to see some of the KPIs like retention rate deteriorate — but monitor the cost to acquire these new customers closely with your performance marketing team.
Test and test. At this scale, you have enormous influence over the profitability of your organization. The rule of thumb is that a 5% increase in retention can lead to a 95% increase in profitability.
If you are selling lower gross margin products, this matters more.
Decide on KPIs over an appropriate time band to track retention rates, and then experiment to drive improvement.
Investing in CX pays back twice.
Happy customers require less costly support intervention (saving you money). They buy more frequently (speeding up your acquisition cost payback period). From a purely financial perspective, the conclusion is clear. When founders or leadership understand CX as a financial lever rather than a cost center, the investment becomes obvious.
Good CX creates purchase patterns nearly as predictable as formal recurring revenue. This has a major impact on your financial models + multiples and can significantly increase the valuation of your company.
Customer support shouldn’t be a cost center. It should be a profit driver.
The trick? Knowing which issues deserve human attention and which can be handled through self-service or AI. This isn’t cutting corners; it’s allocating resources where they create the most value.
Start by categorizing your support tickets. Which questions come up repeatedly? Which are information requests versus problem solving?
The goal isn’t fewer tickets; it’s more efficient resolution that leaves customers feeling served rather than processed.
How? Three tips …
First, robust FAQs and knowledge bases that answer the most common questions. Make these searchable and accessible from within your onsite chat and linked from transactional emails.
Second, AI-powered chatbots for intermediate issues. The key isn’t pretending they’re human but clearly defining their limitations; namely, recognizing when a question exceeds their capabilities and offering an immediate handoff.
Third, reserve your human agents for high-value interactions — pre-purchase questions that influence conversions, complex troubleshooting that affects retention, and VIP relationships.
The ultimate sign of a low-effort experience is when customers don’t need assistance at all. High self-service usage means customers are solving their own needs seamlessly — without contacting support. The brand has thought about their customers most common needs ahead of time. Near-zero effort for customers equals higher satisfaction.
Self service reduces support costs while improving the experience so customer agents can focus on requests that need a human touch. Key self-service areas:
If customers can quickly find answers, track orders, or resolve issues without friction, they’re more likely to repurchase with a brand in the future.
Your cart + checkout stand at the precipice of profit and abandonment.
When someone adds an item, use that high-intent moment to recommend complementary products. Not random suggestions, but items that enhance what they’ve already chosen.
Add-to-bag triggered pop-ups work beautifully for introducing bundles, accessories, or logical next purchases. Each recommendation should include a clear value proposition: “Complete your look” or “Customers like you also bought.”
Once they’re ready to buy, get out of the way.
Checkout should be ruthlessly simplified. Remove navigation bars, unnecessary fields, and anything that could distract from completion.
Remember the contradiction at play — load the cart with upsells, but make checkout feel lightweight and inevitable.
Compelling PDPs combine three crucial elements: (1) practical imagery, (2) reviews + ratings, and (3) solution-focused descriptions.
Open with isolated product shots on clean backgrounds. No distractions — exactly what the shopper will get. Then, layer in lifestyle imagery showing the item in use followed by close-ups that illustrate unique features or ingredients.
Your copy (i.e., product descriptions and details) transforms features into benefits — addressing not what your product is but what it does for your customer. Format this content as a mix of scannable bullet points, short paragraphs, and visual callouts.
Social proof cuts through the noise. A multitude of tests here at FERMÀT confirm that star ratings are the first thing people click after landing on a PDP. Ensure your ratings are prominent and linked to actual reviews.
Use verified buyers, recency markers, and UGC whenever possible.
The buy box culminates everything.
Display all necessary options (size, color, quantity) within a single mobile screen. Make price information crystal clear with any discounts dynamically updating as selections change. Link variants directly to corresponding images so shoppers can visualize exactly what they’re getting.
When the perceived value of what someone’s getting (product) exceeds what it costs (price) — shoppers become customers.
Anchor your cost in something greater than itself. BOGO deals, tiered “buy more, save more” structures, and gifts with purchase shift the focus from what customers pay to what they receive.
Each approach lets you maintain brand value while still delivering a deal.
For straight discounts, justify them with a “because.” Limited-time offers create urgency; seasonal sales feel natural; new customer incentives help overcome initial hesitation.
But random, perpetual discounting erodes worth. Layer psychological value through multiple angles …
Product outweighs price not only by lowering costs but, more importantly, by stacking value.
Pure promotion burns out your audience. Pure content fails to drive revenue. The sweet spot lies in balancing both, with different ratios for different segments and lifecycle stages.
For new subscribers who haven’t purchased, lead with promotional messages dominated by automations. Welcome sequences with limited-time offers, abandoned cart reminders, and browse abandonment follow-ups create urgency and capitalize on initial interest.
With active customers, the ratio flips toward content-heavy communication punctuated by insider access, new products, and limited releases. They’ve already demonstrated their willingness to buy — now they need reasons to stay engaged.
Birddogs (men’s apparel) executes on this masterfully with humor, design, and episodic emails. We’re Not Really Strangers (card games) does it with emotional depth + stark mininimalism.
Each fits its respective products to a tee.
Neither content nor promotions draw the short end of the stick.
The right cadence depends on your product purchase cycle. Daily consumables can support near-daily communication. Annual purchases require restraint to avoid unsubscribes.
Segment campaigns by roughtly five criteria:
These divisions allow targeted content that speaks directly to specific needs rather than blasting your entire list with every message.
The most destructive inefficiency in ecommerce marketing happens the instant someone clicks your ad.
All too often, visitors land on homepages or generic collection pages that bear little resemblance to the message or offer that caught their attention. This disconnect destroys momentum and wastes hard-earned clicks.
Congruence is the solution — matching your ad directly to the post-click experience. One offer throughout the funnel, targeted at a single audience, with creative alignment from ad to landing page.
Mirror similar headlines, imagery, testimonials, and offers. When someone clicks on a 20% off promotion for a specific product, they should land on a page dedicated to that exact product with the discount prominently featured.
For cold traffic, tailor landing pages to the ad’s creative angle:
Design each landing page with a singular focus: moving visitors to the next, smallest step in your funnel. One message, one offer, one desired action — anything more dilutes conversion.
Going native means respecting channel diversity while maintaining a consistent brand story. The same message … translated into multiple dialects.
TikTok demands authentic, raw content that feels spontaneous even when meticulously planned. Instagram still rewards aesthetic polish despite a growing shift toward Reels.
Facebook users expect substantive information alongside compelling visuals. YouTube requires long-form storytelling that hooks viewers + delivers value. Out-of-home (OOH) advertising places a premium on instant visual impact and minimal text.
The mistake? Creating platform-specific silos.
True omnichannel strategy takes winning creative concepts and adapts them to each environment, maintaining core messaging while tweaking execution.
The strongest customer experiences happen when someone discovers your product on TikTok, investigates via search, pokes around your website, receives an email, and completes the purchase through your ecommerce store or retail — all while feeling like they’re interacting with the same brand voice throughout.
Does better customer experience, “optimized” customer support, a growing community of happy customers matter? Absolutely.
Yet, the fundamental pain point for CX leaders — especially within brands where experience isn’t already bought in …
Is connecting the love with the money.
On one end, the natural empathy of those who live and breathe the customer. On the other, financial data + business metrics that unlock a seat at the table.
Thankfully, you don’t have to choose.
Nor do you have to cross the divide alone.
Get all the CX insights and join us …
Last call for the Practical + Tactical CX insiders guide as well as access to the live panel where each leader shared their one must-follow tactic.
