Check Your PX Before You Wreck Your CX

For years, the Akeneo mantra has been, “There’s no good customer experience without a compelling product experience.” We have had this vision for a long time, and it serves as the backbone for our product designed to help brands, retailers, manufacturers, and distributors deliver world-class product experiences. The link between product experience (PX) and customer experience (CX) is well-established and documented not only by us, but also by industry analysts.

Consider this Forrester report, “How US Digital Retailer Brands Earn Loyalty With The Quality Of Their Experience”, wherein the leading analyst firm created a CX Index methodology that measured how well a brand’s customer experience strengthens the loyalty of its customers.

The report lists 4 key drivers, and this is the first one in the list? Product and services experience.

The product experience has the highest impact on customer experience, and product experiences aren’t just limited to product descriptions, but includes all the information you can provide about the product, including accurate technical specifications so buyers can be sure the product will fit and meet standards; usage information and how easy that is to access and understand; and emotional information, which includes great product descriptions as well as high-resolution images, videos, and other documents. Think also about what kind of images you offer. Are they simple photos of the product floating in space? Or do they show the product “in action”? For example, stage the furniture you’re selling in a room where it is designed to be used. Context is king, both in terms of product information relevance by channel and by country, as well as in imagery. Be creative! And use that creativity to build trust and emotion.

This last point leads us to one of the other interesting statements from the Forrester report, and that is about disappointing your customers. This one of course feels very obvious, but there is a measurable impact when customers are frustrated by their experience. From the report, Forrester states:

These research findings from Forrester are based on US company data, but they align with surveys Akeneo sponsored with both B2C and B2B audiences globally.

What do consumers and buyers say about product experience?

Our 2022 Global B2C Survey found that 2 out of 3 customers, just over 66%, said they would abandon a purchase due to a poor product experience

And the year before, in our 2021 Global B2C Survey, we talked to 3,500 consumers from around the globe and learned that 50% of customers would pay a premium (10% or more) for a better product experience consisting of more accurate product information.

If you aren’t prioritizing your product experience, these statistics can feel alarming. The good news is that investing in a strong product experience can be aided by using tools that bring teams together, foster collaboration, evaluate data quality and suggest improvements, and enable marketers to ensure that the digital assets associated with a product are the right ones. How many times have you come across a product you’d like to purchase only to discover that the images did not match the descriptions, or so much product information was missing it was impossible to select that product?

Review your product catalog and make sure it is complete. Are all the mandatory fields filled in? Do the images match the items? Can shoppers search on the right filters, or is important information embedded in descriptions that make it hard to find and compare products? There are so many seemingly little things that can ruin the shopping experience. If your teams find this difficult to spot and fix, perhaps it’s time to review your people, processes, and technology and see if there are things you can do to improve.

Check it before you wreck it!

At the end of the day, it’s clear to see how much of an impact product experience has on customer experience. It is simply impossible to create a compelling CX without first focusing on improving your PX, and your product experience starts with your product information.

You can download the Forrester report now for full insights into how CX impacts PX, or if you’re ready to jump right in, you can request a demo of Akeneo today to see how proper product information management can revolutionize your customer experience.