A company must understand its competitors’ relationships with customers, so that it can identify and address gaps in its own relationship management processes, and incorporate the best practices being followed by competitors. In addition, this analysis provides the company with benchmarks against which it can measure its own relationship with customers. To analyze how competitors are building relationships with their customers through their websites, the company should monitor the following:
- Marketing Messages on Competitor Websites—These messages may include the benefits of competing products, special offers and promotions, demonstration videos, and product trials. All of these messages have an element of customer-centricity and help to build a relationship between customers and the business.
- Third-party Analytics Data about Competitor Websites—There are a number of websites that provide free or paid information on relationship-related metrics. This information about a company’s competitors is helpful in identifying what works well for the target audience. A company can choose from a wide range of metrics, but some of the most important metrics are as follows:
- Bounce Rate—This metric measures the percentage of visitors who exit a website after visiting just one page. A high bounce rate indicates a low level of engagement with customers, implying they did not see what they expected to find, or the first impression of the site did not sustain their attention.
- Time Spent on Site—This metric indicates the amount of time visitors spend on a website. A long amount of time spent on a site generally indicates that a website is able to provide a good customer experience and, therefore, starts to build a relationship with visitors.
- Average Number of Pages Visited—This metric indicates the average number of pages viewed by each visitor to the website. A higher number can indicate that visitors are more engaged and browsing a large amount of content on a competitor’s website. However, it may also be the case that information has been split among multiple pages, thus requiring visitors to browse many pages to find the information they seek, which may be a negative indication. When evaluating a competitor’s website based on this metric, the business should try to gain a sense of the customer experience in order to fully understand the data. In some instances, a high average on this metric may not necessarily be a good indicator. A more reliable indicator, in such cases, may be the total time spent on the website.
- Marketing Messages and Promotions on Other Channels Directing Customers to Competitor Websites—Businesses should observe whether competitors send e-mail or SMS messages, advertise in traditional print channels, or use other channels to promote their products and services, attracting customers to their website with offers or promotions. These promotions may include invitations or updates regarding loyalty programs and special events. The company should actively monitor competitor use of all such channels to gain a comprehensive picture of all the relationship-building activities that competitors are engaging in with customers.
- Customer Service and Support—The company can also monitor the various ways competitors provide contact support on their websites. A wide choice of options indicates a high level of focus on building customer relationships. Similarly, availability of the customer support team (with twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week being the best) is also an indication of good customer relationship building. Other elements to monitor are the comprehensiveness of competitors’ Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and real-time chat features, as well as the existence of a contact form or call-back option.
