A pair of recent studies highlight changing shopper attitudes as the pandemic continues its stranglehold on the supply chain for most industries. Two clear-cut consumer trends have surfaced: online shoppers want more self-service options and an overall more-efficient shopping experience.

Are you looking for a way to reinvent the traditional vendor marketplace? Consider adding composable commerce to your bag of tricks. This marketing approach enables businesses to bring to their brands a distinct method to continuously optimize their customers' experiences.

Leaf Home built its call center operation to drive potential customers to a cheerful encounter with all the departments to which they connect. That pleasant working relationship starts with Leaf's call center staff. We spoke with the company's chief human resources officer, Sean Loboda, to discuss the benefits of creating a positive call center environment.

Automated bots operated by malicious actors are costing businesses an average of 3.6 percent of their annual revenue. For the 25 percent worst affected businesses, this equates to at least $250 million every year. Even more concerning is the time it takes to discover these attacks. On average, more than 14 weeks pass before a successful attack is detected.

Cultivating repeat customers is a critical necessity in the continuing customer shift to mobile-first interactions for a potential product or service purchase. Digital CX tools help level the playing field by providing SMBs the same advantages put to use by their larger counterparts to solidify the customer experience and create repeat business.

With more amounts of data to manage, organize, and make sense of, robotic processes are becoming increasingly valuable to businesses seeking to save time and be more efficient. Not everything needs to be done by a human, especially when the tasks are repeated and predictable. It's here that RPA comes into play and has become an important component to businesses operations and serving customers.

In its simplest form, Fast provides the answer most anticipated by e-tailers. That is, how do you put a checkout button on any page on the website, even if it is not directly on the e-commerce store? "By using a headless checkout solution, retailers are able to convert any digital screen into an opportunity to buy products and engage with shoppers," said Allison Barr Allen, COO and co-founder of Fast.

This year's back-to-school season is a true "Back to School!" that's driving increased spending and demand for clothing, school supplies, computers, athletic equipment, and other products. To successfully navigate the chaos, shoppers will turn to reviews from their peers who have first-hand experience with these products.

Tapping into natural language understanding technology as part of an overall approach to managing customer relations improves the experience that businesses provide to their customers. Brands already implement a variety of solutions to gain data and insights from customer interactions. Still, many companies struggle to catch trends or potential problems due to disparate data.

Because they live on the ecosystem of mobile devices, people expect their apps to be user-friendly and instantly accessible. To attract and keep users, apps must deliver a seamless, simple, and intuitive experience. We spoke with experts in the fields of apps and CX to get their take on what makes for a winning app design, and where commerce apps are headed in the future.

AfterShip Cofounder and CPO Andrew Chan is an advocate of post-purchase engagement to boost customer retention. He advises that ensuring a convenient experience after purchase -- from shipping, tracking, returns, and reviews -- helps retailers sell more to happy, repeat consumers. We spoke with Chan to hear more about his strategies for supercharging customer retention.

One of the fundamental choices that an e-commerce retailer must make is the platform they use to sell their goods and services, because it's not just a store -- it's a place to connect with customers and create a sense of the brand. We spoke with several e-commerce experts to get their take on how retailers can choose and customize platforms to get the right fit between product, culture, and customer.

The need for better customer journeys is a challenging goal. Overcoming operational challenges to become more agile in meeting customer needs -- and raising the maturity of the customer experience team -- will be critical to staying competitive in this ever-changing business environment, advised Bloomfire CEO Mark Hammer.

With resale appealing to a growing share of consumers, chief among them Gen Z, more brands are jumping on the bandwagon. Levi's, Lululemon, and Nike all launched in-house resale programs over the last year. However, the rise of resale comes with many challenges for e-commerce brands and marketplaces. Let's look at the most pressing obstacles for resellers and solutions for how to overcome them.

The magnitude to which retail stores recover when consumers fully adjust to post-pandemic routines may well hinge on the shopping experiences they offer. A new study of consumers in the U.S. and UK shows that the majority of shoppers today view customer experience as one of the most important factors when making purchasing decisions.

The build-versus-buy decision is an important one. Companies have been making similar choices about their technology stacks for decades. When it comes to customer data platforms, however, some organizations are rushing to make a determination. There are some important questions to ask before making a build-or-buy choice. Let's take a look at the factors involved.

From an initial expression of interest, to a purchase, to receiving ongoing support and ultimately buying again, customers take a variety of journeys as they interact with brands. The more a company considers and plans for the paths its customers will follow, the more likely it is that the business will be able to design effective journeys for those customers.

Microsoft recently disclosed that it too was no doubt a victim of the same Russian-based hacker gang responsible for the SolarWinds onslaught. As some of the details surrounding the cyberattack become known, the bleak disclosures might justifiably cause a sniffled gasp indicating that if Microsoft can be breached, what hope is left for everyone else?

By cutting out the middleman, brands can earn a higher margin and gain direct access to consumers and their data. For these reasons, leading brands such as Nike are aggressively making the shift to DTC, and other large retailers are following suit. However, many forget to take into account three important factors.

The post-pandemic era is bringing many changes to how the marketing industry interacts with messaging strategies and how marketers work. Chief among these changes is the technology they use and the frequency with which they visit company offices. But one essential industry staple is not changing. This element is the extent to which B2C marketers rely on digital messaging to engage customers and prospects.

As people emerge from lockdowns and limitations in the coming months, and look toward getting out and exploring the world again, travel is anticipated to become a popular and valued activity. The E-Commerce Times spoke with several industry experts to get their perspective on new trends in travel and tourism.

Reports of a data breach of TurboTax have been overblown, according to Intuit which owns the tax preparation platform. Several news outlets recently reported that an unspecified number of TurboTax accounts were compromised in a wave of credential stuffing attacks. Those kinds of attacks exploit credentials stolen from other websites and reused at the TurboTax site.

The economic implications of Covid-19 have been devastating for many sectors and individuals. As we head into the summer of 2021 anticipating that most places in the U.S. will be fully open for business, many industries are looking at what the post-Covid recovery will mean for them. For sales professionals, the comeback might certainly bring a windfall but also presents challenges.

Everyone loves a deal, and e-commerce shoppers are no different. Coupons, discounts, and other offers can draw in new customers and build loyalty with existing ones. In fact, according to recent survey by Vericast, 83 percent of consumers bought at least one item in the last six months -- and 62 percent shopped with a brand for the first time -- because of a coupon or discount.

A lot of time and treasure has already been spent on "going digital" with no clear understanding of what that should mean. But going digital should, at least in part, mean taking full responsibility for turning a business' mountain of customer data into usable information that advances the company mission.

E-commerce merchants are literally at the mercy of the digital checkout systems tied to their web stores. For retailers, what happens on the other side of the "pay" button is critical to avoiding denied approvals. Online payment service provider Credorax peeled back the curtain for the E-Commerce Times to reveal the ins and outs of what happens behind the pay button.

Across all businesses, the entire C-suite leadership team is looking to validate an experience management program by asking one question: what is the financial impact of my CX investment? Making a business case to the financial leaders of your company means that you have to be prepared to answer any value-based questions they might throw your way.

Important as it is to continually acquire new customers, it's every bit as vital for businesses to nurture existing clientele. The E-Commerce Times talked with several experts in customer engagement to get their thoughts about why it's critical to cultivate current customers -- and how to encourage them to stick around.

Various CRM vendors have been issuing interesting survey results from the pandemic that purport to show the "new normal" in full flower. Salesforce did so recently, and now Oracle is getting into the act. While the data generated from these and many other surveys is interesting, and drives much discussion, the information content we intuit may not be everything it appears to be.

Last week at Dell Technologies World, the most significant announcement was a massive as-a-service offering called Dell Technologies Apex. This promises to return the IT market to its long lost but fondly remembered IBM past. Let's talk about Apex this week. We'll then close with the product of the week, an impressive new WiFi 6E wireless mesh solution from Linksys.