Most effective ways for Indian sellers to make the best of Black Friday sales
Summary-
- Many small businesses are rethinking their strategies on customer engagement and experience.
- Studies have shown that shoppers of today prioritise customer experience over price, product quality and even loyalty.
- Providing a top-notch service should be on the agenda of small businesses to beat the bigger organisations’ advantage with scale.
- This blog contains pointers that should be on your to-do list to provide an unforgettable experience to your customers while selling online.
Black Friday is around the corner, and many people are looking for gifts and great deals to shop for them. If this is the best time for you, it is time to rethink how you can elevate your customer experience to grow your business. No matter how much we would like to forget it, we cannot deny that the pandemic changed everything about the world and even more about businesses and trends. Lifestyles changed, thought processes and so did consumer behaviour. There were six significant noticeable changes in shopping patterns in India.
- E-Commerce opened doors that the lockdowns had shut.
- People started putting more faith in small foreign businesses than before by taking chances and trying out new things.
- People began choosing to shop online.
- Businesses began taking digital aid to speed up and make the processes more efficient in production, logistics, transportation, communication and billing.
- More and more people got time to rethink, and the ideologies of supporting small businesses came forth.
- While some businesses benefited from the trend, most of them knew that this was an opportunity to provide excellent quality and memorable customer service to build long-lasting relationships with customers locally and beyond regional borders.
When you are playing local, the complexities are limited. You have to keep track of changes made to the laws and regulations in one region or jurisdiction, and the logistics are also in your comfort zone. The real complexities come when your doors open to the international markets. Then suddenly, the market is unknown, the cultural beliefs and thought processes are foreign, languages are different, logistics need working, and there are complicated tax laws and regulations that are constantly changing. It wouldn’t need an expert to tell you what can go wrong if sellers complete any of these processes improperly or incompletely. It will ultimately affect your customer experience and have a hard blow on the goodwill of your business.
No business wants to disappoint its customers. And customers, too, love sticking to one good brand. Everyone believes in this myth. However, research shows that age-old consumer loyalty has shifted to brands that focus on customer experience more. People are willing to choose organisations that communicate better than anything else: brand name, loyalty, price, and quality. The deal is simple- In a world that’s rising from ashes after the pandemic, people prioritise businesses that care. Therefore the best way to grow your business is to focus on your customer experience while providing qualitative service.
Here are some interesting facts you don’t want to miss.
- According to research conducted by American Express, 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience.
- Another research by Oracle says 74% of Senior Executives believe that customer experience affects willingness to stay loyal.
- Customers switch brands due to poor customer experience.
- Customers are willing to pay up to a 13% higher price for a better experience.
How can your tax compliance strategy affect your customer experience?
If you are exporting and have customers from all over the world, tax compliance can affect your customer service, satisfaction and experience a great deal. Not so much if you are selling locally. But every business selling out of India should prioritise its tax compliance strategy over anything else. If you do not have a tax compliance strategy in place, tax troubles will come to you at the eleventh hour and solving them would cost your business a lot more.
Many times sellers face ambiguity due to a lack of knowledge regarding tax laws from other jurisdictions. This leads to poor or incorrect estimation of taxes and, in turn, incorrect estimation of landed costs, which further affects the price. Customers usually don’t make changes in prices happily. Hidden costs, additional charges and suddenly charged dues cause confusion and mistrust amongst the customers, and they remember the purchase as a bad one or abandon the cart. It is a very commonly noticed problem that many sellers face while selling across international borders.
Although these problems seem intimidating, one can solve them with the help of a strong tax compliance plan. You should consider having a robust tax compliance strategy.
Another way of ensuring accurate and timely tax payment and compliance is by adopting digital transformation with automation. Softwares like AvaTax help simplify and speed up the process and help you identify, pay correct taxes, and be audit-ready. Since they use the power of technology, what otherwise would have taken away hours of work on your behalf is done by computers within minutes. Many organisations are leveraging their game with the use of tax automation as it is cost-friendly and time-efficient.
Post-Diwali, many Indian sellers are preparing themselves for the next big thing for e-commerce. Black Friday is on its way, and so is Cyber Monday. Thinking that black Friday isn’t popular in India is primitive. Year after year, the number of Indian sellers opening up their stock and offering big deals on platforms like Amazon and Flipkart on Black Friday is increasing. Selling to the American markets is a big opportunity. So don’t stay behind in this rush; pull up your socks and be ready with great deals and let us cover your tax complexities for you. With AvaTax, we use the power of technology to navigate your compliance needs making tax compliance easy, speedy, cost-effective and timely.
Tax regulations keep changing, and keeping track of them becomes difficult, especially because more than one jurisdiction is involved. Avalara helps resolve your tax problems and gives you a seamless selling experience. Get AvaTax today.
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