LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Retail Customer Experience magazine announced the publication of its inaugural Best Retail Customer Experiences report, a comprehensive market survey that asks thousands of shoppers to rate retailers based on several aspects of their customer experience.
"It's easy to look at publicly available figures and determine which retailers are selling the most, but until now it hasn't been possible to see, at a glance, which retailers are satisfying their customers the most," said editor James Bickers, who authored the report. "This document brings together the voice of those shoppers, voices which we have distilled into numerical rankings."
Major retailers in eight different retail segments (apparel, department store, entertainment, pharmacy, etc.) were identified, and 2,500 shoppers were asked to rate them in five attributes: customer service, aesthetics, inventory, online experience and overall customer experience.
Those numbers were assembled and used to find winners in each of the eight segments, along with an overall "Best in Show" — for which there was a two-way tie, between a prominent apparel retailer and an entertainment superstore.
"The two retailers which took our 'best in show' typify customer experience at its pinnacle — beautiful and inviting stores, the inventory that the audience wants, and customer service that is truly legendary," Bickers said.
Along with background information on the eight winners, the report includes expert commentary on each from a variety of sources, analyzing the retailers and dissecting what they do well and how they do it — and how other retailers can learn from them.
The report also includes, as a bonus, "The customer perspective: What shoppers want in an in-store experience," an exclusive survey in which shoppers give their candid opinions on a variety of aspects of customer experience: digital signage, self-service, loyalty programs, card data security, multichannel retail and more.
"The Best Retail Customer Experiences 2009" is available immediately at http://www.networldalliance.com/best-retail-customer-experiences-2009.
