Consumer Behavior

3 ways retailers can play offense with CX this year

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March 23, 2023 by Jim Katzman — Principal, CX Strategy & Enablement, InMoment

The holidays are over, we are all breaking new year's resolutions — now it's time to get to work. And if you're reading this article, your work is likely similar to mine: helping to shape customer experience strategy for 2023.

A crucial part of my planning process is reviewing research on CX trends — and as a member of the InMoment team, I get an insiders' perspective on trends through our annual Experience Trends report. As one of the authors, I can tell you that this year's insights can be truly game changing.

Stop playing defense, start playing offense

For 2023, we built out a specific retail report, leveraging over 180,000 consumer data points to reveal how brands can attract new customers and keep existing ones this year. The moral of the story? It's time for retailers to quit playing defense with their customer experience.

What do I mean by that? Well, I think it's safe to say that the pandemic put every business on the defensive. They were forced to stop relying on existing processes and start innovating to survive. But as the severity of the pandemic has dwindled, so has experience innovation.

What retailers have to realize, however, is consumers' appetites for innovation is not dwindling — in fact, it's becoming even greater. Gone are the days where "best effort" was good enough.

In our data, we found that retail consumers are no longer impressed by BOPIS, flexible payment options, and other COVID-era "innovations." In fact, those experiences are table stakes for their business. For your brand to stand out, you need to get more creative and personalized.

Wondering how to do that? Keep reading and I'll share three specific "plays" your team can execute to start playing offense and exceed your customers' experience expectations.

Play #1: Focus on innovative hybrid experiences

Before you start saying, "Jim, we have hybrid experiences," let me clarify. Experiences like tap-and-go payment, BOPIS, free-shipping on returns, and the like are no longer considered cutting-edge hybrid experiences. They are expectations.

Consumers expect them so much that without those options, they will not give you their business. Take free returns for instance (a hot topic for many retailers, I know). In our research, we found that over 40% of consumers said they will stop purchasing from your brand returns are not free.

The innovative hybrid experiences I'm talking about will exceed consumer expectations. Our research made it clear that consumers were excited at the prospect of using their mobile devices as a part of their in-store experience in the following ways:
● ONE OF TWO consumers said they'd like to leverage their phone/an app to view product ratings and reviews while browsing in store
● ONE OF TWO consumers said they'd also like to be able to view product options (such as colors or sizes) by scanning a product with their smartphone in store
● ONE OF THREE consumers said they'd like to view recommended product pairings via an app/mobile site while in store
● ONE OF FOUR consumers said they'd like to view social media product reviews/mentions while shopping at a brick-and-mortar location

So, it's obvious that customer mobile devices are going to have a bigger role in the shopping experience — whether the customer is in store or not.

Play #2: Personalize (then personalize some more)

In our last CX trends report before COVID-19 (2019), we asked if digital personalization was creepy, and we heard that 75% of respondents found personalization to be at least somewhat creepy.

This year, things were drastically different:

Only 3% of consumers thought personalization was "creepy."
Only 7% had privacy concerns with personalization.
Nearly half of consumers (45% to be exact) felt positively about personalized digital experiences.

And why wouldn't they? Personalized digital experiences make it so much easier for shoppers to find what they're looking for (and additional things they weren't shopping for, but buy anyway).

On the other hand, the absence of personalized digital experiences can push shoppers away from your site. For instance, I'm an avid runner. So, if I go to a site I've bought from in the past and they show me boots, the brand is missing out on an opportunity to get me excited about their latest running release.

According to the data, there is little to risk with personalization, but plenty at risk if you neglect it. And personalization does not stop with the shopping experience. For example, you need to personalize how you communicate with your customers (i.e., via SMS or email, if that's the customer's preference).

Play #3: Bolster CX insights with additional signals

I mentioned earlier we leveraged over 180,000 consumer data points to uncover these insights. And that would have been a lot of surveys — if surveys were all we used, but our data was actually much richer.

As a retailer, you know that the vast majority of the insights you need to shape your merchandising, product development, e-commerce, and overall business strategy come from review sites, social media, from your employees, and beyond.

That's why we leveraged not only custom surveys, but also social media data, review site data, and more for these trends reports. In 2023 you need to take the same approach when it comes to your listening strategy.

If you narrow your listening to surveys alone, you are essentially blind to a large portion of your voice of customer — especially because 36% of retail consumers prefer to leave feedback via online review sites.

Let's get some points on the board!

Feeling inspired to start implementing these three plays into your CX strategy?

I'd love to hear about how you're starting conversations about personalization, hybrid experiences, or implementing social and review data into your CX program. Feel free to reach out to me at jkatzman@inmoment.com. You can also download the full 2023 Retail Consumer Experience Trends report here.

About Jim Katzman

As the world innovates and becomes more digital, Jim looks for ways to leverage the voice of the customer and technology to extract trends and deep learning.

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