Customer Service
Redefining customer experience in retail
Achieving consistently good CX requires a clear understanding of how consumers are influenced and how they prefer to engage with brands and retailers.
October 28, 2022 by Michael Scharff
Competing in retail is no longer just about pricing or promotional offers. While inventory and delivery mechanisms will always remain critical, they too are just part of the customer journey. Overall it's having a consistent and friction free customer experience across every channel that has the most impact.
Defining what good customer experience looks like in retail today is not easy. There are so many different touch points in the average customer journey and so many factors that impact decisions. Achieving consistently good CX requires a clear understanding of how consumers are influenced and how they prefer to engage with brands and retailers.
Voice of the customer and impact in retail
Customers have come to expect the convenience of same day delivery and free returns as part of the customer experience. But more than that they want an easy path to making a purchase - one that is friction-free and relevant to their needs at that specific moment in time. The call for greater personalization continues to grow louder, driven by frustration of complex buying journeys and irrelevant offers.
Listening to the voice of the customer requires the ability to go beyond post-purchase reviews. Being able to see how visitors are browsing a website, which ideas they're responding to or where they abandon the journey is significantly more meaningful. This provides insights on user behavior in real-time and provides retailers with an opportunity to respond with relevant information that helps move consumers closer to completing the journey.
Additionally, being aware of the different channels of engagement and working to create the best experiences for each of those channels requires listening closely to the voice of the customer. The user experience on mobile is very different from desktop and tablets. While mobile commerce continues to grow, cart abandonment rates on mobile remains high at 85.6% and conversion rates remain low at only 2%. These statistics reflect that brands and retailers are still missing the opportunity to meaningfully engage with consumers on mobile.
Why connection is critical to improving CX
Retail has evolved from in-store browsing, where it was common to influence impulse buying with attractive displays or price promotions, to having to compete with hybrid online shopping experiences and brands going direct to customer. Promotional marketing messages today have less of an impact with consumers turning to social media and third party review sites to validate their buying decisions. Increasingly, more buying is happening directly on social media, making this a new storefront for brands.
All of these factors are making it harder for traditional retailers to connect with customers and earn their loyalty. Ironically, it's easier in-store, where retailers can train staff to take cues from customers and respond in a way that creates a great customer experience.
The hybrid buying journey of today is more complex, bouncing between multiple channels. In-store customers frequently use their mobile devices and apps to compare prices or check availability on competitor sites. The number one customer search for products across all industries is Amazon, followed by Google. Consumers may be shopping in-store, but buying decisions are still firmly linked to digital customer experiences.
If retailers only focus on building strong connections to customers in-store and neglect digital channels, they are missing a massive portion of the customer journey. There's a risk that while searching online, consumers could find experiences more engaging that convince them to buy. This highlights the importance of building connections across all channels with consistent CX that drives greater customer loyalty.
Unlocking customer loyalty in retail
The challenge in creating consistent CX is that preferences seldom stay the same. An experience that resonates with a customer today, may not be relevant in the future. The focus should not be solely about what consumers are buying or even why, but more about how they feel about a shopping experience. This means understanding what's important to consumers on an individual level and then tying that to emerging industry-wide trends.
For example: consumers are increasingly aware of how their buying decisions impact the planet. They are choosing to spend with retailers that make a conscious effort towards sustainability. Deposit return credits, reduction of plastic packaging, use of recycled materials, even trade-ins of electronic devices hold huge value to customers. They're far more likely to be loyal to, and advocate retailers who are being proactive about recycling and reuse.
Loyalty, experience, emotions, personal values and convenience all impact CX in unique ways. It presents both a challenge and opportunity to retailers to gain a competitive advantage. By focusing on ways to improve CX across all channels it's possible to build better connections with customers that drive greater levels of loyalty.
Returning customers spend on average 67% more than new customers. By delivering exceptional CX, brands can avoid costly competitive pricing or promotional strategies. A good deal may hook a customer once, but a great experience will make them remember who they bought from and dramatically increase the probability of future purchases too.
Retail takeaway:
The highly complex and dynamic nature of customer experience requires the ability to keep track of variables and connect the dots between customer expectations and experiences. There are a number of technologies, including user experience optimization and artificial intelligence that can assist retailers in learning from consumer buying behavior. The trick is to transform those insights into ideas that can make an impact on moving customers further along in the journey by optimizing CX.
In the words of the extraordinary American memoirist Maya Angelou: "People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
About Michael Scharff
Michael has a wealth of experience in all aspects of retailing and across numerous industry verticals and channels. Michael has built and managed highly successful omni-channel and global e-commerce businesses, led teams in merchandising, digital marketing, innovation and other functional areas.
Related Media
Subscribe
Get the latest news and resources from Retail Customer Experience.
