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Three tips to improve local retail customer experiences during the holidays

November 26, 2013 by Gary Edwards — Chief Customer Officer, Emathica

It's that time of year again. The holiday retail shopping season is upon us and scores of consumers are headed to your brick-and-mortar stores in search of great deals on their favorite holiday merchandise.

But value isn’t all holiday shoppers are looking for. Across the board, consumers are also hoping to find exceptional customer experiences that allow them to shop on their terms, using the newest technologies to drive their choices.

For many retailers, the holiday shopping season is the "make or break" of their year in sales, ranging from 30 to 70 percent of annual sales. The point often missed is that while a 30-day shopping window determines survival, the ability to deliver first-rate customer experiences is what brings customers back and determines longer term success.

Improving customer experiences in holiday retail

There is clearly an imperative for exceptional customer experiences during the holidays. Since the holidays represent many consumers’ first interaction with your brand, your ability to bring holiday buyers back after the holidays hinges on the quality of the customer experience between now and Christmas. This may be your only time to create a positive impression.

But relatively few brands emphasize the delivery of high quality customer experiences during the holidays. Far too often, customer service takes a backseat to moving as much product as possible with little regard to the experience surrounding it. Although it may be necessary to staff up stores with inexperienced, seasonal workers, temporary staffing without adequate training and a clear sense of company mission to deliver a great retail experience presents a serious threat to the retail.

Alongside an investment in experience training, it’s critical to provide near real time customer feedback in order to stay on track and keep serving up great experiences as a top of mind activity for all staff. Here’s a few simple ways to do so:

Empower Local Managers.The worst thing you can to do to local store managers is to funnel massive amounts of unanalyzed data and undifferentiated feedback to them and expect them to convert it into meaningful insights, especially during the busy holiday season. Rather than overwhelming managers with information that really isn’t useful, respect that they need to spend the vast majority of their time on the floor. Empower them with real-time customer feedback insights that makes clear in just a few minutes what their local store issues are that they should work on to provide great experiences.

Provide Actionable "Right Now" Strategies. Complex retail reporting tools are in abundance but they don’t always make clear today’s winning moves. Providing actionable, data-based strategies that can be acted upon "right now" is essential to driving customers to tell their friends, family members and co-workers what can be done. Store managers need to be freed up as local leaders to focus on the rapid implementation and execution of plans to improve the quality of the customer experience throughout the holiday shopping season.

Leverage Social Learning.It takes time for store managers to learn how to intuitively respond to customers’ concerns. But collectively, your brands’ store managers have a vast base of knowledge about specific strategies and actions that can improve the customer experience during the holidays. Consider leveraging virtual knowledge centers and other technologies that enable social learning across the brand.

In many ways, Voice of the Customer (VoC) tools are your brands’ best resources for improving local customer experiences during the holiday season. By implementing the right technologies, you can significantly increase your ability to provide location managers with the real-time, actionable insights they need to truly delight holiday shoppers and keep them coming back throughout 2014.

About Gary Edwards

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