If you wish to stand apart in competition, a unique and exclusive customer experience is a proven method. This statement finds its sound footage in retail because here customer experience is that key element that differentiates e-commerce from a live store. Customer experience apps are increasingly getting recognized by retail companies as the think tanks in digital transformation have realized the significance of customer experience in-house. If you wish to enrich your in-store CX, these 5 complementary methods are your take-home solutions:
Adopt a cross channel approach involving both online and retail experience
The habits of today’s consumers are changing and their demands evolving. They are looking for enchantment, simple, and a personalized customer relationship. Customers today are highly aware and are constantly juggling between several points of contact and channels: brick and mortar, mobile phone, social media, websites, and much more. They keep shuffling from one channel to the other throughout their consumer journey. Consumers are no more merely multi-channel, rather they have adopted to cross-device and cross-device.
Brands today need to adapt to the new behavior pattern by adopting the cross-channel mode of marketing. Within the digital domain, it signifies creation of bridge between the physical points of sale and several digital platforms, so that you could offer your customers a smooth journey and seamless experience.
The methods for retailers to become cross-channel
Once you have been able to connect your physical points of sale to e-commerce site, like with pick up personally or order digitally, or in the in—store terminals that are linked to the e-commerce site. The key is to harmonize the digital and in-store CX. Brands can understand these aspects by using customer experience software to gather which modules or combinations of modules are producing best results for their individual brands.
Build a personalized CX in-store
Why do you need personalization in customer experience in retail? Customer relationship personalizing has become a must. Customers are constantly looking to build a personalized and privileged relationship with their preferred brands. Brands can achieve these both online and at sale physical points using CRM (customer relationship management), behavioral relationship, and Marketing Automation.
Brand loyalty and customer expectations
The following statistics reveals the parameters that determine what customers expect of a brand and how that leads to brand loyalty:
- Customers are readily willing to pay to get better experience – 40%
- In case of poor experience, they switch brands – 59%
- Customers are better empowered today than they were some 3 years back – 60%
- Customer experience affects the willingness to remain loyal to the brand – 74%
Many major brands are already using this strategy so that their in-store customer relationship can be personalized, by using methods known as clienteling, through equipping their sales staff attending in-store by giving them access to CRM through computer, smartphone, or tablet. This helps the shop assistants adapt their advice on the basis of customer profile and buying history. Personalising customer relationship in the retail sector entails digitalization of your sale’s physical points.
Bring together your offline and online data
To experience transformation in customer experience in retail, you need to keep data at the centre. In order to implement cross channel strategy, you have to centralize all your information systems and bring together the entire customer data within a unitary interface i.e., CRM. This includes resolving online data, for instance the visitor’s behavioral tracking to your website, along with collecting offline data in-store. With the help of CRMs, you can unify all this data into a single software ambiance.
The aim here is to get immediate access to every customer data of you, through the creation of single customer view (CSV), so that 360 degree customer overview can be acquired. Through data reconciliation that breaks down the data silos, you can avoid data dispersion in multi-channel platform. There are customer experience software that connect all data sources into an integrated interface that brands could access in real time.
Once you have reconciled in-store and online data, your sales staff has access to all your customer data, helping them to assist them in best manner feasible.
Change retails stores into connecting experiences
To provide an enriched CX, you have to transform sales points into experiences. The target of a brand should never be just selling products but experiences also, and remain connected via geotagging, interactive kiosks, entertainment zones, connected mirrors, after-sales workshops on services, etc.
With some of the services or even devices, not only are the brands attempting a better way of serving customers better customer experience, they are also enabling better customer information and data. For instance, a brand with after sales service for mobile devices could ask their customers to provide their social media information.
Convert your sales people into personal shopping individuals
Technology is not a replacement to the staff at your retail. In fact, it is technology that has augmented your assistants as it has enabled personalized assistance, and converted them into advisors and personal shoppers. Most of the retail outlets now have assistants equipped with tablets. The transformation brought about in retail experience is dependent on two factors- breaking the silos between e-commerce and brick and mortar, and providing adequate training to sales staff.
Either way, businesses need to adopt a complete customer-oriented vision such that the customer experience in-store is overwhelming and wholesome. This entire transformation needs to be implemented beyond your sales and marketing staff.
Only when businesses look at things from customer’s perspective, can they implement genuinely relevant and useful changes and systems. This is where customer feedback apps and customer surveys come into play. The software come with questions that can better understand customer expectations through feedback collection. Just install good customer experience management software in your retail and experience the difference.
