At our other blog, Berman Evans Retail, we focus on retailing. In 2017, we have several posts on better customer experience. The topic is that important! So is factor consideration. The best companies win prestigious awards.
For instance, these are some Berman Evans customer experience posts from 2017:
- Omnichannel and Great Customer Experiences
- How Good Is the Customer Experience YOU Offer?
- Informative Infographic on the Customer Shopping Experience
- 2017 Temkin Customer Experience Ratings for Retailers
Better Customer Experience
For today, we discuss creating better customer experience. What can we do to make customers happier and apt to be loyal?
With that in mind, consider these insights from Kali Hawlk for Shopify. Notably, the insights apply to all types of marketing firms:
“All in all, products in your store speak for themselves. Accordingly, for some retailers, that’s all the experience customers need. Instead, people want delight by interacting with great items on your shelves. In fact, many retailers slip and get stuck.”
“Doug Stephens has a blog post at Retail Prophet. In that post, he says ‘most retailers assume customer experience is aesthetic. They feel it deals with how stores and Web sites look and feel’ and not anything else. Settling for this definition will limit your brand. Indeed, it may cause you to miss chances to craft something great for customers. In fact, any firm can have memorable customer experiences.”
Factor Consideration
In brief, these are Stephens’ factors to consider for great customer experience:
- “Engaging — Find ways to engage with customers. Again, this means at the store and other spots (like the Web). When you are not sure what engages shoppers, build a customer persona. This helps better understand preferences and pain points to address.”
- “Unique — Think different than others. Provide something that no other brand gives to shoppers. This includes your signs and logo. It even means colors you use or music you play. A unique branded experience makes a lasting impression.”
- “Personalized — You can customize loyalty programs. Or, create curated collections and special shops. This lets you tailor to customer needs and wants in a personal way.”
- “Surprising — Brush up on your consumer behavior psychology. At that point, engineer experiences that beat expectations.”
- “Repeatable — A customer experience can fail if it’s a one-time event. Instead, create processes that give each customer the experience you design. And do so every time they interact with your brand.”
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Customers expect to be wowed and have a desire to come back in the future. That’s why it’s so important for marketers to create a seamless marketing plan that matches throughout all aspects of the business. Customers want to feel like you care about them. Having a good relationship with them is key to having repeat customers.
This is really interesting to read right now because at my internship the Marketing Team is trying to figure out why the traffic to our website is not as high as it should be being that we are engaging, unique, personalized, surprising, and repeatable. I think we need to find a better balance of surprising and repeatable, which is hard to do for obvious reasons. With our new store opening I think we can amp up every one of the mentioned qualities, but maybe in the next meeting I’ll mention the point about consumer behavior psychology. It’s hard to debate hard facts, numbers, and concrete research.
A factor consideration is truly helpful in a field of marketing, because it demonstrates the ability to attract more customers through a concise organizational set of tactics. The willingness of any marketing group to apply such a system which relies not only on financial purposes but psychological ones as well as involving a more unique brand can certainly gain more ground. Customers don’t only look to cheaper prices, but also the quality that they receive from a product or the service.
This post is very relatable because I know as a consumer myself that the factors to consider generally do work to make customers loyal. For example, I tend to buy more from stores who have a customer loyalty program. The incentive of earning “points” when I buy something makes me want to shop there more often. It is interesting to read this post and think about these factors from a marketing perspective rather than a consumer perspective.
As a consumer, I can highly agree with the factors stated above for great customer experience. I believe the most important factor is “repeatable”. I think consistency is extremely important and being able to meet a customer’s expectations will keep them coming back. I think another important one is being unique and making sure you stand out compared to your competitors. Personalized is another great factor to keep a customer loyal. I know I will be likely to spend more if I’m receiving benefits in return.
To create loyalty there has to be something drawing your specific customers back. What makes one company differ from any average company is what will bring people back. As the article states, being unique as a company can provide customers with a better experience even if you are selling the same products your personalized program can better relate to customers therefore drawing them back.
Now a days it is not enough to just have “good” customer service to be notable. The company must go above and beyond to surpass your expectations. Largely successful companies can attribute many of their return customers, not necessarily because their product, but because dealing with the company was a positive experience. Would you want to buy something off of somebody that doesn’t care if you’re satisfied?