Today, growing numbers of companies know that their success hinges on much more than just smart advertising, marketing and pricing strategies.
They are the savvy merchants who realize their success is tied to providing consumers with an exceptional customer experience that will keep consumers returning again and again. They recognize there are numerous touch points that affect the retail customer experience that can, in turn, either make or break their business.
A catchy advertising slogan is no good for a restaurant if customers are served food that’s lukewarm or cold. The value of an upgraded produce department in a supermarket may be diminished if the cashiers at the check-out lanes aren’t efficient and friendly. Or a glitzy web site is of limited value if customers find it a hassle to place orders, return merchandise or make selections.
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Is your retail business suffering from an experience chasm? That is the experience gap that exists between your vision of how customers emotionally feel about your business and what they associate with your brand versus what their actual reactions and feelings are.
This past holiday season, many major retailers appeared to fall short of emotionally connecting with customers. Only three out of 24 retailers surveyed retained 70% or more of their customer base, according to study by America’s Research Group (ARG) on Winners and Losers of 2013.
ARG said the research showed that most retailers did a poor job of retaining customers and suggested they had “better seriously review their merchandising and advertising strategies if they want to stay in the game.”
No doubt, merchandising and presentation of goods for sale are important. But for retailers, they are only two small pieces in the total customer experience puzzle. The complete story is all about recognizing and managing a customer’s total experience with you and most importantly, how that experience causes them to feel about themselves.
Often we get so hung up on how customers feel about us (the company or experience) that we lose sight of how the experience causes them to feel about themselves!
Creating customer value in the 21st Century is being driven by retailers’ abilities to build competencies around experience no matter how that experience occurs — in person, through social media, digitally or on the Internet.
When customers interact with your brand, you’re constantly delivering sensory clues that influence their attitudes and behaviors. What they see, smell, hear, taste and touch creates their experience and that affects them emotionally — even though they usually have no idea that is happening.
Customer Experience And ‘Scanning The Clues’
We know that 95% of a typical customer’s mental processing takes place unconsciously. Only 5% of customers’ decisions are based on conscious rational thought.
That is why transforming the way you look at the customer experience at every step along the way, or touch point, is so important. Think of these touch points as moments that matter. Recognizing that these touch points exist will give a retailer the opportunity to optimize customer experiences each step along the way.
Managing customer experience requires scanning the clues (the atomic structure of experiences) to learn not just what customers are doing or thinking, but why they are doing what they are doing. It is knowing “how they think about the experience” that will create a memorable experience for customers so they will want to keep doing business with you.
Three kinds of “clues” — functional, mechanical and humanic — comprise customer experience. Functional clues are those that have to do with the technical quality of a customer’s experience. In a hotel, did you get your wake-up call? In a supermarket, are the advertised specials in stock? Mechanic clues are those that are tied to the sights, smells, sounds, tastes and textures of the retail surrounding. They include such things as the width of aisles and presentation of colors in a store. Meanwhile, humanic clues come from the customer’s interaction with your retail staff, including their choice of words, tone of voice, level of enthusiasm and body language.
Where Does The Experience Begin?
When you think about your retail brand, it is the quality of everything that is associated with your company and the essence of what distinguishes you from other merchants. Your retail brand starts with where your customer experience begins.
Many years ago I had the opportunity to work with Progressive Auto Insurance. The auto insurer discovered a critical customer touch point that had been overlooked before: The scene of an accident. What the customer thought of the insurer began with that “touch point” of how they were treated. It was a significant breakthrough.
All this may sound simple, and to a large degree, it is. But during the past three decades, I have seen only a small percentage of companies — perhaps as few as one out of 500 — that have taken a comprehensive approach to customer experience. The vast majority of companies focus on process management and improvement rather than a 21st Century approach to designing, creating and managing total customer experiences.
Taking The Holistic Approach
Generally, I have found that retailers who focus on process management end up frustrated that they aren’t any more effective in understanding their customers’ habits and preferences. Most businesses fall back on what is comfortable; what they have always done in trying to better figure out their customers.
When process management is the path that a retailer uses to implement changes, the question becomes: Are they just cobbling together the best practices from a number of retailers only to come up with something that is bland and generic? The challenge for retailers is to break out of that usual mold.
Most organizations also tend to make things complex and then undertake a shallow review of their customer experience. The better approach is to keep your review simple but tackle it with some depth. If you take this 21st Century approach, you will find there is a tremendous opportunity to design and create meaningful experiences for customers that will produce a positive return on your investment. That will set the stage for improving your competitive edge for sustainable growth and help increase customer satisfaction, loyalty and repeat business.
Lewis “Lou” P. Carbone is the Founder, President and Chief Experience Officer of Experience Engineering, a Minneapolis-based consulting firm dedicated to customer and employee experience management. The firm helps companies discover what really makes customers tick and offers solutions to help them increase customer satisfaction, loyalty and repeat business. A frequent college lecturer and inspirational speaker, Carbone is the author of Clued In: How to Keep Customers Coming Back Again and Again (Prentice-Hall, 2004), which won the Fast Company Reader’s Choice award. Carbone was the keynote speaker at the 2013 Retail Customer Experience Executive Summit.
