6 Tips for Creating a Memorable In-Store Customer Experience
In response to changing consumer habits, retailers have been actively fusing online and offline shopping, making it easy to lose touch with a brand’s original, in-store customer experience. As life returns to the pre-pandemic days of shopping in-store, many retailers are finding it challenging to step up and offer experiences that people can’t get online or on their phone.
This goes further than simply making in-store shopping more “hands-on”, in response to the pandemic days of lockdown during which time touching products was heavily discouraged.
Retailers who want to truly differentiate themselves in the highly competitive environment that exists today need to focus on every point of contact their brand makes with a customer, and every interaction customers have with products or services, as a way to influence customer spending and loyalty.
Here are some tips on raising the CX in your retail outlet as the world opens up to in-store shopping.
#1. Train your staff to relate to customers
Your front-line sales employees are your biggest and most important assets when it comes to creating a memorable in-store experience. Hire people who can easily relate to your regular customers, and train them to hone their service skills.
The bare minimum is to train employees to know about your products and store policies, but this is not enough. You should also train them on how to connect with your customers conversationally in a relevant and memorable way.
#2. Re-define checkout
A study back in 2014 found more than three-quarters of Americans would be less likely to return to a store if they experienced long checkout lines, and that more than 8 minutes waiting in line will make most shoppers consider turning back.
You can un-tether the checkout process, by taking the checkout process to the customer and enabling staff to ring up sales from anywhere in the store. For example, consider implementing in-app checkout on iPads as a way to combat long wait times. Some retailers are enabling their customers to scan and pay for their purchases within a mobile app that can be downloaded.
Obviously, this customer experience improvement requires a retailer to have a mobile app or an active user base. If you don’t already have those, it is important to keep these upgrades on your radar, as the future of retail is heading in the frictionless payment direction. Cashier-less, checkout-less stores like Amazon Go have initiated this trend, and it will not be long before almost all retailers will follow.
#3. Personalize the retail experience
80 per cent of customers are more likely to purchase from retailers that personalize the in-store customer experience. Customers place a high value on being at the centre of an experience that is calibrated to their unique likes and interests. Of course, designing an experience that is specifically for each and every customer can be challenging.
Begin by getting to know your customers better, and that way you can offer them discounts and promotions based on their buying habits preferred brands and product choices. Starting a loyalty program is a great way to operationalize the data gathering required to personalize the in-store experience. It will enable you to keep track of your customers’ buying habits and offer them relevant rewards.
#4. Go omnichannel for immersive marketing
Embrace an in-store sales approach that provides the customer with an integrated experience no matter what device they use to shop. Reaching your customers with relevant and consistent messaging across all electronic platforms, as well as in-store, is key to making this work.
For example, your customer must be able to check the availability of a product on their PC, personalize the product on their smartphone, register for a discount on an in-store kiosk, try out the selected product in-store with help from your sales team, and then avoid the queue and pay by mobile app.
This consistency of experience across all touchpoints should happen without any overlap or repetition of any kind so that customers are not tempted to abandon the purchasing process at any step.
#5. Leverage technology
Today’s retail customers are literally being bombarded with stimuli, messages and impulses around the clock. In order to stand out and be noticed, retailers must create customer experiences that are highly relevant to stay top-of-mind. But how?
Technology can help and is transforming retail spaces especially in terms of enhancing the in-store experience. For example, augmented reality, where the objects that reside in the real world are enhanced by computer-generated perceptual information, offers a promising tool to immerse customers in a shopping experience that stimulates all of the senses while trying out products.
Smart speakers are another technology quickly becoming ubiquitous with more than 150 million speaker units shipped globally in 2020. By allowing your customers to purchase products from home by interacting with a digital assistant using voice commands, retailers would not only be on the cutting edge of customer experience but would also be branded as highly relevant and certainly memorable.
#6. Be mobile-friendly
If the above technologies seem far-fetched for your retail business, at least make sure you integrate the in-store experience with customers’ use of mobile phones. According to Pew Research, 81% of US adults had smartphones in 2019 and nearly all of them have the capability to use their phones to interact with your in-store displays.
Creating an interactive experience with a QR code, for example, is a great way to inspire repeat purchases. Since QR codes can trigger a multi-media response when activated, they create a channel to educate customers in fun ways with content that promotes in-store shopping, offering unique incentives for customers to come back to you for similar purchases in future.
And once you have a repeat customer, it takes less marketing investment overall to make them more likely to convert again. The bottom line is that you must make customer experience a priority at all times in order to differentiate your retail brand over others, especially as shopping goes back offline.
Consumers may not have as many options in the bricks and mortar world as they did before the pandemic, but they are surely more likely to have experienced the ease and convenience of shopping online.
With the above tips, you can win your customers over to preferring your in-store experience.
- 6 Tips for Creating a Memorable In-Store Customer Experience - April 14, 2021
