Consumer delight
Retail customer experience is defined as the overall experience of customers with a retail brand, across touchpoints in their journey, whether in a brick and mortar store or online.
Right from when customers walk into a store or visit a retail brand’s website, until the actual purchase, billing, packaging, delivery and post-purchase. This journey defines the retail customer experience and it’s the single most important game changer for business success.
Experts believe customer experience is outdoing price and product as the key brand differentiator. A great customer experience is one of the biggest factors contributing to higher customer lifetime value (CLV). This benefit follows as a by-product of customer retention and loyalty, which are also advantages earned from providing your customers an impeccable overall experience.
Customer Experience Fuels Today’s Consumer businesses
Physical retailing is no longer a stand-alone process and, without question, customer experience fuels today’s retail. That’s why it’s critical that retailers understand today’s linear consumer journey.
When retailers and brands understand this consumer behavior and, more importantly, understand that this behavior is an integral part of the customer experience for buyers, they can better serve up the customer experience shoppers desire.
“The first step in exceeding your customer’s expectations is to know those expectations.”
Roy H. Williams
What it requires?
It requires all layers of an organization to be obsessed with the customer.
How to measure?
Customer experience
Customer satisfaction – customer feedback surveys and social media metrics.
Store experience – ‘how satisfied were you with your most recent experience?’
Product value – ‘is the value you receive worth what you pay for it?’
Customer effort score – ‘how easy was it to solve your problem?’
First contact resolution – the number of comments which are resolved on first contact. Tip: tagging functionality in your social media engagement tool will help you track these
Response rates – the total number of customers you reply to in a specific timeframe
Response times – the average time it takes for your agents to respond / action a comment
Completion time – the average time it takes an agent to complete an action
Customer behaviour
Store or eStore visits – number of transactions per month
Spend per visit (basket size) –
Product spend – revenue by category, upsell and cross-sell rates
Business results
Net Promoter Score – measure a customer’s willingness to recommend a brand’s product or service
Word of mouth referral – CSAT survey score – ‘willingness to recommend Io others?’
Customer acquisition cost (marketing spend) – the cost of acquiring more customers, divided by the number of customers new customers during a specific period
Customer churn – the % of customers lost over a specific period