Happy employees equal happy customers. A simple equation that's too good to be true? Actually no. When it comes to the customer-facing industry of retail, your employees play an important role. They can help to build a loyal, returning customer base or they can damage your brand's reputation. We invite you to learn how to drive employees' motivation and equip them with the right digital tools to ensure a great customer experience.
Alternatively, if you would like to get a full overview of how to achieve a 360-degree excellent customer experience in retail, you can download our report straight away.
Here you will find:
- The human element of retail
- Support your employees with the help of technologies
- Knowledge is power
- Give your people something to believe in
The human element of retail
Systems can help you manage your customer relationships, but all the data and systems in the world mean nothing if you don’t back it up with the human touch that retail was founded on.
It’s a store assistant that understands and knows the customer when they come in the store, or at the very least recognizes what they are after and how they can help. It’s about having employees that engage effectively with customers when they have a question – either on or offline.
But it’s not easy. It’s the human element of retail that’s harder to control, especially since it’s within an industry that has typically been the underdog of career choices. And it’s set against a backdrop of the pandemic which saw retail workers on the frontline in the most challenging of circumstances. They had to deal with everything from out-of-stocks, to store closures during lockdown or the uncertainty of a nervous customer coming back into the store after reopening.
So how can you help your people and maximize their efficiency to ensure they deliver customer service at a level that ensures a great customer experience that keeps your customers coming back for more, increasing their spending as a result?
Support your employees with the help of technologies
Frontline employees have many roles to undertake and it's retailer's responsibility to ensure that the team can concentrate on the core task - customers
Technology plays a huge role here. Instore workers have many roles to undertake and so anything that a retailer can do to free up their time to allow them to concentrate on core tasks, and particularly the customer, can be beneficial. It could be allowing customers to self-check out or to self-serve through kiosks during busier periods to ease the pressure, freeing up employees for genuine customer service tasks for example.
The customer interaction this allows can also increase the job satisfaction of your people, improving morale and customer service as a result. For instance, during quieter times employees can be focused on softer roles, such as meeting and greeting customers at the door and being more proactive around offering assistance.
But it’s not just about your in-store experts but making the most of your online employees too, allowing technology to complement what they can offer. For example, customers value convenience. That means chatbots are a great option for dealing with customer queries when your employees aren’t on hand or demand is too high for one-to-one interaction. But this isn’t always the answer since they don’t deliver the human touch that customers love in retail. Live chat offers a far more compelling experience that customers love, while video chat replicates the in-store experience even more closely.
Ikea Sweden has used video chat to help address geographical issues of customer spread, as well as helping streamline customer support where previously emails or photos needed to be sent to support a query.
Video chat especially came into its own in lockdown when the face-to-face experience wasn’t available. Currys plc, which trades as Currys in the UK and Ireland and in the Nordics under the Elkjøp, Elgiganten, and Gigantti brands, prides itself on customers always being able to get expert face-to-face advice through its ShopLive video shopping service.
It allows customers to connect, from the comfort of their sofa to a one-way video call with a Currys staff member for advice. According to the retailer, customers are four times as likely to buy something, spend 50% more, and have higher customer satisfaction as a result. Employees also benefit by increasing their knowledge and selling skills and allowing them to potentially earn more.
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And it allows in-store specialists to sell nationally, even when their own store is quiet. Currys says it’s a self-fulfilling service. “The more customers and colleagues on it, the more often customers are connected with the right expert, the better the service, the higher the extra sales, the less spare capacity among store colleagues, and the more profitable it is,” it says.
In the Nordics, the company recently rolled out a new Next Generation retail platform which includes the rollout of a new customer-facing website, initially in Denmark but with other regions to follow, and which could see video chat rollout in the Nordics too.
Knowledge is power
Knowledge of the customer is vital in delivering great customer service. But it means arming your employees with the information that they need both in-store and offline. As a retailer, you need to know your customer inside out and understand their likes and dislikes, their pain points, and challenges to address them accordingly.
Arming your employees with mobile devices enables them to access stock, product information and customer data to make personalized suggestions based on real intelligence
Your employees need to understand where the customer is on their customer journey, how they’ve interacted with you before, and where their interest is. And staff need that knowledge whether they are interacting with that customer instore, online or via a call center. Such knowledge also allows you to better anticipate customer needs and requirements for the future, as well as the present.
If it’s a delivery or returns query, it’s even more important that retailers solve issues speedily for customers. A recent consumer survey found that one in ten consumers won’t return to a retailer if they fail to deal with a problem they have had, showing just how vital your employees are in delivering great customer service.
In terms of product knowledge, customers have endless information available to them through their mobiles if they need it. Therefore instore employees need to be better – or at least match - that level of knowledge in order to impress the customers that choose to shop in the flesh.
Arming your employees with mobile devices, be they smartphones or tablets, enables them to access stock, product information, and customer data to make relevant, personalized suggestions to the customer based on real intelligence, rather than guesswork. It also allows them to move from behind the checkout to the customer’s side to provide a better level of service and potentially upsell when you are also embedding recommendation engines into such devices.
Give your people something to believe in
Ultimately successful customer service is delivered by employees with a passion or a greater interest in their brand and that view their role as more than just a job. In the UK John Lewis Partnership, which operates the John Lewis department store business and grocery chain Waitrose, inspires its staff - or partners as it calls them – by making them co-owners of the business. It calls them its “secret ingredient” in its success and the “opportunity for us to differentiate” and the fact that such success is shared drives people to work harder.
It's not a formula all retailers can emulate but it shows those retailers who invest in their employees, appreciate their value and arm them with the technology that allows people to perform better will see positive results. They will be able to deliver a customer experience, at any point on the customer journey, that will ensure the shopper comes back again. And that is the ultimate goal of your team and of great customer service.
