Sorted by Tag: Customer Experience Management
How to Use Endless Aisle to Improve Customer Experiences
What’s more frustrating as a customer than when you see the words “out of stock”? When your customers can’t buy the items they want, they’ll buy from your competitor who does. It’s a missed opportunity for a sale. It’s a bad customer experience.
Having readily available inventory that can be shipped to customers is a major competitive advantage in retail. Customers that can rely on you to have the items they need will buy from you again and again. They won’t need to turn to your competitor. They’ll trust you to have it. That makes them a loyal customer.
How do you ensure your inventory is always available to customers? The “endless aisle” makes it possible. In this post, we’ll discuss what it is, why it’s important to customer experiences, and the requirements you need for it. (more…)
What We’re Reading: Machine Learning, Digital Capabilities, Technology Trends
This week I want to share a few articles about how technology is revolutionizing retail. You’re past the silly season. You probably just got a good look at your company’s strengths and weaknesses. It’s time to start evaluating your strategic objectives for 2015…specifically, what technology investments you’ll make.
These articles talk about some trends and ideas regarding retail technology. Some of these ideas may be aspirational for the medium-sized business. All the same, it’s worth understanding where market demands are pushing the retail industry. Plus, a lot of this stuff is really cool.
Exceptional Customer Experience: How to Deliver Incredible Retail Experiences
(This post was originally published on January 13, 2015. We’ve updated it for accuracy and completeness.)
Customers don’t just buy products anymore. They buy experiences. They buy communities. They buy identity.
That means trying to sell anything less than “wow” (to borrow from Michael Hyatt) will not work. In a market where your customers have all the power, you cannot afford to under-deliver on customer experience.
You need to understand what makes up an exceptional customer experience. You need to understand how to deliver them. Let this post be your guide.
Why Customer Loyalty Programs Don’t Build Loyalty
Enrolling customers in a loyalty program is a common practice for retailers. The value proposition for a loyalty program is simple: the retailer gets to track customer data, the customer gets discounts or some kind of incentive for loyalty. Sounds like a win-win.
But, the reality is that customer loyalty programs are not as effective as most retailers think or expect.
Creating a customer loyalty can be an effective strategy for retailers, but to be successful you need to do more than hand out membership cards. You must focus on customer experience to create loyal customers.
How to Provide Personalized Product Recommendations
To provide product recommendations you really only need two things: products and recommendations.
In the offline world recommendations are easy. You see someone looking at a nice skirt, you show them the matching top. If someone is browsing through videogame consoles, suggest your favorite game.
But what if you can’t see your customer? What if you don’t know how your customer is browsing your store? This is the problem online retailers struggle with, daily.
This blog post will discuss what you need to do in order to provide online product recommendations that actually work. (more…)
