They and I say brick-and-mortar retail is a thing of the past. The mall is, so while it’s still here, retail brands are trying to attract new customers and retain existing consumers. While some brands succeed in getting more customers, many are struggling under the current economic climate. The difference between success and failure lies within the customer experience.
Customer experience is an essential part of the retail experience. It is what sets retail stores apart from e-commerce. As technology advances, the border between an e-commerce site and a physical store no longer exists, and points of contact have multiplied. Retail stores and shopping malls must be able to compete with e-commerce by providing a better customer experience.
Here are our three tips for a successful customer experience in the retail industry.
Turn the point of sale into a place of experience.
Beyond streamlining and simplifying the journey, the shopping mall must offer more than a place to purchase the items. Instead, they must move towards moving the sale of experiences. Despite all the ease provided by the web, consumers will always need to touch the product, try it, smell it, and live an emotional experience, giving them genuine reasons to return.
We then see many brands reinventing their retail spaces to make them places of experience and entertainment, like Newmarket Plaza. These shopping centers take over the purchase in the background and offer their customers to interact with the sellers. They immerse themselves in the universe of the brand, meet a community, to charge their phone while drinking coffee. This gives them an engaging experience that makes them stay longer in the store and consume!
Capitalize on data to converge on and offline.
Just as your websites track web visitors to offer them offers tailored to their profile, you must integrate analytics tools into your physical store. This includes RFID chips, connected labels, and intelligent cash register systems. Your point of sale must adopt e-commerce codes to understand better and follow customers.
This in-depth knowledge of each target constitutes the fundamental basis for any relationship personalization! Imagine that a loyal customer, having the habit of buying online, finds himself in your store, under the total indifference of the sellers who explain that they cannot refund his last purchase because they do not manage the site e-trade!
From now on, you must reconcile all your data sources to obtain a 360 ° customer view (single customer repository) and ensure their security. All this online and offline data is valuable for the brand because it will gain insights into the customer profile, including purchasing behavior, trends, preferences, and journey.
With this new data, retail brands can better engage customers through a more personalized relationship.
Reduce all the friction in the buying journey.
The next crucial step is reducing the friction or constraints that hinder the purchase journey and conversions. This friction is illustrated in several ways: it could be a form that is too long to fill out on the web or too many steps before making a purchase.
At the point of sale, it can be an insufficient or inexperienced number of salespeople, poor inventory management leading to frequent product shortages, or even too long checkout! To reduce this friction, many distributors are innovating by offering services that make it possible to simplify the purchasing process: contactless payment from a mobile application or facial recognition, voice control, etc.
The ready-to-wear brand Gap, for example, found that nearly 70% of its shoppers leave the store without having purchased items due to a lack of availability of size or color in the store! The brand then decided to remedy this by offering the consumer be delivered to their home in the correct size or color of the item that would not be available in stores.
