Take advantage of high-touch customer engagements, a retail insight.

Take advantage of high-touch customer engagements, a retail insight.

Retail managers have a tough job balancing operating constraints and customer experience demands. What is often missed are the opportunities created through positive customer engagements, delivered at the right time…. and those can be designed.

In a retail context, where do we place our best employees? In one instance the store managers had allocated their worst performing staff to the fitting rooms to sort hangers and fold clothes behind a desk.

Out of sight, out of mind?

I think not. And certainly a missed opportunity to engage (delight) customers. Wait, there’s more – fitting rooms present the ideal opportunity to up-sell and drive revenue.

The peak-end-rule should also guide our operational decisions. The peak-end-rule says that a customer’s experience is based mostly on how they felt at the peak of the experience and at the end of their experience.

The buying decision is often the ‘peak’ or most intense point. Does this decision occur in the fitting room?

Then how do we design the ‘end’ of the experience? Does the cashier surprise the customer with a discount or offer on their next purpose? How do the door staff thank the customers as they leave? The opportunities are endless (and cost effective). 

When sorry isn't enough

Whilst reading my book over the weekend I overheard my twins quarreling with each other. The one child apologises to the other for throwing her treasured toy tiger in the dirt. The other responds (slightly belligerently) – “well sorry isn’t good enough” and storms off to her room.

This got me thinking about how often we apologise or receive an apology and whether simply saying sorry is enough.

In the context of customer experience management we need to consider how we apologise to our clients when we mess up – and let’s face it we all mess up, it’s how we recover that’s important.

While I believe empathy in saying you’re sorry is important, the words need to be backed up with actions.

The question is: are the recovery actions your company takes random, consistent or at the discretion of the service delivery agent? What is the closed loop to ensure we learn from our mistakes?

My suggestion is to invest time thinking about the desired outcomes for your customers and the organisation and design a set of guided actions to achieve these outcomes. Whichever way you look at it, there is only an upside: poor experiences are turned into great ones leading to more loyal customers and internally processes can be continuously improved and slip-ups avoided in future (a journey to customer excellence).