What to innovate and improve in customer service?
The last year has accelerated the implementation of many new features to improve the consumer experience during their shopping journey and this has led physical stores to forcefully reinvent their strategies.
While e-commerce invested in chatbots, new forms of payment such as QRCode, PIX, and other facilities through Artificial intelligence (AI) and Intelligence of Things (IoT) absorbing a growing number of buyers with high of 47% in the first half of 2020, the best result in the last 20 years, encouraged by circulation restrictions due to public health, face-to-face commerce found itself seeking to reconnect with its customers by expanding or strengthening the business on digital platforms even though they didn't really know how to do this. Find out more in the post about Trends for physical retail in 2021.
The good news is that we can count on numerous tools to facilitate this process. The challenge is to be able to use them in favor of the business by making intelligent integrations of all service and sales channels that cover the end-to-end customer journey, the so-called omnichannel. Understand how to prepare your customer service according to what will be trends in retail this year.
Self service
Make the entire physical store more digital, giving your customer autonomy to solve basic needs in a simple way. Spread Touch TVs and other types of digital panels in strategic places that make it possible to search for pieces and accessories by category, find out the promotions of the day or week, which allow you to view the weather forecast to help the customer choose the best look for the occasion according to the weather. These are just a few examples, but there are other solutions such as paying credit card bills, paying credit card bills in installments, paying installments in advance, etc.
Speed
Just like in the virtual environment, no one likes to waste time. The customer needs to find what they want clearly and easily, otherwise they will quickly lose interest and leave your store. Put tablets or smartphones in the hands of your salespeople integrated with the store system, the application, their own inventory and that of other partner units so that they can help customers find what they want more quickly and easily. Several factors contribute to retaining or losing a potential customer in the first few seconds of purchasing interest, one of them is: good or bad signage/indication of products or a service; the other is: the service provided to you at the establishment, and the latter can be crucial.
Specialize your service
Would you buy a product or service after receiving poor service? Yes, your product may even be the best on the market, but the impressions that the customer will have during the service will definitely influence whether they purchase it or not. Periodically train your employees (not only about products and services, but especially about listening carefully and empathetically to the customer, always looking for the best solution), give them autonomy to personalize each service (avoiding binding them to techniques and procedures), make them aware of the culture and image that your company wants customers to recognize, monitor and observe the routine of this service, carry out customer satisfaction surveys to more clearly assess their perception of how your company treats customers.
A report from Accenture, identified that Consumers 75% buy from stores that they identify them by name and make product recommendations based on their purchase history.
Provide a reasonable number of employees or establish an information desk so that customers with more difficulties, including technological ones, can resolve their needs promptly. You must have already left a store without buying absolutely anything because you couldn't find a salesperson available to answer a small but important question for you, right? Therefore, keep in mind that your first customer is your employees, in order to delight the end consumer with a differentiated and meaningful experience, they must be one of the first to believe in this value as true within the company. Invest in their engagement and experience.
Never forget: Your customer is bombarded by the competition's actions and reaching you means that they are not only interested in what you offer, but also give you an opportunity to present yourself better to them. Don't risk this last and very important step with half-assed service compromising the consumer experience.
