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Tag: retail

  • When To Give The Customer A Quick In-And-Out

    When To Give The Customer A Quick In-And-Out

    For those of you with less than pure thoughts, got ya! I don’t write on customer service issues very often, once or twice a year, and it usually has to do with how to treat them with respect, how to enhance their experience, or how to engage them more thoroughly and for longer. But sometimes, you just want to get in, get yer stuff and get out, and that’s not always a bad thing.

    The thought of speed in a transaction is a foundation in certain sectors of brick and mortar retail – groceries, convenience, gasoline, and the like for instance. They aren’t large footprint locations, don’t have much room for folks to be roaming around, and studies have shown that they often are in a hurry or have a set list of things they need, and that total receipt won’t change much due to them lingering. They make up for this by providing a lot of opportunities for impulse buying while they have you the most captive – at the cash register. Some of these locations are so ardent about this, that they have arranged the items packed so closely together you can hardly see the cashier for the racks of stuff! But you can still get in, pick up your choices off of easily selectable shelves and quick-grab racks, get in a line (if there even is one) and pay inside of a couple of minutes, seemingly regardless of the number of items.

    In that instance, that’s good customer service – you gave the customer exactly what they wanted – speed. Their expectations were met and you’ve given them exactly what they needed, a no-frills transactional approach to commerce without a lot of fuss or conversation. Some of this is possible due to technology – they have the fastest register software available and the simplest, most common-denominator pricing and indexing for inventory of anyone in the business of retail. But some of it has to do with design, layout, and most importantly, human behavior.

    The reason people shop at convenience stores is exactly that – convenience. They don’t go bargain hunting, they don’t argue over the $3 mini bag of Cheeze Curlz, they don’t bring coupons (there aren’t any), and they often aren’t terribly loyal when it comes to brand. They’ll pay a premium for the speed and won’t argue about it with the cashier, who says as little as possible during the transaction. They’re not folksy, they’re not chatty, they don’t know you most of the time, and don’t plan on seeing you again, ever. No need to form a relationship, just bag the chips and the soft drink and move on.

    That’s not to say that you feel rushed, or hurried, or that the service is brusk or rude, because its not. It’s just devoid of emotion, good, bad, or indifferent. They serve a function, do it well, and please the customer – job done. For the cashier, this is a relatively simple, boring to the point of inanity, potentially dangerous job, often on an odd shift, done for the short-term based on a dearth of marketable skills and a need for capital – it’s not a career position. For the customer, it’s a quick pit stop with a specific purpose, no browsing or emotion required, and if they happen to find something whimsical or amusing at the register, or something there reminds them of another item they need, so much the better for everyone – what the heck, it’s only two bucks, right?

    Other types of retailers can benefit from this approach as well, specifically online. Everyone’s focus in the early days of web commerce was to extend “dwell time” – how long are they lingering on the site, what are they looking at, what page and what item draws their attention, were key metrics. Consumers were still getting used to shopping online, and there had yet to be developed standards of usability or code norms for websites, so the customer had to not only learn how to find the items they were looking for, but how to work the website in order to get them, from the shopping presentation matrix to the sizing and customizing of the item, to calculating the shipping time and cost, to the payments page(s), it was a learning experience, not so much a shopping experience.

    More recently, shoppers have gotten vary familiar with all the bells and whistles of online commerce, web designers have figured out how to present non-static digital items for greatest effect, and how to lay out pages intuitively so that your eye and cursor travels to what you want almost effortlessly. It’s a strong advantage, and only recently have online shoppers been allowed the freedom to use their own data to speed the process along. For commerce sites you frequent, there is significant data from your prior transactions that allows both you and the retailer to benefit.

    I frequent a couple of gift sites for things I send to clients for the holidays, and after a few years, I can visit them, select, buy, address and ship about 20 items in less than 30 minutes – blazing speed compared to a trip to a crowded mall, let alone the gift wrapping, boxing, shipping, and distribution time and cost. All the addresses are already there, my selections from last year and prior are logged, and it reminds me if, in my shopping haze, I duplicate a previous gift – nice feature for us oldsters. The shipping is often either included or free based on frequency and volume, and I know the quality and presentation are top notch with out having to investigate further – a quick in and out transaction that by no means diminishes the thoughtfulness of sending a gift to a loyal client.

    Sometimes providing a great customer experience really means delivering on your brand promise, as long as it’s been accurately telegraphed ahead of time. I know the convenience store doesn’t have premium brands, I know their selection is rather limited to a certain type of merchandise, and I know that I’m not going to get a bargain, or be met at the door and asked if I’d like a sample of Chai latte while I shop, or that the cashier is going to gushingly ask if there’s “anything else she can do for me.” But I also know they’ll have what I need to get by, right now, and get me back out and on the road without having to do anything special, or even say a word. Sometimes, that’s a great experience!

  • Build Customer Brand Loyalty by Letting Them Depend On You

    Build Customer Brand Loyalty by Letting Them Depend On You

    Consumer’s purchasing behaviors have changed over the last 20 years, yet many companies are still marketing like it was 1954, pushing down advertising messages, focusing on media buys and eye-ball numbers, knowing little about how customers decide to purchase their products, how often, and most importantly, why.

    Itamar Simonson, a marketing professor and researcher at Stanford University, posits that consumers have essentially three categories of input when making a purchasing decision: Preferences, prior personal experience, brand impression (P), point of purchase messaging, advertising from outside sources, packaging, shelf positioning, coupons, price point, (M), and the input of peers and others they know or have seen, like online reviews by customers, friends and family, co-workers, etc, (O). There is a balance between these three that needs to be satisfied, and he contends that it’s a zero-sum game, since the more you rely on one factor to make purchasing decisions, the less you rely on the other two.

    Your job as a marketer is to make marketing, (M), the most influential it can be, since it’s the only factor you have direct control over. But this can back-fire if the other factors are too far out of balance one way or another. If all your marketing messaging, packaging, color selection, product size, convenience, media placements, shelf placements are all perfectly aligned, but the product itself is too far down-scale for the audience, or the quality is low, or the need for the product disappears or is usurped by an innovation, you still lose the race with the consumer. Too many negative reviews, bad word-of-mouth buzz, poor peer referral, and even if the marketing is perfect, the product will tank.

    This effect is tied to several factors inherent in the product itself. The higher the complexity, the broader the range of choices, the more important peer review becomes. The risk of making an ill-advised purchase rise with the level of price and complexity of the product. A carton of milk isn’t too complex, and the price point is relatively low risk, as purchases go. Under those circumstances, even though there is a seemingly ever-widening range of choices of types of milk, (P) plays the largest part of the purchase decision. It would take a tremendous amount of marketing dollars to shift that and make people’s perceptions and purchasing habits change. On the other hand, items like cars, computers, and personal consumption, (like restaurants), rely increasingly on peer reviews to drive purchasing behavior.

    As marketers, it’s our job to make our efforts so direct, so appealing, so transparent and dependable, to make our brand so reliable and stable, that our brand burnishes consumer’s choices of ANYTHING carrying that brand. That makes (M) the biggest factor, and develops a level of trust with the consumer that really moves the needle in the long term. This serves several purposes, including strangling competitors and locking them out, expanding the brand’s circle of influence, broadening the potential audience for the brand, and keeps the brand evolving and contemporary with the target consumer as their behavior grows and shifts throughout their lives, keeping the brand relevant.

    Review sites and their reviewers change constantly. If you want to win the battle for consumer mindshare, continually strive for quality, keep your brand consistent with that quality, and go the extra mile for customers – that way no matter what the platform or source of the review, they will be overwhelmingly positive and you’ll get the purchasing nod.

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