When it comes to retail store environments, one of the greatest differentiators is customer experience. It involves everything from the appearance of your store and how employees engage with customers to whether or not checkout is a memorably positive or negative experience. For every brick and mortar store, it’s vital to evaluate different strategies to improve your customer’s shopping experience.
In this article, we’ll be exploring actionable tips you can start implementing today to improve the customer experience in your store. As an added bonus, we’ll also be discussing a few different ways you can increase sales too. Let’s get going.
Why Customer Shopping Experience Is Important
When it comes to retail, the core pillars will always be differentiation and influence. Customer engagement plays a major role in creating memorable experiences for shoppers. Retail stores should focus on creating lasting relationships with customers by engaging them in meaningful conversations throughout their visit as well as utilizing technology such as chatbots, virtual assistants, and personalization tools to create more meaningful engagements.
You have to ask, “what keeps your customers coming back?”
If the only answers you have involve price or location convenience, then chances are high you’ve got room to increase sales through improving the customer shopping experience.
You Don’t Have To Spend Big To Improve
Although it may cost you both money and time, investing in improvements within your business is a necessary decision. That being said, upgrading doesn’t always have to entail buying the newest sales technology or a bunch of location changes. Think about it, VR suites mean nothing to customers who don’t want to shop in your store or work with you employees. Get to know your customers well so that you can spend time and money on the right improvements for their shopping experience.
You don’t have to spend big to make improvements. Take Joalpe for example, they sell plastic shopping baskets – there’s a variety of different types and sizes retail stores can choose from. retail stores. The ergonomic design makes it easy to use and they have many colours to match your brand. Shopping baskets play a big role in retail and they matter to customers. Perhaps most of all, they’re affordable and another way you can make customers happy.
Happy Employees Lead to Happy Customers
The state of happiness amongst your employees can inadvertently affect the customer experience. For example, if they’re unhappy, this can lead to high turnover rates which make your business look unstable and unreliable. On the other hand, happy employees are more content with their position within the company and will present a knowledgeable face for customers, this can greatly boost trust for your brand. They’re also more likely to be team players and invest the time necessary into ensuring that every customer has a great experience.
Building The Right Company Atmosphere And Culture
A good retail location is well-lit with space to move and shelves that make sense. Signs should help customers find what they need without being overwhelming, and include information on specials or promotions. How your store looks sends a message about your brand–make sure it’s the right one! A great example of this in action is Ikea, they guide users through different iterations of rooms in a house, giving the space personality and allowing customers to experience what their rooms could be like in a real way. This allows shoppers to visualize a product within their own home, and improves the customer experience as a whole. It can also improve sales.
Take Customer Engagement To A New Level
It may sound like common sense, but you need to focus on making sure customers feel heard and valued. There’s many ways to show them you care, one of the best ways is through surveys and reviews. This allows you to engage them and let them know their voice matters. You want to know what they think. By doing so, not only will the customer have a better experience with your business, but they’ll be more likely to recommend you to others.
You want to create the best possible atmosphere for your customers. This will vary a lot depending on your specific company, but let’s use a good example. If you owned a pet store, you may decorate the floor with paws to help customers around. You could put a cute dog at the entry door for everyone to see. You could pass out a free dog treat for customers every Friday. Be creative, listen to customers, and you can deliver an experience they won’t forget.
Thill Inc., an ecommerce order fulfillment company, shared several tips on building positive customer engagement. “Little things can go a long way, a polite answer to a customer question, being asked if you need help, this is why your employees are so valuable to creating a positive experience,” Todd Thill explained. “All of us want to feel appreciated, we’re human. If I’m out shopping and an employee is checking on me, that feels good. Little conversations like these matter, it’s the little things that can add up to a lot later.”
Make It Seamless To Checkout
Time is precious, and waiting in long lines to make a purchase is stressful, no matter how great the product or deal may be. You want to make sure you give your customers an easy process to check out. Difficult check out processes will lead to abandoned carts, dissatisfaction, and unhappy customers.
Offer discounts that are easy and quick to encourage a positive end to the shopping experience. This can be as uncomplicated as allowing mobile payments, or it may require investing in technology upgrades and giving customer representatives payment-enabled tablets. Sephora has done this last option so patrons getting makeovers (which can take up a lot of time) don’t need to stand in line afterwards.
Loyalty And Rewards
Make an effort to give back to your customers. Customer loyalty can be very powerful. Your most loyal customers will usually spend more money over time; in conjunction with the fact that they cost less to maintain, retained customers can mean lifts in sales and revenue.
Having ongoing loyal customers not only helps your business by providing stability, but they can also turn into advocates for your brand to those around them. While it’s important to provide incentives to new shoppers in order to attract them, don’t forget the importance of rewarding loyalty too. Your reward program doesn’t have to be overly complicated – even something as simple as exclusive discounts based on their shopping habits can add value and improve the customer experience.
Free Access To WiFi
By having free WiFi in store, shoppers can take advantage of their loyalty rewards program, search for deals and find information without having to leave the store.
Although WiFi may be expensive to provide for customers without charge, research suggests that doing so would increase store time and spending. Over 20 percent of retailers noted that deploying customer WiFi definitively lifted loyalty and boosted sales a few percent.
In Closing
When all is said and done, every business wants to increase sales without spending a lot of money. As you can see, it’s possible to do this when you improve the customer shopping experience.
If you can start implementing some of these tips right now, it’s very likely you’re going to start improving customer experiences in your retail stores.
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