Increase Retail Customer Satisfaction with These Tips!
It can be tempting to make sweeping changes to your stores when customer satisfaction drops to the retail level. However, consistent small improvements can have as much of an impact as significant changes.
In this article, you’ll learn 15 ways to increase customer satisfaction. None of them will revolutionize your stores. However, they are all proven methods to delight consumers and turn them into fanatical fans.
1. Justify the sale with social proof
Recent research shows that shoppers buy for 100% emotional reasons, not logical. After purchasing, they want to justify their purchase with logic. We need to convince ourselves and the essential people in their lives that they made a wise choice.
Often references are used in the sales process. Provide a printed testimonial or other social proof to take this to the next level and increase customer satisfaction. Shoppers can then use this information to justify their decisions.
2. Give the shopper a gift and then surprise another
When you give a gift to customers, you activate the reciprocity reflex. This reflex is described in Robert Cialdini’s book The Effect: The Psychology of Persuasion. It’s triggered when you give people something for free, causing them to feel obligated to do something in return.
Giving gifts is a long-standing way to increase sales. However, an experiment in restaurants showed a way to achieve even better results. For example: give shoppers a gift, then return a few minutes later with a second gift. Waiters who mint the dishes, then returned unannounced and given a double mint, saw a 23% increase in tips.
3. Take notes
There is a valuable lesson in the self-help movie Dale Carnegie’s classic How To Win Friends and Influence People. Everyone is the hero of their own story. In other words, everyone wants to feel important.
For example, your staff can make shoppers feel important in a way that evaluates what they say. Staff indicated they thought it was important by grabbing customers’ attention and taking notes while shopping.
4. Train staff to educate resentful customers
The key to working with excited customers comes from the same Dale Carnegie rule as people. People want to feel important.
Sometimes, employees dealing with the first complaint can make the customer feel valued and resolve the issue. Other times, the only way your employees can do this is to escalate the issue to a senior employee.
When they do, they must be careful not to disturb the customer any further.
It’s not human nature to empathize with someone when they attack us. That’s why you need to train staff to solve the customer’s problem even under fire.
5. Staff treat customers like “bosses”
When employees see themselves working for you, they may not think they owe you anything other than the work they were paid to perform. Teach your employees a new mindset: they are the president of their company, a professional services firm. They work for themselves. You are just the first, best customer.
In this scenario, customers will enjoy excellent service and employees will push to increase their quota. An employee’s success in his company depends on his ability to improve customer satisfaction.
6. Celebrate customer birthdays
Does remembering the customer’s birthdays make a difference? A survey shows that this simple act led to an 88% increase in brand loyalty.
There are three ways to confirm birthdays. Send them a birthday card signed by you and your team. Send them a gift to collect from your store. Alternatively, send them a birthday present.
Test and use which method gets the best results.
7. Customization satisfies customers more than standardization
Customers are seeking customized experiences as the world becomes more homogeneous.
On the one hand, you want customers to have consistent experiences in your stores. After all, with these experiences, you create your brand.
However, you want to find ways to customize the customer experience. Target just did it, they used a beacon technology in their store to personally engage customers as they browse the aisles.
8. Prepare a customer satisfaction survey
Why you want to create a customer satisfaction survey offers you a benchmark. “This is where we are right now,” he says. Before you get to where you want to be, you must know your starting point.
Surveys allow you to track your progress, identify issues and create a frictionless customer experience.
9. Teach employees to be more service oriented.
Have you ever walked into a shop and asked a staff member to help just to tell you they have no business?
Don’t make the same mistake in your stores. Train employees that everyone is in customer service. If they can’t solve the client’s problem, they should put the client on the right track with the person who can.
10. Welcome to indirect purchasers
In many cases, purchasing decisions are indirectly affected. When shoppers are in the toy aisle, it is their child who chooses what to buy.
Do you attract and delight such indirect buyers?
11. Setting up self-service controls
For shoppers, nothing is more frustrating than long lines. In many stores, a few checkouts are often not open.
Why not turn your manned checks into self-service checks? Invite a staff member to assist customers with their purchases and allow customers to immerse themselves in the ‘freedom to wait for the experience.
12. Entertain shoppers during long wait times
If you have to stand for a long time in your shopping, why not go shopping? Business is not about blasting people with marketing messages, it’s about building relationships. Why not hire a magician, comedian, or even a musician to provide some entertainment this time around? Keep it consistent with your brand and entertain your customers.
Remember that emotions are responsible for decision making, a good experience while waiting can boost customer spirits and improve their overall experience.
13. Establishment of an employee mentoring program
Why not set up an employee mentoring program?
Many retailers do not tap into the knowledge and experience of their senior staff. Each week, a senior employee can meet with a senior team member. When they are together, they can review the performance and even tie it up.
Employee bonds are crucial to morale. It is one of our most basic needs, we like to be a part of something and accept it.
14. Use Customer Relationship Management software to manage the customer experience
I’m sure you are using Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software in your store. There are a variety of options, from inexpensive to the enterprise platform Infusionsoft.
Did you know that your CRM can help you manage customer experiences, not just customer data? Consider this example:
CRM reports that a regular elderly shopper hasn’t been in the store for several weeks.
Your employees call him and say, “Hello. I noticed you haven’t been in our store for a few weeks. I wanted to offer you a ride. ”
Listen to what they have to say before answering. If he didn’t go in because he fell, you could send him a gift. If it is healthy, you can offer a coupon that will be valid for the next seven days.
That her smoothie shop will remember enough to check it out.
15. Identify potential pitfalls
Here is one final tip to increase customer satisfaction. Use a mystery shopping company. There’s a fundamental advantage to hiring a mystery shopper: an unbiased outsider’s opinion on how shoppers experience your store.