3 Ways to Create Connected Customer Experiences and Increase Loyalty
As a retailer, you need to strike the right balance between technology and human interaction to offer an exceptional customer experience and in turn foster a long-term partnership with your customers. Here are three ways technology can help retailers build lifetime partnerships with consumers by making technology their partner and deploying modern customer engagement strategies:
Delighting Customers with Personalized Promotions
In the age of hyper-personalization, it is more important than ever for retailers to make sure they’re delivering an exceptional omnichannel customer experience. Personalized promotions allow retailers to build strong relationships with their customers without excessive margin erosion. With more consumers looking for deals to offset increasing prices, retailers can entice customers to make purchases with personalized promotions to targeted customers, or customer segments. This tactic ensures discounts are being directed at customers with a high likelihood of purchasing only if a discount is offered while remaining at an everyday competitive price for customers who are not likely to base their purchasing decision on a deal or discount.
As per a Forbes article, personalization has become a key indicator of a brand’s success. If brands are looking to last the year (forget a decade), then personalization is imperative. This article referenced the State of Personalization 2021 Report published by Twilio Segment, a major player on customer data platform. The report is based on a survey in which over 3000 companies, consumers and marketers worldwide participated. As per the report,
60% of consumers say they will likely become repeat buyers after a personalized shopping experience with a retailer, up from 44% in 2017. In other words, brands that don’t personalize experiences and promotions will lose their customer loyalty and revenue to those brands who do.
Less than 1 in 4 businesses have the required technology to deliver consistent, personalized experiences across channels.
E3 Retail’s Unified Pricing & Promotion Management Solution allows retailers to create and manage all promotions in one place for all customer touchpoints. Promotions can be setup for all customers, customer segments, or individual customers. Retailers will benefit from additional traffic and increased basket size with new targeted and complex types of promotions that can be active concurrently with, or without, stacking discounts.
Anticipating and Fulfilling Customers’ Needs and Wants
Upselling and cross-selling can improve customer’s shopping experience when done right. A store associate is the most important part of the in-store experience and can be the deciding factor for a customer making their purchase or not. Therefore, retailers must have a thoughtful and connected process of upselling and cross-selling in all customer touchpoints, ensuring the customer is not surprised by offerings in-store after researching their planned purchase online. Not only can the customers’ shopping experience be improved but retailers will also boost revenue and improve customer lifetime value.
Source: Orquest
There are different times in the selling process when you need to recommend or offer your customers various products and services or collect information to complete the sale. E3 Retail’s Guided Selling Solution enables retailers to invite customers to purchase additional or related products and services at the right time in the selling process which can also reduce transacting benefiting both the consumer and the retailer.
Our software tools enable your store associates to deliver a exceptional shopping experience to your customers. There are several studies done to show how important a customer-facing employee is and how they can be the main asset for a business entity. As per an article published by Orquest, 91% of retailers recognized that customer-facing employees are what differentiates the store experience from the online experience.
The above graph analyses how customer-facing employees influence annual sales - 25% of survey respondents said that these types of workers play a role in between 50%-74% of the final sales. Additionally, 23% of them said that the range is between 75% and 100%. But that trend is going to increase over the next few years. So clearly, to boost revenues, store associates need to be backed up with technology that helps them sell more.
Source: Proximity Insights
As per an article published by Proximity Insights, Assisted selling or guided selling allows brands to deliver excellent and personalized customer experiences as it arms them with value-added insights into the customer wants and preferences . More and more customers want brands to be aware of their favorite color, fabrics, size and so on. As per their data, assisted selling tools leads to an uplift in sales, average transaction value and customer retention.
Enabling Customers to Transact Anywhere, On Any Device
Consumers want the ability to shop when they want, and where they want. Whether online, in-store, or with a sales professional in the comfort of their own home. Retailers require the ability to meet customers’ needs by being able to interact, and transact, with customers from a tablet, laptop, or a traditional POS workstation.
Source: Gartner, Market Guide for Unified Commerce Platforms Anchored by POS for Tier 1 and Tier 2 Retailers, August 2021
As per a Gartner® article “POS applications have moved beyond an integrated solution in a multichannel network”. A new generation POS system is expected to deliver beyond the traditional functions of sales and returns to complete a transaction. They are expected to facilitate key unified commerce activities like click & collect, store fulfillment of online orders, running loyalty programs, maintaining customer data and so on.
Often customers want to browse online and narrow down their selections by adding them to the cart and then going into a retail store to touch and feel the product before making their purchasing decision. E3 Retail’s POS Solution allows customers to create a basket online, retrieve the basket in-store and share it with an associate who can assist them with completing their purchase without starting over. A unified commerce platform heavily relies on POS as an anchor for creating a holistic customer experience across all customers, and associate, touchpoints. Our POS systems will not only connect the customer experience, but also simplifies the associates sales process and reduces transacting time.
Source: Gartner, Market Guide for Unified Commerce Platforms Anchored by POS for Tier 1 and Tier 2 Retailers, August 2021
In Conclusion
Retail technology provides information about customers which gives retailers an advantage over competitors who have not invested in technology to drive their growth. Innovative technology solutions can help retailers understand the ever-changing customer demands and preferences so businesses can tailor products and services to match their needs. The right balance of technology and human interaction empowers associates to boost revenue and deliver exceptional customer service at every point in a customer’s shopping journey.
Each retailers operating model, and needs, are unique and every customer touchpoint needs to be backed by custom solutions that fit their unique needs.