The local retail experience fascinates me. As much as customers use online tools for research and even purchase, local resources matter. Particularly if those local retailers recognize and respond to their needs in a relevant way that - ideally - integrates the online experience with the in-store one and generates customer satisfaction.
Ace Hardware's Customer Loyalty and Satisfaction Lessons:
1. Have a clear sense of mission and how that translates to your customers' lives.
2. Develop an intensely local flavor to create connection with your local community. In addition to building relationships, this means that you offer products and services that are customized to meet the needs, desires and preferences of your local market.
3.
Speak to customers in a personal manner - both in terms of tone [i.e., make it sounds like it comes from a human being who cares] and customization. Use your data analytics - perhaps not to the same extent as is described in NYT's
How Companies Learn Your Secrets - to recognize your customer's purchases so you can thank them and create relevant offers to entine them to return.
Happy Friday! Here are the retail experience links that caught my eye this week ending 2/17/12:
For organizations wanting to get more customers, I recommend offering visitors and customers the option to opt-in to email and text messages rather than automatically enroll them in communications from you.
Although this seems like a no-brainer to me, let me explain my logic.
Over the holidays, I narrowly escaped getting subscribed to text messages from Sears as I completed a purchase. My only salvation was asking the somewhat surly cashier about a pre-checked box on the digital credit card signature device.
Imagine the damage Sears would have done to its relationship with me had I not realized its stupidity! I am not subscribed to any kind of texting service through my phone carrier. [Many people in this country aren't either.] Which means that for each of Sears' unsolicited text messages, I would have been charged money.
For the privilege of paying for Sears' messages, I would have gotten increasingly angrier since I never asked to receive text messages and the text messages couldn't possibly have any relevance to me.
As it is, I consider Sears' understanding of its customers and appreciation for digital marketing tools to be naive - at best. However, having escaped, I'll simply tread cautiously around them and remember forever what they were willing to do to a customer.
Imagine a different scenario. As I checked out, the cashier invited me to receive either text messages or emails [my choice] about upcoming sales relevant to my purchase. I could opt-in to receive daily, weekly or monthly messages with discounts available only for those customers who opted-in.
I would have willingly signed up for the monthly email communication - to check it out.
In other words, as it relates to interactions with customers, it's critical for retailers and businesses to:
- Ask permission to communicate with them on a regular basis
- Explain what's in it for them
- Offer them the opportunity to easily remove themselves
From a digital perspective, a marvelous solution for getting more customers comes from using website landing pages which invite visitors to learn more about offers such as signing up or opting in to email [or text] communications and provide them with tangible reasons for doing so.
In a real-life retail environment, the same can be accomplished by explaining verbally the benefits associated with the invitation.
Interestingly, in doing so you invite customers and visitors to provide you with feedback and perspective - which in turn might help you fine-tune your offerings.
What's your reaction to being duped into email or text messages? What have you found works best in convincing customers to opt-in to your communications?
I admire
retail thoughtfulness, the kind of careful attention to details that communicates to customers that they matter and that translates into a talk-worthy retail experience.
Zipcar and
Nufloors Coquitlam understand this as do the two retailers featured in this NRF2012 article titled
How to make your customers love you more.
Thoughtful Retail Experience: Nufloors Coquitlam
During my Surfaces 2012
Marketing and Selling to Flooring and Stone Power Consumers (aka Women!) presentation, I shared the case study of
Nufloors Coquitlam, a flooring store in BC, which epitomizes a thoughtful retail experience.
Here are a few of the details that General Manager Cynthia Dean pays attention to:
- Creating an inviting store appearance that reinforces: ‘We Sell Fashion’
- Cleaning the carpets on a monthly basis
- Steam cleaning the bathroom grout lines
- Putting away flooring samples consistently
- Ensuring clear sight lines to the back of the store
- Banishing bits of paper stuck to the walls
- Making sure that price tags are neat
- Offering large umbrellas by the front door for customers to stay dry
- Having a bowl of red and green apples and fresh flowers at the reception desk
- Creating a comfortable seating area
- Welcoming store visitors and offering them coffee & water
- Keeping the parking lot tidy
- In the spring and summer, growing flowers in the pots outside the front door
- Selecting giveaway Nufloor pens that don't fall apart
- Offering a chocolate bar for completing an instore survey
It's amazing how much customers appreciate thoughtful touches. Just think about your recent retail experiences...
Thoughtful Retail Experience: Zipcar
My friend Gary Petersen, who lives in New York City, sent me the following email about
Zipcar.
Zipcar - not sure you know about them being a suburban dweller, but the car less (and small carbon footprint urban dwellers) love it.
Basically the premise is one joins the Zipcar club, $50 year, and you can rent cars on line for specific periods of time - two hours to two days. (Not a long time long distance opportunity, but that is not their niche.)
You get a card with a infra red reader on it, and you order the specific car you want, on line, from many venues which are garages, or parking lots. Within a 5 minute walk from our building are 5 locations. No paper work, no waiting in line, nada. You call up 30 minutes in advance, go to the lot, wand the reader on the car and off you go. They pay for gas and insurance. Now it has its own little things you have to deal with, but for me it's great.
Now the great marketing: this insert [pictured above] on a notice from them describing reserved parking at IKEA for Zipcar. This is a major problem for manhattan dwellers - if you go to Ikeat how do you get the stuff home? Zipcar ties the short term rental with easy parking, genius!!
I agree this is genius! Zipcar thoughtfully considers its customers' or members' pain points and addresses them in a remarkable way that gets them talking about it. It makes me wish I weren't a suburban dweller and had reason to use them regularly.
Which are the little details you focus on that help you deliver a thoughtful retail experience?
Here are the links and resources that caught my attention this week ending 2/3/12 related to the retail experience. I hope you find them as intriguing as I did!
For the record, according to Punxsutawney Phil, 6 more weeks of winter...
Retail Experience Ideas
Retail Experience and the Consumer
Kohl’s: The Best Department Store for Customer Service
Integrating Offline/Online Retail Experiences
'
Green should feel good' appeared in the January 17-31, 2011 issue of
Floor Covering Weekly.
Although focused on sustainability, the article relates green to the retail experience and the marketing of flooring.
Green Should Feel Good
By Christine B. Whittemore
In the midst of the ongoing economic doom & gloom, what has inspired me most is Green. I’m entranced with Green roof and Green wall buildings, GeoHay protecting the Gulf Coast from oil devastation, community-based stewardship of critical waterways such as the Conasauga River, and witnessing my child learn about Green at school as she eagerly participates in community garden projects.
Green is innovative, creative, collaborative and beneficial. It produces tangible results: energy savings, better insulation, diminishing greenhouse gases, protecting the shoreline… It’s a positive journey toward a better world. Green makes me feel good.
So why doesn’t buying green make me feel better?
In the marketplace, I’m intuitively skeptical of green claims. I assume it’s all or mostly greenwash; I resent being fed a mound of green gobbledygook, signifying nothing, which leaves me feeling that I’ve been had. Combine that with the complexity of the flooring purchase process sans green, with seemingly thousands of shades of beige to wade through, and I’m stressed before even reaching a decision!
I want to feel good as a result of my purchase decisions. I don’t want to feel stupid and too many aspects of buying – whether green or not – make me feel stupid.
I’m not alone.
According to MSNBC, 15 retail practices really annoy customers! From up-selling, bait and switch and too much fine print, to rebates and constantly rearranging shelves and a few more in-between. These practices make customers feel stupid, which in turn makes them angry and unlikely to buy.
Many of those irritating retail practices parallel the ‘Sins of Greenwashing’ described in Terrachoice’s 2010 “Sins of Greenwashing” Report. These include: hidden trade-offs, no proof, vagueness, irrelevance, the lesser of two evils, fibbing and worshipping false labels… The report states that “more than 95% of consumer products claiming to be green were found to commit at least one of the “Sins of Greenwashing”.” Interestingly, Big Box stores were almost twice as likely to offer legitimate green certifications as either specialty stores or green boutiques. That means that Green is more likely to feel good for customers shopping at Big Box stores…
Imagine banishing the reputation-damaging claims of Greenwash and embracing instead the positives of Green: sincerity, authenticity, transparency, intense customer focus, fierce refusal to misrepresent and a desire to involve your constituents in this Green journey.
Here are tips for ensuring that Green Feels Good for you and your customers.
1. Embrace transparency. Jack Laurie in Ft. Wayne, IN deliberately replaced all product labels so they transparently stated pricing to establish trust with customers. That was in November 2008 when I visited. Don’t deliberately obfuscate. When in doubt, simplify and clarify.
2. Assess how green your green products are. Understand your green claims. If they aren’t fully green, be realistic about what benefits they offer. When in doubt, banish Greenwash!
3. Participate in your community’s Green programs and activities. Go help clean up your local river. Donate dated carpet samples to community gardens to keep weeds down. Offer your store as a community meeting place. Green is social; it’s about community. Be part of it!
4. Review your own business’ energy practices. Are you energy efficient? Do you recycle? How well do you and your business associates practice Green? If you look at your processes from your customers’ perspectives, might you uncover improvements that also support your customer-focus?
5. Make your store more efficient for customers. Time is our most precious resource. Can you rethink your store so it resolves the frustrations customers experience when they shop? Can you edit your store selection so that the options make sense for your customers? Can you make better use of the various communication tools available to listen to and communicate with customers?
Green should feel good. Are you ready to make buying Green feel good, too? Do you want to sell Real Green? Or are you just going to slather on the Greenwash?
An article in VMSD titled Soul Searching: How to trigger an emotional connection with your shopper bemoans the lack of theater and excitement at retail. Excessive focus on cutting costs to increase profitability has taken the magic out of the retail experience; no magic means no connecting with customers.
Better to "be investing in the creation of a shopping experience that engages consumers emotionally to create a competitive edge that ensures long-term financial success.
The secret is to involve as many senses as possible – sight, hearing, smell and touch – in a very holistic and coordinated approach. Then you create an experience that converts a potential shopper into a loyal customer, while your brand distinguishes itself from the masses of ordinary retail operations without a soul."
Here are specific recommendations:
Using Sight for Connecting With Customers
I love this suggestion: your store is a stage; customers are the actors; your products are the stars and your visual merchandising is your scenery. Change it frequently and don't forget to add surprise. Start with your store windows and integrate every element of your store into the performance. The Apple Store comes to mind [as well as the Disney Times Square Store].
Using Sound for Connecting With Customers
Sound supports your performance. It shouldn't be too loud. The article refers to Hermes including the sound of birds and galloping horses in the background.
Using Smell for Connecting With Customers
Scent reinforces the overall performance in a subtle way [think how evocative that 'new car' smell is]. "Less is more". [Read Scents and Sellability.]
Using Touch for Connecting With Customers
Testing products, touching them, feeling them - these are all ways to engage customers and connect with them [and even moreso if the test products include evocative scents e.g., hand lotions].
The benefit in using senses for connecting with customers is that you give them reason to relax, to linger and get lost in your retail experience. The longer they stay, the more likely they are to buy...
As I head off to Las Vegas, I'll be on the lookout for examples beyond the visual stimulation of wild carpet designs [see Vegas Carpet: Surreal, Intense and Addictive?].
Which are your favorite examples of using senses for connecting with customers at retail?
Let me know!
I'm off to Surfaces 2012 [see Surfaces 2012: Getting Found Online, Social Media, Marketing To Women] next week. It takes place in Las Vegas which tends to be a wild place for retail experience ideas. Wish me good inspiration!
In the meantime, here are links to stories I found intriguing this week relating to Retail Experience in the News for 1/20/12.
Let me know what you think!
Retail Experience Ideas
Target Aims To Regain Cachet With Unique Boutiques
What can retailers learn from Amazon, Groupon and eBay?
The Future of Retail Depends on Today's Policy Decisions
Retail Experience and the Consumer
What Consumer Culture Will Look Like In 2020 (And How Brands Can Adapt)
NRF Retail Predictions 2012
Integrating Offline/Online Retail Experiences
For previous issues of Retail Experience in the News, click on this link [and also this one].
Consider subscribing to Flooring The Consumer Blog!
Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!
Best,
C.B.