If a customer likes you and continues to like you, they will do business with you. If they don’t, they won’t. — Paul Greenberg
Happy customers = more sales. Got it. Pretty simple, isn’t it? Sure! Until it’s not. But how to know, if your customers really are happy? Or even if they are — could they be even happier? Coated with a pinch of humour, we wanted to provide you with some tips and tricks on how to make your customers happy(ier) again!
“52% indicated that a good customer service experience led them to purchase more from the company, where 55% said they’d switched to a different company for that product or service after having a bad customer service experience.”—Zendesk
“How did we do today?”
Retail business wouldn’t exist without customers. As the world of retail is changing, competition increases and customers are less brand loyal, brands are constantly thinking how they could improve. Or at least they should be.
But how do you know as a retailer what your customer really expect and how to become better it? Ask them.
Do you actively ask your customers feedback? How? Where? When? Encourage your customers to give feedback in all the different touchpoints online and offline and make it as easy as possible. Better even, reward them for it! By creating an atmosphere across the corporate culture where giving feedback is encouraged — or even better, set as one of the top goals, customers are more likely to give feedback less aggressive and more constructive.
One key metric of an agile organisation, able to approach the future turmoil, is how willing and able the top tier management is to interact with end consumers. The future retail experiences are becoming more and more user-center and those memorable moments aren’t created in closed boardrooms.
If one doesn’t exist in your retail team yet, it’s time to build a winning protocol for customer feedback. In order to actually learn from the feedback, the message needs to get further in your organisation. From the stores right up to top management. When harnessed correct these positive and negative viewpoints can really help your business grow and develop into a true bad-ass customer-centric organisation.
67% of customer churn is preventable if the customer issue was resolved at the first engagement. — Vala Afshar, from Esteban Kolsky survey
“Thank you for your feedback.“
These right here are the magic words that seem pretty obvious but unfortunately somewhat forgotten amongst many retailer. Now that you’ve managed to get your customers to interact with you — HOORAA — remember that this word combination gets you far (and gives you some extra seconds to think about appropriate ways to _really_ react).
Notwithstanding you agree with the feedback or not, remember never to underestimate the feedback. Listen and learn. Always. A lot of things have changed but there’s one golden rule of sales that never rusts: customer is always right (even when they really aren’t)!
We cannot highlight the importance of the correct reaction upon negative feedback. If handled correctly, the reaction might just turn, even in the most trickiest situations, to your advantage.
When negative feedback is handled well, the customer can forgive, forget or in best cases be even more satisfied with your brand than before. As a rule of thumb, you’re not only doing a damage control but building a community, which has a tendency to make people even more brand loyal.
37% of customers are satisfied with service recovery when they are offered something of monetary value (e.g., a refund or credit). But when the business adds an apology on top of the compensation, satisfaction doubles to 74%. — Len Markidan
Screwed up? We have some great news for you!
There’s always something you can do to make a bad situation better. Your only aim now is to make the customer feel better, more appreciated or make sure they come back. Oh yes, and tell their friends what a good experience they had.
Interacting with an aggravated client is like teaching a dog a new trick. The reaction needs to be immediate and repeated multiple times until the message sticks. In that moment the customer needs know JUST how apologetic you are and that your soul mission is to make them happy again. Often a simple gift card or another concrete compensation will do the trick. Most times, a small financial setback pays itself off in the long run. Make sure to follow up afterwards,tell the customer what you did to prevent this from happening again and repeat the apology by email.
What you don’t ever want is the bad rep to spread. People love to talk — and negative experiences are shared a lot more often and broad than positive. A simple customer feedback instance and spread like a wild fire cause a lot more serious financial set-backs than small gift voucher.
Luckily not all customer feedback moment’s are monstrous like this, but each message should be dealt with the same precision, attention and personality. Nothing sends a stronger message of ‘we don’t care’, than a company that fails to follow up on customer feedback, positive or negative!
If talking to humans (the nice and nasty ones) is new to you, we wrote some line that might come in handy:
We wish you good luck in the never ending story of constant development — enjoy the ride!
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