For those of you who haven't had the chance to check out Becky Carroll's Customers Rock blog it's well worth a few minutes out of your day. Recently, Becky quoted from Doug's "50 Ways" list within a framework of focusing on the customer experience. While it's not specifically a retail site, Customers Rock is a great place to find ideas and insights on delighting customers and creating a positive experience. Check it out!
Three years ago I shared with readers a list of 50 ways to be more customer-focused and deliver a better experience. I've decided to update the list and publish it again. It's a bit long so you might want to print it out and read it later. Even better, check off those actions you and your team take on a regular basis.
Here are 50 Ways to Improve Your Customer's Experience:
1. Open the door for your customer whenever possible. This is especially important if her hands are full.
2. Don't just hand your customer his product, "present" it to him.
3. Keep the store temperature at a setting that is comfortable for customers. Most retailers set the thermostat at what's comfortable for the employees.
4. Acknowledge your customer's children.
5. Offer to gift-wrap purchases if you already know it is a gift. Don't wait for your customer to ask.
6. Always suggest accessories and other items that will enhance a customer's purchase and his/her life.
7. Offer to carry your customer's purchase, however big or small, to her car.
8. Send handwritten thank-you notes. Come on, do you really do it?
9. Smile.
10. Introduce yourself to your customer.
11. Ask your customer her name. Use it.
12. Compliment your customer on his purchases. This is especially effective if he is another staff member's customer.
13. Don't give your customer too many choices. You're the experts, so recommend a product based on what you learn from him/her.
14. Tell her why a product isn't right for her.
15. If you can't fulfill a customer's need, suggest another company that may be able to do so.
16. Never ever say something negative about another company.
17. Act just as happy to see a customer with a return as you are one who walks into make a purchase.
18. Make it easy for customers with returns. Almost all customers are honest and should be treated as such. If you have to give a customer a refund, end the conversation with "I'm sorry this product didn't meet your needs but we will welcome the chance to serve you again."
19. Warmly welcome every customer who comes into your store.
20. Loan umbrellas on rainy days for customers to get to their cars. Ask them to either drive up to the sidewalk where you are waiting to receive the umbrella back or to bring it back on the next visit. Most customers will turn you down but you score major points for offering.
21. Don't interrupt the customer to talk. Talk - listen - talk - listen. You get the idea.
22. Do whatever you can - within reason - to keep an unhappy customer. What you'll lose on the one transaction you'll make it back because he will tell his friends and family how wonderful you are.
23. Refrain from visiting with a colleague when he/she is with a customer. It's distracting to both the customer and the colleague.
24. Never rush customers out at closing time. Gently let them know that you'll be closing in a few minutes. Never flash the lights or sound the air horn. (I'm joking.)
25. Offer to teach your customer how use the products. Clothing and home goods retailers might show their customers how to accessorize the items he/she have already selected.
26. Never blame the company for a policy or decision. You are the company.
27. When a customer says "Thank you," say "You're welcome."
28. Add "It's my pleasure" after you say "You're welcome."
29. Provide written details of frequently asked questions.
30. Don't coach or reprimand an employee or colleague in a customer's presence.
31. If you're on the phone with a customer and you absolutely must put him on hold, tell him approximately how long he will have to wait.
32. Don't interrupt an employee with a customer unless it's extremely important.
33. Create a children's craft area in your store so the kids can create art while their parents shop.
34. Give your customer your undivided attention when she is talking. Everything else can wait.
35. Accept responsibility when the store has made a mistake. Too err is human. To not admit it is stupid.
36. Empathize with upset customers. Say you're sorry.
37. Offer free drinks to your customer.
38. Give a gift for no reason. Even better, give a gift for being such a great customer.
39. Have the owner or manager personally call a high-ticket customer and thank her for her purchase if the sale was made by another staff member.
40. Loan books and other resources at no charge. This positions you as an expert and creates repeat traffic.
41. Ship a replacement to a customer with a defective product before you receive the original back.
42. Open the doors early when customers are waiting outside.
43. Provide seating for customers and offer to bring them product to look at.
44. If you're busy and a customer is waiting for help, give him an estimate of how long he'll have to wait for someone to help him.
45. Stop cleaning and doing busy work when customers are in the store. They're less likely to ask for help if you're doing other things.
46. Partner with restaurants and other stores to present exclusive discounts and offers to your customers. (A win-win-win. The other company gets incremental revenue, your customer saves money, and you're the nice person doing it for both of them.)
47. No checking email or text messages on your phone when customers are in the store. It makes you look bored and nobody wants to shop in a boring store.
48. If you have to walk away from your customer to go to the backroom or counter tell her what you are doing.
49. Always offer to contact your customer when a product she wants comes in. Never tell her to call and check.
50. Always thank as many customers as you can for coming into your store and invite them back.
51. Always go above and beyond for every customer.
You can download from our website the 50 Ways to Improve Your Customer's Experience article that's formated as a handout.
Dr Joseph Michelli, bestselling author of The Starbucks Experience, recently posted a brief podcast on his site in which he talks about our own Doug Fleener's 50 Ways to Improve the Customer Experience. An insightful and outspoken proponent of the customer experience in his own right, Dr. Michelli offers some flattering words for Doug and Dynamic Experiences Group, and shares 12 of Doug's 50 tips with his listeners. It's definitely worth four minutes of your time.
When I was a little kid my dad owned and operated several movie theaters. He'd been in that business for many 
years, and his office was full of relics from the golden age of Hollywood - though most of them were from the exhibitor's point-of-view. One of my favorites was a handbook of sorts for successfully running a concession stand. It was really nothing more than a collection of best practices from theater owners all over the country, collected, typed up onto fifty or so pages, and bound with three brass clasps along the left margin. I can remember rifling through the pages and learning all about how the way a snack bar was merchandised, presented, and staffed could have a positive effect on the amount of money people would spend.
One of the things that always stuck with me was the recommendation that popcorn be popped while customers were waiting for the movie to begin. This flew in the face of conventional wisdom that dictated you pop your corn when there were no customers around so you wouldn't be too busy to tend to customers. However, the smell of freshly popped popcorn and the visual of it bursting out of the popper would send customers into a buying frenzy, enticing even those who already had their Ju-Ju-Bees and Coke into buying a bucket. And do you know what? It worked.
Today, we know for a fact that we can influence buying by stimulating more senses simultaneously. Show somebody a product, and they might have an interest in it. Let them touch, hear, smell, and maybe even taste the same product, and the level of interest rises into a level of desire. This has worked especially well in the food industry with free samples, and it's a staple of the automotive industry where a test drive lets you feel all the aspects of the vehicle, smell the new-car smell, and hear the solid THUNK of the door as you close it.
So, here's an opportunity for you. Look around your store. What are you doing to stimulate more of your customers' senses? Is your background music conducive to your brand and products? What does your store smell like? Can customers touch the products? Is the lighting effective in showing off merchandise?
You probably won't be able to stimulate all the senses, and depending on what you're selling, you might not want to. But if you focus on stimulating more of the senses than you are now, you'll find customers' interest levels rising.
Okay, I've got to go get my popcorn.
My typical Friday morning routine involves breakfast at a great little spot down the road. The kind of place that only serves breakfast and lunch, where the waitresses call you Hon and know your regular order by heart. I usually read the weekly newspaper while I eat, but the last time I went there was no weekly paper to be had. They hadn't published that week due to staff vacation. Okay, fair enough.
So I found myself reading the paper placemat. In addition to a few word games to occupy little ones the placemat features a border of advertisements for local businesses. Usually these ads are just reprints of business cards, and there's nothing wrong with that.
As I looked at the different ads I took note of how many businesses have websites and email addresses. No website? Okay, that's forgivable for some businesses. No email? Again, somewhat allowable, but it's becoming less excusable. Let your customer contact you in as many was as possible, and in the way they want. Most businesses wouldn't dream of placing an ad without their phone number in it.
What I found most confounding is the number of businesses who have a website with their own domain name, but their email uses a generic service provider. For example, a local pet groomer might display www.petgroomer.com in their ad, but their email address is jdoe@verizon.net. Or jdoe@aol.com. Or jdoe@hotmail.net. Some folks would use petgroomer@whatevertheirprovideris.com, and that's a little better.
My questions is: why not use jdoe@petgroomer.com? Or info@petgroomer.com? Or anything@petgroomer.com? I actually saw an ad for a local company that builds websites, and even they were using a generic email address! This tells me these businesses are either using the free webspace their internet provider includes or they didn't want to spend a few bucks to have somebody set up an email account using their own domain name. Either way it makes one question how serious these businesses are about making it easy for their customers to reach them.
The Associated Press recently wrote about a multi-university study on how emotions affect the spending habits of consumers. The study essentially confirmed what many human behavior and retail experts had known for a long time: sad customers spend more.
Study participants who watched a sadness-inducing video clip offered to pay nearly four times as much money to buy a water bottle than a group that watched an emotionally neutral clip.Most folks will agree that a bit of shopping can lift them out of the doldrums, but what this study illustrates is the commonly unknown impact of mood on spending. Interestingly enough, subjects in the study who were exposed to the sad video and offered to pay more for the water bottle were adamant that the video had no bearing on the price they were willing to pay.
“This is a phenomenon that occurs without awareness,” Jennifer Lerner, a Harvard professor who studies emotion and decision making, said in a phone interview. “This is really different from the idea of retail therapy, where people are feeling negative and want to cheer themselves up by shopping. People have no idea this is going on.”This phenomenon can be looked at two ways. First, retailers can do what advertisers have been doing for years: take advantage of customers' low levels of contentment and appeal to their need to be happy. The other way is to understand how a customer is feeling when they buy, and work to make sure the sale is permanent. One major side effect of misery spending is the realization that purchases don't have a long-term curative effect. This often leads to buyer's remorse and returned products, and if you don't have an effective way to handle those returns, you'll soon find yourself feeling down. And you know what happens then.
Sometimes the most memorable part of a customer's experience comes from a small but thoughtful detail. Details that less customer-centric businesses rarely think of doing.
This is definitely the case at my local bank Cambridge Savings Bank. At each teller window they have placed a bottle of hand sanitizer for the customer's convenience. LOVE IT! I've seen this also used at some grocery stores, including Trader Joe's, with the shopping carts.
What a great message to your customers, especially during cold and flu season. Kill some germs and WOW the customer.
So let me ask, what are you doing that shows the customer that you want them to have the best possible experience?
Forget customer service. It's all about the experience.
Recently, Doug and I had the opportunity to visit some stores throughout the area. Some were clients, some weren't. I was especially excited to visit one store in particular because I have been a loyal fan of their product and brand for many years, and had yet to visit their store.
Upon entering, I was struck by the awesome assortment of product, most at very reasonable prices relative to other brands in the industry. I felt like a kid in a candy store. My immediate thought upon entering was that if I had a larger house (and a more understanding wife) I could easily spend a few hundred dollars in the short time we would be there. I found things I didn't even know this company sold. I found great impulse items. I even found stuff I didn't know I wanted or needed until I saw it!
But what kept me from going on a crazy spending spree was the staff. The behaviors and attitudes of the three or four employees who stationed themselves behind the cash wrap completely turned me off. Here I was, picking up products, commenting on things, remarking on the great prices, and the staff remained completely aloof and uninterested in my desire to spend money. There was no attempt to build rapport, apart from a cursory and well-worn "How can we help you?" Instead they discussed lunch, talked among themselves, and sat on the back counter. If somebody were to erase the retail environment from around this group, it would be difficult to distinguish them from any other group of twenty-somethings hanging out at the mall, much less determine what brand they were representing. Remember, this was a manufacturer-owned and operated store. The employees work directly for the brand they're selling... or not selling, in this case. One would think that the talent on the sales floor would provide an experience that's representative of the quality and uniqueness of the brand's product. Instead of adding value and raising customers' perception of their product (and, not coincidentally, justifying the premium prices), the staff's lack of interest in their customers and product nearly ruined my appreciation and loyalty for their brand. Imagine what it would do for a customer who had yet to be enticed by the magic of these products.
Whether you're a manufacturer or retailer, brand loyalty is one of the most valuable assets you can build in your customers. The trust and advocacy that comes from a loyal customer is priceless. It's critical to empower employees with the skills and tools necessary to build brand loyalty in customers. Otherwise your brand simply becomes a name.
The National Retail Federation's Stores.com website recently published a list of predictions for the upcoming year in retail. While there were no real surprises (consumers will continue to shop despite threats of recession, "green" practices will continue to pervade the way retailers appeal to customers, shopping excursions will become less of an event for more shoppers), there were a few interesting points of interest and one glaring omission.
First, the interesting bits. While social networking remains a dominant activity on computers, its infiltration into portable devices (cell phones, smartphones, media players) will drive a need for retailers to provide a more proactive approach to engaging customers. When a customer is able to get their questions answered by referencing a website or personal expert via their handheld device while they're standing in front of the product, retailers will need to be able to communicate a compelling reason to buy from them.
Another interesting, if not perplexing, conundrum facing retail in the next year is the growing rate of consumers' paradoxical desires. As Stores.com puts it:
You know this guy, right? Installed solar panels on the roof of his home; insists on cutting his grass with a push mower; recycles with vengeance. Yet, parked in his driveway is a Hummer. Having trouble putting the pieces together? That’s the challenge retailers and marketers face.
Finally, it looks like one prediction was left off of the list. It speaks to a few different items on the list, but it deserves to stand out on its own because it's something retailers can have direct control over so that it doesn't adversely affect their business. We predict that over the next twelve months, customers will continue to grow increasingly intolerant of unengaging store personnel. As time and money start to reach parity in terms of value and scarcity, and more and more retail employees are brought on board with little-to-no customer engagement skills development, the result will be more consumers turning to the web or other avenues for their purchasing, eroding the loyalty that's so valuable to growing a business.
Well, just like Ebenezer Scrooge was able to prove the Ghost of Christmas Future wrong by changing his ways, retailers can thwart this course to destruction by investing the resources into making their sales talent engagement specialists. The retailers that succeed beyond the next year will be the ones that have customers singing the praises of their people.
Last week I was fortunate enough to participate in a two-day customer experience program titled Creating Xtreme Customer Experiences
with the National Association of College Stores (NACS). Fifty college
store retailers gathered in Seattle for interactive workshops and
learning tours on the topic of creating remarkable, memorable customer
shopping experiences. Presenting the first day was Joseph A. Michelli,
author of The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary into Extraordinary. Another presenter was some guy who writes The Weekly Retail Experience.
Tony
Ellis, the educational director at NACS, didn't miss a detail in
creating a wonderful learning environment for the participants. One of
the smartest things Tony did was choose the W Hotel as the location of
the program. From the minute you entered the hotel you realized that
differentiation is a key element of the W customer experience. The W
definitely has its own brand personality and presents one of the most
unique hotel experiences in the hospitality industry.
I
have stayed at a lot of hotels in the world but this was my first visit
to a W. The W is hip, urban, and social. I was once hip, urban, and
social but not recently. So I'm sure the targeted W customer likes the
low mood lighting in the hallway and the music cranking in the lobby.
Well, it's more like a living room than a lobby but I still didn't want
to hang out there. The Kobe burger was quite good but at $30 with the
room service delivery charge it seemed a little over the top. There was
no coffee pot in the room but, it being Seattle, there was a Starbucks
across the street. And for the life of me I can't figure out why the
more you pay for a room the more you have to pay for an internet
connection.
With all that, the W still exceeded my expectations.
Why? It's clear that the staff's goal is to exceed the customer's
expectations. From the doorman to the concierge to the banquet
employees, every single person is focused on the guest. Any time I
engaged an employee it was clear that I was that person's priority.
Other conference attendees staying at the W had similar stories of how
the hotel had wow'd them.
One man asked the concierge how to get
tickets to a Sonics game. The concierge pulled two tickets out of his
desk and handed them to the guy. Another asked the concierge for some
dinner recommendations and when they got to the restaurant they were
treated to some appetizers, courtesy of the concierge - and this was
not a restaurant located in the hotel.
The best story was told
by the gentleman who had bought some fish at the world famous Pike
Place Fish Market to take home with him. In the middle of the night he
decided he was hungry and called down to the front desk to see if there
was a microwave he could use to cook his fish. In minutes there was
someone at his door with a microwave. That may not seem like a big deal
but I guarantee that most hotels would have told the person why they couldn't accommodate him.
So
why am I telling you all this? Because in the hustle and bustle of the
holiday season it's easy to lose sight of what's important. And what's
important is exceeding your customer's expectation. Dr. Michelli said
something I don't think I'll ever forget. He said that
a retailer doesn't have to be that interesting to create a great
customer experience; they just need to be interested in the customer.
I wasn't really into the hip and cool hotel with the $30 burger and no
coffee pot in the room, but I had a great experience because the people
who worked there wanted me to.
If you're interested in every customer who comes into your store, and you make it your goal to exceed their expectations, I can't imagine that you won't achieve your goals this holiday.
