There’s one thing that should underpin everything you do as a retailer. It’s not product launches or streamlining retail operations or expanding into new markets and channels. It’s something far simpler and can be summed up in one question.
“What makes customers happy?”
When they interact with you - regardless of the channel - your customers should get what they want, every single time. That’s it. It’s retail’s Holy Grail. Figure out what makes your customers happy and the rest - while not necessarily easy - will look after itself.
So ask yourself this: “What do your customers really want and what can you do to make sure they get it?”
The answer to this will be specific to your business but, generally speaking, customers want to feel they’re important and valued, they want to be cared for, they want convenience and ease, they want knowledgeable and helpful store associates, they want a great product, they want rich experiences and they want every interaction they have with your brand to feel worthwhile.
Ok, we get it, it’s a lot. But the good news is giving your customers what they want (even though they are more demanding than ever) is easier than it’s ever been before.
Digitalization, technology and cutting-edge retail software - especially systems that work seamlessly together - help you give your customers what they want.
Think of it like this...
If you were going to build a house, you wouldn’t expect one person to do everything.
You wouldn’t want a carpenter to wire the electrics, or a painter to fix your plumbing, or a roofer to fit your new kitchen.
You’d call in the experts. People who specialize in doing certain things and do them incredibly well.
The same logic applies when you're building the IT architecture to power your stores.
The retail software you choose and your IT architecture, play essential roles in helping you deliver the kind of experiences your customers desire.
It’s why you need a flexible, best-of-breed approach to creating a retail IT architecture and processes that work for you and your business.
But it doesn’t stop there. Finding systems that work in harmony together can be the true game changer.
As Tomas Pinås, Sales Director at Maze, says: “When systems like your POS, your CRM and your training app are all integrated in real time, you’re able to not only take your customer experience to new heights, but to continuously improve and evolve at the same time.”
Maze (customer service insights and training), Sitoo (Unified Commerce Platform anchored by POS) and Voyado (CRM platform) are three best-of-breed solutions built to help you give your customers what they want.
When they’re linked together in real time, here’s how they help:
1. Show customers you care
When your POS, training app and CRM are integrated, the level of service you’re able to offer you customers goes through the roof.
For example, with this integration customers will receive an email or a text asking about their experience immediately after they make a purchase.
At its most simple level, this makes your customers feel valued. It shows them you care and that you want to know what they think. Creating these feelings help build loyalty which in turn generates repeat business and word of mouth recommendations.
But the benefits don’t stop there...
2. Deliver a personal service
As mentioned above, if you have an email address or phone number for your customer, they can receive a feedback survey immediately after they make a purchase. This survey is incredibly important for staff training, but it also allows you to offer a hyper-personal service next time they visit one of your stores.
As Tomas explains: “We can actually send customer feedback back to the POS and loyalty system. That means, next time a customer comes into the store, store associates can see in the POS system your history of feedback.
“That means store associates can see, in an instant, the status of the customer. So if, for instance, the customer had consistently given green feedback apart from their previous two visits - which had been red feedback - then your store associate could do something about it.
“They could say ‘Hey, I can see the last couple of times you came to see us you didn’t have the kind of experience we’d expect you to have. So, to make up for that I’m going to give you 15% off your purchases today.’ By doing this, the store associate is able to deliver a unique experience and transform the customer's mindset from a negative one to a positive one.”
3. Drive continuous improvement
Software is a great enabler for delivering ‘above and beyond’ CX but, when all is said and done, the main people responsible for CX are your store associates. That’s why continual improvement and evolving with your customers’ needs are so important.
Tomas adds: “We are actually motivating people before they go to work. We collate customer feedback in the app and this is then available for the store associates to see each morning. This means they can see, for example, that they had 98% satisfied customers from the day before.
“We find this helps give them an extra kick and a motivation boost before they even start their shift. It keeps them on their toes and helps them create good customer engagement while providing excellent service.
“And, if the feedback scores aren’t great, it means problems can be identified and acted on through better training.”
Not only does the combination of different solutions help create better experiences and service levels, it’s also easy to manage thanks to fast, efficient implementation and the ability to easily scale the solutions across different stores and locations.
If you’d like to find out how integrating your POS, CRM and customer service platform can benefit your business then we’d love to talk to you.
