All About Retailing Blog - This blog tackles the topic of retail technology solutions and key retail trends. One Step Retail Solutions is your one step resource for your retail technology needs.
Do you ask a wall of questions before ever getting a customer excited about the possibilities in what you sell?
If so, I’ll bet it is affecting your conversion rate (the number of people you encounter divided by the number of times they purchased).
Such was the case when I went into a flooring retailer…
Me: I’m looking for a new wood floor.
Guy: Are you doing it yourself or are you using a contractor? Is your floor above grade or below? Are you looking for real wood, laminate, or vinyl? Do you have a budget?
He asked about six other questions, but my ears had stopped processing. All I could hear was my own voice, Boy are you unprepared – this is work. Let’s leave. Such a wall of questions ultimately tumbles onto the unassuming customer making them feel stupid and foolish.
Are you doing that to your customer?
I’ll bet you are…
There are varying degrees of complexity to many sales in a store.
Maybe your customer needs to know what their dinner companion will be wearing because she wants a complementary look. She wants to look like a couple, not like two individuals. Perhaps a contractor needs to be consulted for items in a new kitchen.
Maybe the doorway dimensions need to be known to make sure the dream couch will fit through it.
Like everything when it comes to retail sales training, there’s a way to get that information…and a way not to. Let's iron out the wrinkles in your selling process...
Here are four tips for selling in retail to navigate a complex retail sale:
1)First and foremost - create the vision of what your product can do for your shopper. This is the fun side. This is where you create wonder, where you encourage people to look, touch, and imagine. Get them to fall in love with it first. Show options in different price ranges and styles. The important thing is to keep all of your options to sell wide-open, to show your customer all you have and all you can do for them.
2)Present each piece of information you need in bite-sized chunks. While you may need a wall of information and only questions will help you build it, you need to build it brick by brick. Your goal is to reframe fearful into safe.
If you need the dimensions of a doorway for that couch, is there a way to approximate the size? For example, you could ask Does it feel like an average doorway to walk through – not too tight? You could ask them to hold out their elbows at shoulder height and touch fists together and then ask, This is about the space we need – does that feel right?
If it does, you can move on. If there is still a question, you need to provide safety, so now you offer options. 95% of the time we can deliver through a doorway like that, if not we look to see if we can use a window. In the rarest of cases, they’ll measure before bringing it in and if there’s no way it can be done, we’ll cancel the order. Sound good?Your goal in a complex sale is to keep the motion moving forward until you know the sale is dead. This keeps you from stopping a sale before it even starts.
3)Recap all of the possibilities that could throw the sale off by assuring the customer you’ve examined everything.
To finalize the sale, restate each brick of information once again. Remind them…
We’ve approximated the size of the ring;we’ve got the rose gold color she likes;we’ve got plenty of time to get it resized or let her pick out something else. And always end by asking, Did I miss anything?
Again your goal is to anticipate their fear of the unknown and remove it to make the sale. You need to show them you have thought of everything - the things they’d thought of and the things they hadn’t - so they know they are in good hands.
4) Finish by making a personal request.Invite me to the wedding when she says yes. I hope you’ll post a picture of your outfit online; I would love to see it. Remember a party is a great way to show off your new furniture. Again, I’d love to see a picture of the fun.
In Sum
A sale that is dependent on more than one factor can make untrained employees want to get all their questions out immediately. They don’t want to waste their customer’s – or more likely – their own time.
The problem with all of those questions for information is they front-load a potential sale with a bunch of heavy baggage. That makes the customer’s whole effort to buy an effort. You never want that to happen.
Customers want to spend money freely and not feel shamed that they didn’t come in armed with everything they needed to know.
When you keep your focus on creating a vision...and not a wall... you’ll make the complex sale simple. And after all, isn’t that what you’re paid to do?
He had enthusiasm; he had product knowledge, and he had a swagger to his presentations.
He wanted to help as many people as possible - toget ‘em in and quickly get ‘em out when closing a sale, so he could then go onto the next customer.
About half the shoppers who encountered him thought he was fun and a bit outrageous.
But he had a finite time he’d given himself to wait on someone. If the customer wanted to bond a bit and enjoy his company...dicey.
Once their allotted time was up, Steve would try to close the sale before the customer had been convinced of the worth of the item with some of those awful closing techniques. Remember these 60’s closing techniques?
Do you know if your content is resonating with your audience? Do you know who exists in your audience? Do you use Buyer Personas to build targeted content? If so, how do you build those personas?
Personalized, data-driven marketing will become increasingly important moving into 2016 and beyond. Building strong relationships with your customers will become more important in this ever diversified digital world. This is not new, it's just something we haven't been doing a great job at.
Getting back to basics
The Furrowis a magazine about agriculture, farming and any other topic that is relevant and interesting to the average farmer. John Deere first produced this content in 1895. You could say that this is this first piece of content marketing (that we can reference anyway) and still exists today.
John Deere started his company by listening and understanding his customers. John was able to talk to his customers face-to-face to hear their struggles and build products that suited their needs. John passed away before The Furrow was first published, but it is based on his legacy of understanding your customers and providing them with information suited to their interests and needs.
In today's world, we don't have the opportunity to interact with each of our customers face-to-face. Our customers are more diverse and unique than ever before, they are not located down the road from you, they are spread out all over the country or world. So, how do we create a customer experience that is unique and personalized?
Buyer Personas are not a new concept, but how we build them is. You likely use personas to create your Marketing strategies and plan your content. But how are you defining these target segments?
Let's talk about demographic targeting
Who is your target market? Way back, you may have defined it as "Females aged 18-49". In the 80's, Marketers realized this wasn't enough and introduced 'Generational Targeting', defining consumers not just by age, but also by social, economic, demographic and psychographic factors. Then 'Cohort targeting', which was centered around the life path of a target segment. We seemed to have stopped the evolution of targeting there, for the most part.
With all of the complex data and information about consumers that we have today, why are we still basing targeting around simple demographics like age, location, gender, income? It's so common to hear a market defined as "Females aged 18-24, who attend College and love beauty products". Ok, so that's more complex than just demo's, but one girl attending college aged 23 who wears makeup may be the MVP of the Basketball team and really into EDM and the bar scene. While, another 23-year-old girl attending the same college who wears makeup is First Chair Cellist in the school orchestra and is interested in Yo-yo's (my kinda girl). I'm sure you are getting my drift here.
It is a Buyer's market. Today's consumers are more informed than ever before. They could know more about your company and product than your frontline sales people do. They are sophisticated and demanding (rightfully so). Today's buyers (not just limited to Millenials), don't want to be lumped into a category that a Marketing team came up with based on past customer data and opinions. They want to feel understood, they want to be delighted, they want to trust you.
Today's consumers are not demographics, they are people. They are individuals with diverse interests and they demand more from you.
Defining target market by interest profiles
It is not realistic to think that a company today can market face-to-face or even one-to-one to ALL of their customers. The availability of complex data and information, however, gets us closer to offering a 'one-on-one' experience. At Affinio, we believe that target markets can't be limited by a stagnant description of an audience based on demographics. We believe in understanding your customer through what they are interested in, no matter their age, allowing you to understand the diverse Buyer Personas that exist within your audience and understanding them through what they are interested in and care about most.
Winter is coming (ughh) and that means technical apparel to keep you warm - at least it does here in Canada. We're big fans of Patagonia here at Affinio, so we wanted to take a peek at who the other Patagonia fans are. For this, we used the Affinio Platform to analyze the social connections that exist within Patagonia's twitter audience, segmented the members into Tribes of people with similar interests, then were able to understand Patagonia's fans on a more personal level.
Visualization of Patagonia's audience
Not surprisingly, a lot of these communities are centered around sports and adventure. Notice, however, that people that may have been traditionally grouped together in a "US Male adventurists, aged 30-45", are broken out into many tribes. These are not pre-defined interest categories. They are unsupervised, naturally formed clusters based on what else and who else Patagonia's followers follow. Let's look at a few examples of these tribes.
After reviewing these examples of interest-based tribe summaries, would you market to these people in the same way? Do you think that the 'Runners' use Patagonia gear in the same way that the 'Fishers' do? Do you think that all people that exist within the 'Runner' tribe are a similar age or gender? Maybe, but why would we limit ourselves to that when we can relate to these people based on their interests and what they care about most.
Demographics are not People. Interests are a better way to understand who your individual customers are and what they care about most. Once you understand this, you are better able to connect with your customer segments through personalization leading to your customers feeling better understood and resulting in a trusting relationship.
Sometimes, you just have to go back to the basics and take another look at how you are doing business. Our world has changed; customers have plenty of choices when it comes to buying what you sell. Customers themselves have changed: different generations want different things. And Gen Y and Gen Z are dragging some retailers kicking and screaming into using new technologies. But make no mistake, you will have to adapt to these new ways of doing business.
We get lots of questions these days about how to conduct business. Is there a new etiquette? The answer to that question is yes. And no. Consistently great customer service is still great customer service but it’s not always enough. Let’s take a look at three of the challenges and opportunities facing retailers today:
“Do I have to repair or service products that people purchase elsewhere?”
The easy answer is, you don’t have to, but if you want to stay in business you need to serve the people who need your help.
It costs up to five times as much to get a new customer than it does to keep an old one happy. Think about that for a moment. If a potential new customer comes to your store seeking help, help her. You didn’t get his first sale, so don’t miss the second. If you turn her away, you are not only walking potential sales, you are hurting your store’s reputation and potentially creating harmful word of mouth.Who wants to be known as the store that isn’t willing to help?
It’s fair to charge for your services, just smile and explain your policy. Hang a sign in your store that politely tells these potential customers what you can do for them, and what it will cost. Then get to work turning them into lifelong fans of your store.
“What about customers who buy online or from another retailer and come to me for advice on how to use the product?”
This is an age old dilemma facing all retailers. We’ve met retailers who are openly hostile with customers like this who have the audacity to ask for their help. And we’ve met retailers who embrace the opportunity to get their future business. Think outside of the box! We know a scrapbook retailer who was getting killed on Cricut machines – everyone wanted them, but the big boxes were selling them for less than her cost. So she got creative and started a series of Cricut training classes, and people lined up to attend. At the end of each class, she gave attendees a coupon they could use for future purchases in her store.
So, offer classes and invite these customers to attend. Host in-store clinics where you teach the basics. And sell private lesson packages. Hang a sign in the window, and on the sales floor, that reads something like this, “It’s one thing to have a new toy, it quite another to know how much fun it can be when you know how to use it properly. We’re here to help!” Add this message to your website and social medias. Get the word out that your store is the Go-To store!
“Browsers drive me crazy. I need buyers.”
Questions like this make us scratch our heads, wondering why the person who asked it ever got into retailing.
Once a shopper enters your store there is a world of possibility to turn them into buyers. Show them around, if they don’t buy this time how they are treated will determine if they come back. Sign them up for your newsletter and email blasts. Tell them about events and promotions, offer ideas, and invite them to hang with you on social media. You know the drill!
Chances are you have a few rolling display racks in your store. Some retailers use them to arrange merchandise in the store itself, while others use their racks to sort dressing room leftovers or sort through new SKUs in the backroom.
Regardless of how you use your rolling racks, wouldn't you rather they be a dynamic part of your establishment rather than just a boring fixture? Here are four ways that you can improve your usage of rolling racks in your store.
1. Create a mobile sale section
There's probably a section of your store dedicated to sales merchandise, but if you're hosting a special seasonal clearance, you can present the marked-down SKUs prominently using a rolling rack. Place the rack in your window or at the right-front of your store, as this is the first place that consumers usually look when they enter an establishment. You'll draw people in and hopefully entice them to buy with your low prices.
Optimize storage with rack shelves.
2. Upgrade your Z-Rolling rack
If you have a few of Firefly's stackable Z-Rolling racks in your store, you can upgrade them with the new bottom shelf add-on. Now in addition to hanging garments, you can optimize your storage by placing boxes, crates or baskets on the bottom shelf of your rolling rack. This can be helpful for use in your backroom or on the sales floor! If you're using the rack in your store, why not set out a few pairs of shoes that complement the garments you hang on the rack? Smart display tactics can help increase your customers' impulse purchases.
3. Fill a boring corner
When you're rearranging your merchandise, you may end up with some empty corners in your store. You can cover up areas that are under construction with a strategically placed rolling rack. Arrange the rack diagonally across the corner you want to mask, then load it up with some great SKUs. Your customers will be distracted by the merchandise and won't notice that the corner behind it is less-than-polished.
4. Make an outdoor display
How's your store's curb appeal? You need to have something eye-catching in front of your establishment if you're going to entice people to stop in.
A rolling rack is the perfect tool for creating a display outside your doors. You can simply roll it out in the morning and bring it back in at closing. Just make sure your employees know to keep an eye on any merchandise so passersby don't carry anything off without paying.
Every job exists thanks to customer funding. As Peter Drucker said, “The customer is the foundation of a business, and keeps it in existence.” And as Dr. Deming said, “What everyone in a company does can be reduced to one of two functions: to serve the customer or serve someone who does.” But how many employees in your organization see their job this way? And how many managerial decisions respect these truths?
In the future, companies that treat customer experience excellence as the context for everyone’s roles, thinking, and actions will outpace their competitors in success. Context is one of five success factors described in my recent article, Customer Experience for the Future: 5 Keys. Context is defined as “the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed”. Customer experience excellence as context for every job means that it is always top-of-mind as the primary basis for the way we do our jobs.
In the mainstream we’ve come to think of customer experience management (CXM) as a way to get customers to do things for us: engage in social media, recommend us, renew their purchase, and expand their purchase. But this may not be the most appropriate definition of customer experience management.
As a customer yourself, you know that your experience with a company is much more than what you do about it in social media, recommending, renewing, or expanding your purchases. You know that your experience is as much – or more — about the product working as expected, right the first time and every time – as it is about your purchasing and social interactions.
The responsibility for CXM is largely assigned to marketing, sales and service – exempting most of the company from a customer-oriented mindset. Many employees see their work as a right in and of itself, with logic such as:
“Every company needs an accounts receivable function, so my job is to receive payment as early and often as possible so our books look good.”
“As a corporate lawyer, my job is to protect the company from risks.”
“On the manufacturing line, my job is to produce product according to our deadlines.”
“In engineering, my job is to design products better and faster than our competitors do.”
“In marketing/sales/service, my job is to maximize revenue before month-end, every month.”
“In customer experience management, my job is to maximize our index (e.g. NPS) scores.”
Think of the wasted energy caused by every job having its own reason for existence. This mindset is the basis for organizational silos. And we all know the headaches caused by siloed efforts, data, systems, processes, and politics.
Think of the synergies possible by creating a common rallying point for every job: we do our work so that customers will choose our company for their next purchases. If so, the new logic will be:
“Every customer needs to pay for what they buy, so my job in accounts receivable is to make that process as easy and nice as possible, helping customers want to pay our company.”
“As a corporate lawyer, my job is to help the company operate as smoothly as possible for customers’ long-term well-being.”
“On the manufacturing line, my job is to produce product that meets customers’ standards of quality and timeliness.”
“In engineering, my job is to design products that help customers achieve their goals through us better than through any other source.”
“In marketing/sales/service, my job is to sync my processes and communications to maximize customers’ inclination to buy more, and more often, from us.”
“In customer experience management, my job is to guide the company in preventing hassles for customers and in maximizing value to customers.”
As you can see from these examples, CXM is not something that customer-facing staff take care of. It’s much more than digital or content marketing or touch-point management. It’s much more than encounters, interactions, experiential events and processes, or case-specific resolution. You may think employees in your organization already think like the second list shown above. Test it. Ask a sampling of employees what their role is, and listen carefully for the word “customer”.
CXM is actually about centering everyone’s thinking on realities as customers see them, across their end-to-end process for selecting, getting and using the solutions they’re seeking.
Every manager, at every level and in every functional area, not only has fiduciary obligations and supervisory duties, but also responsibility for how decisions and deliverables contribute to customers’ propensity to buy and rebuy.
You may be wondering about the practicality of shifting everyone’s mindset to a customer orientation for their roles and responsibilities. Here are some practical ways to do it:
Capitalize on the fact that everyone wants their company to be well-liked.
Leverage related corporate values and objectives to help everyone see customer experience excellence as the context for the business’ success, and in turn, for their career success.
Show them how to re-write their job descriptions from this context.
Stream relevant customer comments, from any source, to each department on a regular basis.
Feature succinct customer experience stories (and not just testimonials) at every opportunity.
Give every department their own cut of voice-of-the-customer data, with analysis of patterns, and show them how to create action plans that prevent recurrence of issues.
Weave accountability for engagement in customer experience improvement and innovation into existing routines and processes.
Begin every meeting and training session with the context of customer experience excellence.
Revise performance reviews and recognition and incentive programs with the context of customer experience excellence – and not based on a survey score, but rather, on something employees do as part of their roles and responsibilities.
Every job has a stewardship to customers’ well-being. If not, why fund it?
To view the original article please visit: Inside CXM
Even with e-commerce skyrocketing, many shoppers still choose to make purchases in the store rather than online. PwC’s annual consumer survey notes that nearly 40 percent of consumers buy in a store at least once a week versus only 27 percent who buy online. And design plays a huge role in that decision. Not just because it lures people through the door, but also because it inspires them to pull out their wallets.
So how can you create a truly standout look in your stores? There’s no question that today’s shoppers want to be wowed. Tech-savvy and design-smart, they’re looking for interactive and visually appealing experiences that jolt them out of the day-to-day. Retailers are upping their game in response, delivering hi-tech touchscreens, augmented-reality displays and spaces designed to calm busy customers. Hands down, some of the smartest and most inventive designs we’ve ever seen.
Below, we’ll take you through some of the top trends, give you a peek inside our faves and suggest how you can put them to work for you.
THE CALMING EFFECT Serene spaces relax customers and let products pop
Today’s shoppers are pooped. Minimalistic design schemes offer a much-needed respite from their busy lives while allowing products to take center stage. Neutral colors and natural textures turn spaces into soothing havens where shoppers can leisurely browse — and hopefully buy. Borrowing tips from top beauty and wellness brands, retailers can create minimal spaces that still feel friendly and inviting. Skin-care company Kiehl’s mixes industrial elements (cement and brick) with premium accents (marble) to create warm, organized spaces that reflect various aspects of the brand’s personality; while luxury skin-care line Aesop uses sustainably sourced wood in stores to echo its product packaging and plant-based ingredients.
GO DIGITAL OR GO HOME
Technology connects retailers with consumers in a powerful way
As the lines between online and offline continue to blur, it’s critical for forward-thinking brands to develop and implement digital strategies in their brick-and-mortar locations. Brands like Home Depot, Burberry and Harrods have transformed their spaces with inventive offerings, including: customer tablets for easy product browsing, interactive window displays, video-based ads and mobile apps that enable shoppers to complete purchases on their own.
Before funneling dollars into digital design, it’s important to assess how it will elevate the shopper experience or eliminate inconveniences. For instance, how quickly will you make your money back and will it save cash in the long run? Does it reinforce brand messaging or improve the customer experience? All good things to ask!
THE STORE AS STARSHIP
Store design goes back to the future
Many high-end fashion retailers like Louis Vuitton and Shine are opting for a futuristic look with streamlined fixtures for clothing rails, curved display cabinets and shocking stretches of white space. Shoemaker Stuart Weitzman is at the helm of the movement. Working with world-renowned architect Zaha Hadid, Weitzman created the company’s international flagship in Milan and five other stores in major cities around the world. Much like the company’s shoes, Hadid’s spaceship-like designs are fluid and playful, adorned with reflective surfaces that stand out against monotonous floors and walls.
5 store designs blowing our minds
Retailers to Watch and Why
Ministry of Supply: The hi-tech menswear line recently set up shop in San Francisco with a few interactive touches. Thanks to a partnership with Mission Bikes, shoppers can pedal away on a bike while wearing the performance-inspired classics to test their durability.
Google: The tech giant designed its first-ever physical location to encourage consumers to learn and play before buying. With perks like Portal (which lets shoppers “fly” around the world) and Doodle Wall (where people can spray-paint their own version of the Google logo), this shop-in-a-shop is already turning store design on its head.
Starbucks: To combat the franchise blahs, the coffee chain recently decentralized its design efforts in an attempt to increase local relevance. Now, 18 in-house design studios around the world are giving Starbucks stores unique looks inspired by culture and community.
Minerva Canna Group: Not only has this Albuquerque-based marijuana dispensary sharpened its own business image and space, its design has cast new light on the entire cannabis industry. Gone are the dark, dingy, hippie-havens of the past; replaced with sleek, friendly spaces that appeal to the modern cannabis customer.
Why bother hosting events in-store? They can take up already valuable time above the normal day-to-day operations, and put extra workload on you and your staff. You may worry that if you hold a store event that’s under-planned, under-attended and underwhelming, it could actually hurt rather than help your reputation. So, is it really worth the effort? The answer is YES. A successful store event brings increased exposure, traffic and sales with it.
The reason certain store events stand out is because they add something remarkable to their otherwise normal store experience. They create a connection with customers, encourage them to speak to others about the event, and ultimately drive repeat business back to your store.
74% of consumers have a more positive impression of a brand after an in-store event. 59% say that they plan on telling others about that experience within 48 hours of it. - (Event Marketing Institute)
Don’t simply pass over store events because they take up too much of your time to plan, or because they haven’t produced the results you desire in the past. All you need in order to host a successful event is proper planning, access to marketing channels to promote the event, and a dash of creativity.
I have a dream that in the future we’ll look back and say “Remember how hard it was to be a customer back in the 2010s? Thank goodness it’s so much easier now!” This dream stems from acknowledgement that it’s all too often a bit rough to select, buy, or use a solution in our lives and businesses. For example, when we buy something the farthest things from our minds are that it might not work as expected, or how it will be to call customer service, or the surveys we’ll be invited to answer, or recommendations we’ll be encouraged to make, and so forth. Yet, for customer experience (CX) managers in companies, these are the first things on their minds.
Can this gap continue indefinitely? Probably not. Customers and executives alike will become impatient. Mixed signals we’re seeing already include declining response rates to surveys, declining satisfaction ratings[1], reduced budgets and staffing for CX, and executives losing faith in the potential for CX-driven business results[2] – while other companies are seeing the opposite of these trends, toward stronger customer relationships and stronger CX-driven business results. Let’s learn from the latter.
Here are 5 words representing successful customer experience management (CXM) in the future:
Context
Outside-In
Patterns
Collaboration
Momentum
1) Customer Experience Excellence as a Context
Every job exists thanks to customer funding. Therefore, every job has a stewardship to customers’ well-being. If not, why fund it? Every manager not only has fiduciary obligations and supervisory duties, but also responsibility for how decisions and deliverables contribute to customers’ propensity to buy and rebuy.
Why it’s key to future success: This viewpoint is powerful in shifting from our current collective mindset of CXM as something that customer-facing staff takes care of. It is a shift from the micro management of CX as encounters, interactions, experiential events and processes, or case-specific resolution. It is an expansion from relatively superficial treatment of CXM as digital or content marketing or touch-point management. It centers our thinking on realities as customers see them, across their end-to-end process for selecting, getting and using the solutions we sell. It has the power to dismantle silos that currently dominate and severely limit CXM.
Customer Experience is customers’ realities in selecting, getting and using
a solution that enables a capability they want.
A customer is anyone who has a role in the decision or action to get something,
or who uses what is obtained.
2) Outside-In Perspective of Customer Experience
Which of these two questions is outside-in: (1) “How likely are you to [do X for or think Y about] our company?” versus (2) “How well have we helped you meet your goals?” The latter is about us helping the customer, while the first question is about the customer helping us. Think about which of those two questions is most appealing to customers. If we give anyone the opportunity to talk about themselves we’ll get a lot more participation and a lot more valuable information.
Why it’s key to future success: Expecting customers to do something for the company is perhaps a bit odd. They’ve already paid fair market value for what they bought. If they’re participating in a survey or in social media or anything else we can be grateful for that generosity. Otherwise, as much as we’re reaching out, it’s actually from an inside-out, self-serving perspective. We should seek to extend value or create value to continue a fair dynamic in our hopes for customers to engage with us.
Focusing on the customers’ goals can make a huge difference in what we can achieve through CXM. First of all, it gives employees and suppliers a higher purpose. Second, it is the key to being more innovative, and more successful in launches. Third, it characterizes expectation-sets. Customer segmentation and CX personas based on expectation-sets are more natural and a better view of reality, and they are instrumental to every manager using CX excellence as a context for their decisions and deliverables.
3) CX Patterns Move the Needle
Patterns in customer experience data reveal trends, connections, and impetus to make a difference for the greater good. To identify patterns we need to study cross-tabulations, conduct correlation analyses, characterize groups of customers who see things similarly, link various customer feedback sources, connect quantitative (ratings) and qualitative (verbatim) data, and explore linkages between customer perceptions, sentiment, behaviors, operational data, employee opinions, and financial data. Patterns are enriched through root cause analysis (ask “why?” 5 times), Pareto charts, scatter diagrams in quadrant charts, and calculating customer lifetime value. Patterns can motivate collaboration.
Why it’s key to future success: Patterns are influential in shifting from our current emphasis on index scores, micro approach to following up on low ratings, tactics for moving a few decimals in ratings averages, seat-of-the-pants action planning in silos, and weak accountability for driving changes that customers will reward. Patterns are currently used most effectively by Business Intelligence and Marketing, but the greatest power of patterns is how they inform the rest of the company in using CX excellence as a context for their decisions and deliverables.
4) Collaboration Earns Customer Trust
The customer experience journey or lifecycle is horizontal, fluid, and continuous across a company’s various departments, processes, and facets of CXM. Incongruent CX governance, design, data, or improvement efforts are typically more transparent to customers than we realize. These mis-matches erode confidence and trust that are essential for relationship strength that yields business growth. Nearly every issue that causes surprises or hassles for customers cannot be resolved without cross-functional collaboration. Perpetual existence of these issues, especially after customers have voiced their dissatisfaction, takes a toll on customers’ trust that they are heard and valued, and that their future well-being is assured.
Why it’s key to future success: This viewpoint is impactful in shifting from our current silo treatment of VoC instruments (i.e. customer listening posts). It is a shift from silo management of VoC, references, predictive analytics, loyalty management, user experience design, customer service, and other facets of CXM. It is a shift from finger-pointing and the not-invented-here syndrome. Collaboration is an indication of internal trust, which is a precursor of external trust.
5) CX Momentum for Company Growth
At the end of the day, company growth is the ultimate reason for customer experience management. Growth is something that’s ongoing, and customer experience is also ongoing. So of course momentum is an essential aspect of customer experience strategy and governance. Coincidentally, shared vision and ownership among the entire C-team for CXM is the starting point for enduring momentum, which is not accidental or automatic. Momentum is assured when “CX excellence as a context for every job’s decisions and deliverables” becomes a way of life. Team recognition, incentives based on action progress, and weaving CX insights into the company’s ecosystem can be instrumental in propelling momentum.
Why it’s key to future success: This viewpoint is significant in shifting from our current emphasis on individuals, heroics, programs, and compartmentalization of CXM. It is essential to overcoming the negatives in the mixed signals noted in the introductory paragraphs of this article. It is a shift from patchwork CXM strategies and Jenga-like managerial decisions. Growth requires fuel.
Not every company will succeed in profitably differentiating customer experience. Very few companies are making this wish a reality now. The strongest differentiation won’t be about sizzle, but rather, substance. Future success will not hinge upon an impressive technology, but rather, people and processes. To rise above the pack, context, outside-in, patterns, collaboration, and momentum are five keys to managing CX in ways that customers will reward in a strong positive trajectory.
This article is the first in a series of articles about Customer Experience for the Future.
[1] From the 2015 Temkin Experience Ratings: “Between 2014 and 2015, only five industries improved and 14 declined.”
[2] From the 2013 State of Customer Experience report by Forrester: “Despite 90% of respondents saying that CX is a top strategic priority for their firm, a shocking 86% said their companies don’t actually expect to get much value from it”.
Whether or not you're a football fan, it's hard to ignore the excitement generated by a big game or in this case- the start to the season. This season provides great opportunities to bring in new customers and a way to show your appreciation to current ones.
Game Day Sales
While fans often have plans
on Game Day, there are always people looking to shop. You can offer a Big Sale
on Game Day to draw people in on a day that might otherwise become slow. Customers
can come in wearing their favorite team apparel and get 20% off their purchase.
You can even up it to 25% if they come in during the game.
Window Displays
Grab some inspiration from a
big company like Nike who can create a window display like this. Ask yourself a few questions: What do you like about the display? The use of footballs as a flag? The mannequins in motion?
Figure out
what speaks to you from your favorite windows and incorporate it into your
display!
Tailgating
Come from a big Football town?
Offer an event that will help people get pumped for the game and their team.
People can stop by before the kick off for some coffee or snacks on their way
to watch the game. Interacting with your community and getting foot traffic in
your store will be great for your store!
Go Subtle
Football fans not your main
clientele? You can have fun anyway! Choose your cities colors (or your
favorite) and create a display with them. You can put hints of football in
there too, to bring together the look. The best part is you can incorporate any
holiday into your display too.
Think Long Term
Create a gift basket that
people can place their bets on now! Ask people which two teams they think will
make it into Super Bowl 2016. Then, as the tie breaker ask people to enter what
they think will be the final score of the game. If this is too much of a long term plan, you can create a competition for just the kickoff game between the Patriots and Steelers, asking people for the final score. Whoever comes closest wins!
Have Fun with Social Media!
Make sure you get your
store’s personality out there on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram! If you have a
great new display, an event or some football-related products make sure to
share. There are also great memes that you can utilize and engage with your
followers. Social media is not about only pushing your store, but about
creating a connection with your customers.
Now that you have some inspiration for this football season- go out there and show it!
Study after study has proven that referral marketing is one of the best forms of marketing when it comes to sales and conversions. Simply put, referral marketing, sometimes also called word-of-mouth marketing, is just people purchasing products based on someone else's opinion or influence. It's a powerful marketing channel because people trust the opinions of other people in their lives and people they respect, whether that be family, friends, social media influencers or big stars.
It makes sense, we regularly get advice from our friends on which TV shows to watch, movies to rent, or restaurant to go to. And, as end consumers ourselves, we wan’t to share our stories, the products we buy and the brands we choose. This becomes magnified when the buying experience and products are exceptional.
In this post, we will show you the three fundamental reasons referral marketing is so powerful, some examples of extremely successful referral campaigns, and provide you with seven tactical steps to build a powerful referral marketing engine for your business.
Let's jump into it.
Why Is Referral Marketing So Powerful?
We know that word-of-mouth and referral marketing is powerful and is continually rated as one of the most powerful forms of marketing, but why?
Let’s take a look at three core reasons for this:
1. Precision Targeting
Have you every tried using Google Adwords or Facebook Ads just to watch your money disappear, literally before your eyes? Many times this isn’t the fault of the platform, rather your targeting. A great marketing campaign involves two key components, a great message and laser targeting.
Referral and word-of-mouth marketing tend to be much more targeted because people tend to know their friends and social audiences pretty well. This allows your brand message to spread more effectively than with most other marketing channels.
2. Trust Factor
Trust goes a long way when it comes to convincing someone to buy something. If we don't trust someone, we aren't going to listen to them. Consider the last time a salesperson you know is on commission tried to sell you something. You likely had doubts about his authenticity due to a lack of trust. With referral marketing though, the sales pitch is usually coming from someone that you either know well, like friends and family, or it's coming from someone you have trust in, like a favorite blogger.
Time and time again, studies have shown that people almost always trust these people's opinions over generic advertisements and sales pitches carefully crafted by the brand themselves.
Need proof? A recent Neilson Trust Study showed that referrals are the most trusted form of advertising by a large margin:
But wait… there’s more. If you looked at the graphic above and only looked at the first row (Recommendations from people I know), you may of missed something. Position three (Consumer opinions posted online) and position four (Editorial content such as newspaper articles) are all also forms of referral marketing.
Remember, referrals aren't just limited to friends and family. They can come from a variety of sources, provided the receiver of the message trusts them. So what are the major types of referral channels?
Friends/Family
News Publications
Customer Reviews and Opinions Posted Online
Influencer Opinions (Bloggers, Social Media Influencers)
Testimonials
3. Reach and Acceleration
Not long ago, reach of the average reach of a typical consumer was limited. For the most part it was contained to the number of people they saw in person each day or talked to on the phone. In this day and age though, the average consumers' reach is much larger and for many people with strong social followings, it can be enormous. Some consumers now have the power to make or break a business by what they say about it online.
With a simple Facebook post, Twitter tweet or Instagram selfie, the average consumer can now reach hundreds, if not thousands or friends (who again trust their opinions) in a matter of seconds. That kind of social reach is a critical reasons to why referral marketing has only gotten bigger over the last ten years.
Referral Marketing Examples
So now we know referral is huge and understand the reasons why it's so important, let's look at a few examples of companies that used referral marketing to catapult their businesses.
Example 1: Dollar Shave Club
Dollar Shave Club is a great example of an ecommerce company that used referral marketing in the form of a marketing video to launch their business. Dollar Shave Club created a honest and cheeky video that now currently sits at 16 million views.
Take a look at the video below:
According to Entrepreneur.com, in the first 48 hours after the video debuted on YouTube, over 12,000 people signed up for the service, by the end of the week, that number over doubled to over 25,000.
Although many people would call this a viral marketing campaign, the truth is every single one of those 25,000 customers was referred by someone that had an enjoyable experience with Dollar Shave Club by consuming their video content.
Example 2: Harry's
Harry’s, a new grooming product company in the ultra competitive market of shaving suppliers for men grew extremely quickly, thanks to referral marketing.
In a detailed post on the 4-Hour Work Week blog, Jeff Raider, co-founder of Harry’s describes the referral based launch campaign they used to acquire over 100,000 sign-ups before ever even launching.
By setting up a referral marketing campaign on their pre-launch landing page that rewarded people with free shaving products in exchange for sharing their brand, they were able to launch to a massive audience and have continued to grow to over 40 employees.
So maybe these are two very extreme cases of referral marketing done right. However, the underlying message you need to understand is that all this was possible because of the power of referral marketing.
How Do You Use And Implement Referral Marketing?
Implementing your own referral strategy to increase referrals and sales isn't difficult. Here’s seven tactics you can implement today for your own online store:
1. Provide Exceptional Customer Service and Buying Experience
Are the core of every and all referrals is great products, exceptional customer service and a great overall buying experience. This is fundamental to any referral campaign.
To start, evaluate the buying experience of your own store, looking at it from a customer perspective and ask yourself what's worth sharing with your friends?
2. Pay Attention To Your Analytics
You’re probably already getting referrals and don’t even know it. Google Analytics has a whole section on referrals that can help you pinpoint other sites that are linking and referring people to you. This report can be can be broken down to not just visitors but customers as well, giving you a deep understanding of which of the referring websites are the most qualified.
With this knowledge, you can reach out to those sites and work out a plan to acquire even more traffic.
For example, you may work out:
Additional mentions in upcoming posts
Guest blog post
Referral program to share profit with them
3. Make Your Products and Product Experience Sharable
There are many ways to create a wow factor for your customers. Consider your packaging and unboxing experience. In a previous post on shipping and fulfillment we introduced you to the exceptional effort Trunk Club makes to create a great, share-worthy experience for customers.
You can see from their packaging below that their customer unboxing experience is very central to their overall brand experience and makes for a great photo to share on Instagram and other social networks.
Trunk Club does an such exceptional job at wow'ing customers with the packaging experience, that customers make unboxing videos on YouTube which furthers amplifies Trunk Club's reach through referral marketing.
Everlane is another great example of a brand that uses their packaging as a marketing channel. Items from Everlane arrive wrapped in craft paper with an Everlane sticker and a thank you note that encourages people to share a photo of their purchase on social media.
Consider how you can provide a wow factor to customer that makes them compelled to share your products and refer your brand to their network.
4. Make It Easy For Visitors And Customers To Refer Your Brand
You always want to make sure you’re making it as easy as possible to share your products and refer your brand. There are many ways you can do this. Consider how MeUndies Underwear has done this on their site by adding it right to their main navigation. There is no doubt that referring friends is an important call-to-action for them.
After you click it, they also make it easy by pre-populating the Twitter and Facebook message so you don’t have to think of one.
How can you make it as easy as possible for people to share your products? You may also want to consider smaller, but effective tactics like adding social sharing badges to every product page.
5. Implement a Referral Program
Sometimes people need a nudge. Providing rewards for referrals can be just the thing to get your visitors and customers sharing your brand with their friends and family.
In the example at the beginning of this post, we showed you how Harry’s offered several tiers of rewards in the form of products to get people to share their pre-signup landing page. You can do similar by offering rewards through a referral or loyalty program.
There are lots of really solid apps in the Shopify App Store that can help you quickly implement a great referral/loyalty program.
Influencers within your niche can be a goldmine of referral traffic and sales. The key is to find influencers who's following is close as possible to your target market.
So maybe you're not at the point you can afford to pay Hilary Duff to refer your product, however there are plenty of other influencers out there with small, although still huge audiences you can work with. We touched on influencer marketing in this post and this post, but influencer marketing can be as easy as reaching out to a popular blogger, YouTuber, or Instagramer and asking if they do sponsored postings or if they would like your product for a review.
7. Reviews Are Referrals Too
People trust what other customers say about your company more than what you say so make sure you encourage customers to leave reviews after their purchase.
As an example, looking at the product page for BeardBrand Tree Ranger Beard Oil, we can see they have over 400 reviews and an average rating of 4.7 out of 5. The reviews might not drive new traffic to your site but they will help people still on the fence convert.
Conclusion
Referral marketing is a powerful and important component for every business. Implementing some basic tactics can help encourage and facilitate the referral process which can be a major source of new sales.
For more information and tips and tricks when creating a referral program for your brand, check out the bonus section below.
The view the original article please visit: Shopify
Want more articles like this one. Check out these:
Optimize storage with rack shelves. 
