How top retailers are staying competitive when consumers are shopping less
Customer loyalty… is there anything more elusive, yet more vital, to a retailer?
And right now, with inflation, fuel price hikes and shortages affecting shopping behavior across the board, customer retention is even more essential.
Last time we looked at how leading retailers are tackling the challenge of optimizing individual visits by improving conversion rates and increasing average basket sizes; this time we’ll take a leaf out of the book of a well-known department store chain to see what key factors most impacted their customer loyalty.
With the ability to track customer return rates and tie these to responses to questions about their experience, this retailer discovered 3 main drivers of repeat business:
- Having staff available to help
- Engaging customers when they enter the store
- Driving uptake of the loyalty program at checkout for new customers
Having the ability to not only identify these specific practices, but also measure them across their stores, meant that even with a large number of outlets, head office could easily observe which stores were underperforming in these areas and plan training accordingly. The opportunity based on these factors alone is estimated at over $160 million annually.
There’s a common thread running through these insights, even when examining what might be considered dry data: it’s the people that matter. The single biggest impact on in-store customer experience for retailers across the board involves their staff on the ground.
The retail industry as a whole is coming up against the challenge of staff shortages and retention. We have millions of data points from consumers telling us that there is a clear (flashing, neon) arrow to be drawn from the people working for you to the people buying from you. Investing in your people, training, developing, motivating and retaining them, is the highest of high priorities for retailers that aim to stay ahead.
