Author: Stuart Richards

Well the big day is over but the end of the busiest shopping season is not yet in sight for retailers. The start of the sales, which traditionally began in January, has crept ever earlier as retailers compete for a share of cash-strapped consumer spending in a tight economy. Indeed, many brands now start their sales at midnight on Christmas Eve, vying for the attention of consumers with vouchers burning a hole in their pocket who go online on Christmas Day for a bit of retail therapy and to bag a bargain.

So what can retailers do to ensure they stand out from the competition and provide a great customer experience during the sales mayhem that will see shoppers return to them in future and become brand advocates?

Here is a simple 3 step guide:

Step 1 – Multichannel, one experience

Internet shopping is now more popular in the UK than any other major country in the world, according to the latest International Communications Market Report released by Ofcom. Shoppers use online channels in a variety of ways, not only to shop but also to read reviews and research products before visiting a store.

Customer opinions of your brand are formed over time across these channels – you may see them as separate, but customers view them as one brand experience. It is important for brands to deliver a consistent experience, delivering the same brand promise at each point of their customers’ journey.  Feedback programmes can ensure each channel is consistent with the desired brand experience, enabling businesses to maintain a strong brand identity across what may be disparate parts of their operations.

Step 2 – The human touch

Staff have a more important role to play during busy periods. A friendly welcome upon entering a store can make a great first impression to shoppers battling their way through sales crowds; shop floor staff can direct customers to what they’re looking for with ease and provide up to date stock information via mobile devices; and a friendly word at the checkout with clear information about refunds and returns policies can complete a great in-store experience. Forging a human connection with shoppers can also help grow turnover. Empathica retail studies show a thoughtful product suggestion from a staff member can increase basket sizes by up to 30%.

Step 3 – Walk a mile in your customers’ shoes

Store layouts change to accommodate stock promotions and sale items – at best this can confuse customers; at worst, it can irritate.

Examine every aspect of the store environment – starting from the outside looking in, all the way through to what is experienced as a customer leaves and including staff interaction points. Ensure they build, rather than detract from, a great customer experience. At sales times more than any other these elements are potential key moments to deliver the brand promise and consistency in operations to ensure every visit is a perfect one.

Restaurants, bars and pubs rise and fall based on the experiences they provide to their guests. This can be particularly challenging for multi-unit operators where location managers must walk a fine line between maintaining a consistent brand experience and tailoring the experience to the demands of local patrons.

Managing the Guest Experience

An optimised CEM model should be a priority for any hospitality brand that values the quality of local guest experiences – and it begins with a three-step strategy designed to equip managers with the resources they need to quickly transform guest insights into tangible actions.

Focused Insights

Sending large quantities of unfocused guest feedback to location managers is a losing strategy. Today’s most advanced CEM solutions can empower location managers with daily action plans based on the most recent feedback insights for their location and across the brand. Using sophisticated CEM technology, managers can have an action plan in place within minutes of receiving relevant and location-specific guest feedback information.

Action-Focused Tools

While hospitality chains employ sophisticated feedback solutions, most location managers don’t possess the skills and training it takes to derive meaningful insights from complex reports. A better approach is for brands to equip location managers with technologies that do the work for them. Ideally, managers will be given access to solutions that present focus areas for improvement in a simple, clear user interface.

Shared Knowledge

The social knowledge-sharing capabilities offered by leading CEM solutions can provide several benefits. Less experienced managers gain access to virtual knowledge centres and other resources that work to fill gaps in their brand experience. Additionally, fostering this type of communication within a brand helps to build the brand’s internal community. Regardless of the amount of experience, all location managers have the ability to turn guest feedback data into specific improvement actions that can be shared as best practices brand-wide. This crowd-sourcing helps ensure a consistent brand experience and optimises the value of guest feedback insights.

A higher level of guest satisfaction (and ultimately brand advocacy) is being achieved through the implementation of CEM solutions and other technologies that give hospitality brands the ability to use guest feedback as a key driver of location performance. Instead of giving location managers more data that they need to wade through, these solutions equip managers with the actionable strategies they need to achieve meaningful improvements in the guest experience.

With a fresh NBA season kicking off, one of the story lines I’ll have my eyes on is the progression of Jeremy Lin’s career. Like many sports fans I became quite caught up in the #Linsanity phenomenon last season and am looking forward to seeing what he can do in his starting role in Houston.

When it comes to how he will do, I think most people have two questions when it comes to his basketball potential.

1. Can he play in the NBA?
2. Can he play at the level he played at last year for a full season?

If #Linsanity proved one thing , the answer to question number one is a yes. Question number two is trickier and requires the young point guard to be able to sustain a consistent level of performance for a full season, perhaps the playoffs, for many years to come.

Variations of these two questions are what retailers are asked of when it comes to business success.

1. Does a retailer have a unique offering that addresses the market?
2. Does a retailer offer a consistently great experience that can scale their growth?

Like the young point guard most, if not all, retailers can answer an unequivocal yes to question number one.  After all defining a unique offering is the first paragraph of most business plans. The trickier part is question number two. Particularly in a fast growing brand, maintaining a level of consistent execution can be a challenge. But brands that are successful, the ones that separate themselves from the pack and reach iconic status, are the ones who have this operational consistency.

There is help out there for brands who want to achieve consistency but aren’t quite sure how. Today’s customer experience management (CEM) programs are focused on helping brands to first uncover what elements are most important to a great experience, and also help brands with action driving tools to make sure those key elements are delivered on in a consistent manner.

These programs work by focusing on location excellence and help location managers to do their jobs better by:

Providing program accountability to local managers

Customer experience programs don’t work if locations ignore them. A CEM program should turn complex customer feedback into simple, relevant insights and clear actions.  This goes beyond reporting and allows location managers to take increased ownership of the experience delivered at their locations.

Help ensure consistency across all locations

CEM programs can help ensure that all of your local managers understand the key elements of a brand promise and what factors they control to ensure they are delivering it. One of the most valuable assets multi-unit brands have is their top performing locations.  Not only are they big contributors of profits but decoding their formula for success can be a key to brand growth.  Location focused CEM programs have the ability to raise the performance of all locations by providing local managers with insights on best practices from top locations and how best to apply them.

Coach local managers on what to fix and how to execute

Today’s CEM programs eliminate wasted time spent reading and interpreting reports.  Instead, local managers are focused on the most important area to improve and spend their time ensuring the correct front line execution.  Locations control an action plan based on best practices to tailor the execution to the needs of their specific teams.

Whether on the basketball court or in the game of retail, consistency is often the key to rising above the competition. The good news for retailers out there is there is help available. A well thought out CEM program can be the key to ensuring a recipe for retail success is within reach. As for Jeremy Lin, we sports fans will have to wait and see if he can rise to challenge put in front of him.

The kids were barely back to school before the first ‘Celebrate Christmas for £9.99!’ posters started to appear, and with November now upon us, consumer appetite for all things festive is going to start accelerating.

The Christmas party market is currently believed to be worth around £1billion, so even in challenging financial times, there is a huge opportunity for operators with a strong offer. While competition is tougher than ever and the market is unlikely to grow this year, there is certainly a chance to increase market share.

For a customer experience management (CEM) professional like me, it’s not only this commercial potential that is exciting, but also the huge amounts of intelligence that will be collected over the Yuletide period, which will provide pointers for quick fixes this year, as well as more strategic planning for 2013.

A great CEM programme will deliver insight into which elements of hospitality have a link to customer loyalty and thereby repeat business. However, at Christmas, your regular guests might have a very different agenda from their regular visits and what is usually important may go out of the window.

• Food quality might not be as important as ‘ease of ordering’ for a party of disparate work colleagues who would never normally break bread together (I am not describing the Empathica Christmas party here…).
• Whoever is the office party organiser will want things to run smoothly and keeping it simple may well pay off.
• Budgets may be tight but a classic Christmas dinner with all the trimmings – and no washing up – could well be worth paying for.

Learning from past years across the sector, three interesting areas to monitor are:

1. Server attitude underpins the experience

You may have hired plenty of seasonal staff to support the rush, but if they are not happy dealing with customers, you may have made things worse, not better. How are you going to ensure that they are supported by experienced team members to deliver a level of service that is your customers expect?

2. Menu design can have unexpected effects

You have differentiated your brand’s Christmas dinner with a delicious chestnut stuffing, which people loved in your test kitchen. Have you tested it in a real kitchen? If not, are you sure that its unique preparation process won’t put the kibosh on everything else? We have seen organisations scrap dynamite new ideas after a couple of days because their service speed scores are so badly affected. Make sure you’re watching this closely.

3. The festive spirit

Even the most abstemious of us enjoy a drink at Christmas. Are your team switched on to taking the maximum number of drinks orders, and upselling? There are lots of people to serve, but taking the time to take a drinks round can make the difference between a good and bad office party, and future loyalty. And turning an order of a couple of bottles of wine into a couple of bottles of prosecco can make your guests’ evening and increase your take (done responsibly, of course). Have you got measures to enable you to monitor availability and upsell?

Over the 10 years working with leading global brands, we’ve learned that sometimes it’s executing the basics well that allows brands to break through to new levels of success. Here are some of the key lessons we’ve taken from our retail and hospitality programmes on improving customer experiences:

1. Customers are eager to connect with businesses they frequent

85% of consumers are willing to provide feedback to the retailers they frequent. The challenge is ensuring their feedback is acknowledged and acted upon. Sadly, the same study showed that only 29% believe this feedback is used to improve the customer experience.

2. Drive response rates to ensure an appropriate sample size

Insights are only as good as the data sample being analysed. While many customers will be proactive in providing feedback, some will need added incentives like discounts or a sweepstake entry.

3. Customers vary – so should feedback mechanisms they are offered

Whether it’s younger customers consolidating all their communication on a mobile device or an older person wanting to use a landline telephone, feedback programmes need to take into account customers’ technology preferences.

4. It is often the little things that define the best experiences

It’s often the subtle factors that lie just beneath the surface of the obvious drivers of satisfaction that separate merely good experiences from truly great ones. Understanding those is key to moving experiences from good to great.

5. A survey shouldn’t be an interrogation

Feedback starts with asking the right questions. The right questions should always be personal to both your brand and your customers. You need to focus on your own brand strengths and exploit competitors’ weaknesses.

6. Commitment and focus are the first steps in driving change

All employees of a brand need to be engaged and accountable. The real key is in changing the behaviour of front line staff to prioritise the areas that will have the most impact, focus on specific improvements and follow through with a tangible level of commitment.

7. Delivering great experiences is a marathon, not a sprint

It’s only with that consistency built up over the lifespan of the customer relationship can lasting loyalty be built – the type of loyalty that can translate into advocacy.

8. Brand insights can reveal the keys to future success

Customer feedback can serve to answer three basic questions: How are we performing as a brand in the eyes of our customers? What is broken or needs improvement in how we are executing? Where should we be headed next, to stay top of mind with customers?

9. Multiple channels, one experience

Brands must provide a consistent experience, delivering the same brand promise at each point of their customers’ journey. Feedback programmes can ensure each channel is consistent with the desired brand experience, enabling businesses to maintain a strong brand identity across what may be disparate parts of their operations.

10. Drive advocacy by engaging the social consumer

Once brands have invested in a customer experience management programme, it is important to convert loyal customers into brand advocates by making it easy for them to share their positive brand experiences via social media platforms.

In Summary

Customer feedback programmes have at their heart a simple goal – connecting brands with their customers whose support is their lifeblood. By opening up this vital channel of communication not only can brands get a view into how they are delivering in the eyes of their customers, but also unlock their own formula for ensuring they can sustain their success on an ongoing basis – at every location, in every department, on every shift.

The cooler autumn weather and the children returning to school signal one thing for many households in America… the return of NFL football.

It’s also around this time that many football fans begin to exhibit some interesting behavior. Premature championship celebration. After only a handful of games many fans are already preparing their Superbowl celebration party. However if there is one lesson I’ve learned as a lifelong football fan it’s that a handful of early season games is rarely a good predictor of the future. A full 16 game season can be long and it’s usually not the fast starting teams who win it all, but the most consistent.

The phenomena holds true when it comes to customer experience as well. Launching new products or seasonal marketing campaigns might prompt a temporary spike in great customer experiences for a retailer, but ultimately the best brands are the ones who are able to deliver on their promises day in and day out, from one location to another. Front line staff needs to be fully engaged and accountable each and every day to do so. Great store managers know this, and they understand that the real key to maintaining great experiences is in changing the staff behavior for the better. Behavior that drives exceptional in-store experiences are the catalyst for advocacy.

There’s a simple four step process to helping make this happen:

1. Start with helping location managers focus front line staff on specific areas that can have the biggest impact and doing so in a consistent manner.

Focusing on doing the right things shouldn’t be a onetime event, it needs to be an ongoing philosophy. One way to ensure ongoing improvement is to leverage the power of your own internal community through social sharing. Let location managers learn from each other, to provide support and best practices.

2. Create a program where you ask for commitment to making improvements.

Committing to those focus area improvements is a significant emotional step and encourages a more meaningful level of engagement for location managers with their customer experience programs. Commitment and engagement also provide a different kind of measurement for area and regional managers to have conversations with local managers about improvement rather than blame.

3. Once the commitment is made, then it’s all about driving actions.

Providing location managers with action plans to encourage the right behaviors at the right times for all their employees. These actions can be built from brand best practices, and they can be enhanced through the power of social sharing and the knowledge of other managers across the brand. This living library of actions ensures that local improvements aren’t a onetime activity but are an ongoing part of your brand’s culture.

4. On a regular basis location managers should have an opportunity to reflect back on what worked and what needed improvement for next time.

This ongoing cycle of action and review provides location managers a powerful tool to reflect back on what worked and what to focus on moving forward.

Whether the goal is to win the Superbowl or to build a winning retail brand, the key is consistency. While not every NFL team has access to the same player talent and fan base, all retail brands today have access to the modern tools and programs to ensure their front line staff is fully engaged and delivering every day.

As a father of a toddler I’m no stranger to fatigue. Interestingly that also plays into one of the most common questions I get asked when it comes to customer experience management – What are some ways to reduce the risk of survey fatigue on the part of consumers?

Within surveys themselves there are four key elements that can serve to minimize fatigue on the part of a consumer:

1. Only ask important questions

Survey length is strongly correlated with drop-off rates in surveys. It is important that surveys only ask questions that are impactful to the results you want to achieve. A market insight driven approach to developing your survey based on a combination of cross-brand best practices and brand-specific loyalty modeling is the first step. Loyalty modeling can statistically determine which factors drive key outcomes, like overall satisfaction and likelihood to recommend, for your specific brand. This allows the survey design to prune questions that do not actually lead to useful results.

2. Make the survey appropriate for the medium

Data collection platforms should support a large range of media: computer web browsers, smartphones and tablets, or phone-based (IVR/CATI). Each media has different needs in terms of structure, length, and question wording in order to prevent fatigue. The ability to vary the set of questions, wording of questions and answers, and the visual layout of surveys for different media allows each survey medium to be used most effectively.

3. Give control to the respondent

Fatigue is caused by the mental state of the respondent – “This is taking too long” or “This feels like work.” Surveys can and should be segmented. All respondents are asked a short set of core questions and then given an option to complete a second longer segment that asked more detailed questions. Empathica’s testing with the same set of survey questions shows that adding this optional element reduces fatigue and results in more fully completed surveys.

4. Selective sampling

If it is not possible to create a survey of reasonable length due to the number of factors involved (operational efficiency, marketing, product feedback, etc.) then selective sampling can be used. This essentially allows you to use several smaller surveys at once. Any particular respondent will be asked a specific subset of questions. The ratio at which each subset of questions is asked can be set. For example, you may want 90 percent of respondents to be asked about operational efficiency and 10 percent about the effectiveness of a promotional campaign. In this manner no one particular respondent must answer everything but the total set of survey responses will give you insight across the full question set.

There are also methods to reducing fatigue across surveys:

Multiple surveys at once.

If you have a need to gather information about several discrete topics at once you can use selective sampling (described above). This allows you to invite a large respondent group and those that respond will be proportionally split across your surveys. You do not need to pre-segment your list and hope that enough respond from each group.

Multiple surveys over time (periodic eblasts).

While most satisfaction surveys are ongoing invitations, they can also be supplemented with periodic eblast services. Eblasts are based on specific lists of contacts and can be segmented to ensure that the same respondents are not over-invited to surveys.

Industry research has proven that the majority of consumers are interested in providing valuable feedback to retailers about their shopping experiences. However many companies seem to forget the tenets outlined above and are left struggling to understand why their programs aren’t getting the anticipated adoption by their customers. Plan to prevent fatigue during the build phases of your program and chances are excellent that you will experience higher response rates and less drop-offs.