The secret is out in living color on the cover of Consumer Reports – how to use social media as the last chance way to get some attention when unhappy with a product or service. This issue shares secrets to great customer service, and social media use is one of them. Consumer Reports states that 84% of consumers who posted complaints to social media used Facebook. The report goes on to suggest that social media can be a highly effective way to resolve customer complaints, even when other approaches fail.
JCPenney is one retailer that was cited as having great customer service via Twitter.
When a customer reached out by phone and learned of the hold times, she quickly went to the company’s Twitter page. She said that their phone wait times were “nuts” and within minutes a representative quickly tweeted a reply. After a bit of back and forth, the issue was resolved.
As the chart indicates, the under 25 demographic shows an indication that they will be the ones who will expect this type of service moving forward, so making sure those wait times are on target will be well worth the effort.
Ann Michaels & Associates, a leader in Customer Experience and Social Media Management, conducted a study on this very topic
How long is too long when it comes to receiving an answer to a product or service question in social media?As the Consumer Reports article shows a consumer expectation, Ann Michaels & Associates set out to look at the disparity between what consumers expect as far as wait time for brands to respond to consumer concerns vs what is actually happening.on social. The study was initiated when it was evident social would serve as a customer service channel – take a look at consumer expectations vs brand response and learn how response time on social shifted over a three year period. Click here to find out the results
It
takes a mere second and can actually make someone’s day. Smiling is probably
the most underrated gesture we can bestow upon one another. Think about how
many people you interact with during the day. Or maybe people you just walk by.
How easy would it be just to smile at them? You never know what kind of day
someone is having so why not try to make it just a little better.
A
smile can also do wonders for your business and the customer experience. Many companies
strive to achieve a great product or service but forget the other side. Customers
want to buy a complete package that includes your product and the customer
service that comes with it; this experience includes the sale, purchase, and
post-sale. Your goal is not just getting your customer to buy and go, but that
they will return and bring more customers with them.
The simple
action of smiling can have a dramatic impact on the way you relate to a
customer and the impression that this will give about your brand. No matter
whether you interact with a client in person, by phone, live call, chat or
email, a good attitude will always be useful.
What your smile can do to your customers
Studies have shown a good smile can increase confidence by
up to 10%.
It helps build a good first impression of your business; a
customer will always prefer to do business with someone who is happy.
Smiling improves your mood and therefore the attitude in
which you face everyday situations, including your sales work and customer
support.
A smile is contagious and humans tend to copy emotions, so
a good attitude on your part can improve your customers as well.
The smile during phone support
Did
you know that smiling on the phone can help you reflect a positive attitude?
Customers can tell, even over the phone, what kind of mood you are in. A startup company that offers internet phone calls explained; “Most of our sales and support processes are managed by phone
contact, so we can tell you from our experience that our customers know when we
smile and that’s why we do it. In fact, many customers gave us great feedback
about our customer service and it all starts with a smile.”
How do you measure the business
benefits of a smile?
It’s no
secret who does customer service the best—Trader Joe’s, Chick-fil-A and
Southwest Airlines—and you will rarely see an unhappy employee. These companies
go above and beyond to give every customer a memorable experience.
QuikTrip Corp., a Tulsa, Oklahoma based chain famous for its
in-house analytics and memorable customer service, just clinched the 2019 CSP Intouch
Insight Mystery Shop, their fourth win in the program’s 15-year history. The
study includes both a covert and a revealed audit, with shoppers sizing up 10
participating brands on everything from greetings to gas-island cleanliness.
Chet
Cadieux, chairman and CEO of QuikTrip, says, You can’t solve everything with
math,” he says. “It just so happens that … you can use analytics to hire the
right people to begin with. And if you hire friendly, sincere people, they’re
generally, on most days, going to be friendly and sincere to the people they’re
taking care of.”
84% of
QuikTrip shoppers agreed that they were greeted in a courteous manner, placing
the chain nearly 20 percentage points ahead of the average. Another measure of
QuikTrip’s customer-service strengths is how well it scored on the question
“Would you recommend this store to others?” Based on the Net Promoter Score, a
metric that measures consumers’ loyalty to a brand by having them rate their
willingness to recommend it on a scale of 1 to 10, QuikTrip received more 9s and
10s than any other retailer.
That’s
significant, says Cameron Watt, president and CEO of Ottawa, Ontario-based
Intouch Insight, which conducts the mystery shop on CSP’s behalf.
In the CSP Intouch Insight Mystery Shop, shoppers are not necessarily regular
customers of the brands they are visiting, Watt says. But the fact that
QuikTrip scored so high with these shoppers is considerable, “because you
create customer loyalty one customer at a time,” he says.
“If a person
goes there and they enjoyed the experience enough at your brand, even though
they usually shop at another brand, and they’d be willing to recommend you, I
think that would be very highly correlated to your ability to drive customer
loyalty,” Watt says.
For its part, QuikTrip is most interested in how its customers weigh the individual variables of the c-store shopping experience. Its internal mystery shop assesses employees’ ability to hit these needs, and a large percentage of their compensation is based on their performance in this measure. Consumers’ expectations for c-store service may be modest, but for a retailer to consistently hit the mark on friendly and fast with nearly every transaction is a triumph. Ensuring a high batting average means hiring right the first time.
Can cleanliness
and organization affect how a retail store performs? You better believe it. 2018
was a rough year for several retailers…proving that fact.
Toys R Us closed
for good in
the United States and was forced to liquidate because it was unable to
sustain its debt load after a leveraged buyout in 2005. According to a
filing with the bankruptcy court, Toys R Us had still been making $400 million
payments on its debt every year.
Department
stores, in particular, have been struggling because of declining foot
traffic to malls, which has affected Sears, JCPenney, Lord & Taylor, and
Macy’s. They all have closed stores in the past year, and Sears filed for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after years
of declining sales.
The rise of e-commerce has played a huge
role in the downfall of some retailers who can’t keep up with Amazon, eBay,
Wayfair, etc. Although stores have been working on improving their marketing
strategies, it hasn’t always been enough. Even on Black Friday, traditionally
one of the biggest shopping days of the year, stores were relatively
empty.
Maybe it’s because department stores are
focusing on the big picture and not the details. During secret shopper visits
to various stores, it was alarming what was discovered. Empty shelves, dirty
carpet, displays so crowded you couldn’t sort through the inventory, and empty
cash registers with no employees in sight.
Tom
Buiocchi, the CEO of facilities management platform ServiceChannel, sees it over
and over. Retailers cut back on store maintenance and improvements and end up
on the fast track to bankruptcy, while those who invest in store improvements
and upkeep are succeeding and expanding.
A study commissioned by ServiceChannel surveyed 1,521 consumers and 70% said they recently had a negative experience with a messy store, ranging from dirty bathrooms and broken toilets, to disorganized shelves and burned-out light bulbs. Over two-thirds said they have walked out of stores because they were messy or disorganized. Four out of five shoppers said they would rather have a clean store than ones with the newest tech, and two-thirds said retailers are forgetting the basics—like clean floors and well-stocked shelves—in the rush to add tech. “The vast majority of purchases are still being done by people walking into a location. And their experience of that location has never been more important,” Buiocchi said in an interview.
With
so many other shopping options, retailers must be on top of their game. Consumers
want to be rewarded when they make the effort to walk into a store and a dirty,
disorganized store says the retailer doesn’t care—about the store or the
shopper. Store maintenance used to be considered “a non-sexy part of the
business,” Buiocchi said, “but now it directly affects the high expectation for
an in-store experience. And facilities managers all have a role at the table
now.”
Many
of the new online brands that are opening stores are quick to recognize the
value of rigorous maintenance and are signing up as customers. “There are the
people that get it, and there are the people that don’t get it,” Buiocchi said.
“Good progressive retail is investing in their brick-and-mortar experiences and
enjoying the benefits of that,” he said. “Bad retail is not and they’re
unfortunately being penalized for that.”
Although
JCPenney has been struggling the past few years, new CEO Jill Soltau, is up for
the task of bringing the stores back to life. Soltau,
who took over the position in October, said in a recent earnings call that the
department-store chain is failing to adequately deliver on some fundamentals of
“good retail.”
On Tuesday, JCPenney reported
first-quarter earnings for 2019; same-store sales during the quarter dropped by
5.5%, following a 6% drop in the previous quarter. “I am pleased with the
strides we’ve made in setting key objectives, building our senior leadership
team, executing significant changes in our assortment, such as eliminating
major appliances, and mobilizing the entire organization around our
priorities,” Soltau said in a press release on Tuesday. She continued:
“JCPenney is an American retail icon that is very important to all of our
stakeholders, and I am encouraged by the early signs I am seeing in our
business as we work to realize the potential that lies ahead.”JCPenney, and other struggling retailers, are definitely
capable of delivering on the fundamentals of great retail. The fate of the
company now depends on its ability to execute this shopping experience across
its entire fleet.
The problem is consistency. Visits
to numerous JCPenney stores across the Southeast proved just that. Stores in Richmond,
Virginia featured empty shelves, messy displays, and abandoned cash registers.
The stores, which both anchored enclosed shopping malls, felt outdated and far
too large. However, a third JCPenney store in a strip mall, revealed flawless
design, layout, and presentation. This store obviously cared about
presentation, reputation, and customer experience.
