best
practice
Best P r a ct ice
00
Retail customer experience
This month, Dr Tamira King and Professor Hugh Wilson of Cranfield School of
Management describe how retailers can differentiate on customer experience
In today’s aggressive retail
climate and with a squeeze on
consumer spending, a strong
positioning on customer
experience can make the
difference between success and
failure in retail.
Advertising, buying and a
low cost base are all vital in
attracting shoppers. But another
crucial factor for improving
customer footfall is managing the
overall customer experience.
Research consistently shows
that the same six things matter
to customers when assessing
this experience, irrespective of
product category. So, it’s
important to track these and to
target managers on them.
Six facets of great
experience
l Responsiveness: Willingness
to help customers and provide
prompt service.
Do you communicate with
customers exactly when things
will be performed? Are
employees always willing to help
customers or are they seemingly
too busy? Responsiveness is as
much about attitude of mind as
it is about resourcing levels. A
2011 Economist Intelligence Unit
study found that the top barrier
to responsiveness was a lack of
investment in training. Training
matters because customers are
acutely attuned to the attitude
of the staff: whether they catch
your eye and indicate that they
will be with you as quickly as you
can, whether they seem to want
to talk to you or prefer to talk to
each other.
A recent Cranfield study
found that customers
actually prefer a store where
the queues are longer but staff
seem to be doing all they can to
reduce them, over a store with
shorter queues but less evident
commitment.
l Assurance: Knowledge and
courtesy of employees and
their ability to inspire trust and
confidence.
Check whether customers
trust your employees and feel
comfortable in their transactions.
Are staff supported adequately
to do their jobs? When
customers aren’t confident that
the firm will do what it says it
will, it often turns out that staff
aren’t either. As with all our
facets of great experience,
assurance is perceptual and
culturally specific. London
department store Harrods,
for example, has a highly
international clientele. It employs
70 Mandarin-speaking members
of staff. It has also installed 75
dedicated China UnionPay points
for ease of transactions.
l Empathy: The caring and
individualised attention that a
firm provides its customers.
Do your customers get the
personal attention they crave?
Do your staff elicit the needs of
each customer or just act like
a talking brochure? Staff should
treat the customer according to
how they themselves are treated.
Experience leaders have a
strong executive philosophy of
talking to staff with the same
courtesy and consideration as we
would wish them to talk to the
customer.
l Reliability: Ability to perform
the promised service dependably
and accurately.
As with other aspects of
experience, customers judge
reliability not relative to other
stores but relative to their
expectations, which is a problem
when these expectations are
high. For online retailers,
reliability of delivery is key. It
is no surprise that the
top-performing websites on
customer satisfaction during
December 2011 were also
financial top performers.
l Tangibles: The appearance
of physical facilities, equipment,
personnel, and communication
material.
As customers, we use tangible
appearance as a clue to the
difficult-to-observe aspects of
customer service, which may
only emerge after purchase.
Tangibility isn’t just about being
smart and clean. Neither is there
any rule that retail outlets have
to look as boring as each other,
even if they do use the same
refitters.
It is thought-provoking to
visit the new Disney store on
London’s Oxford Street, which
contains an in-store castle with
innovative technology that
creates spellbinding wizardry
and fairy dust. The image is
communicated throughout the
store, from the people serving,
to cartoons playing. With this
new Magic Kingdom, this may be
A DMAP marc h 2012
B e s t P r ac t i c e
the year that Disney stores see a
revival in the UK market.
l Multichannel integration:
Enabling the customer to
combine channels seamlessly in
their journey with the firm.
Cranfield research across
several sectors has shown
that multichannel integration
is a stronger driver of overall
satisfaction than channel choice.
While customers would rather
have a choice of ways to deal
with retailers, they care even
more that the channels that a
retailer provides join up with
each other. Mess that up and
customers will rapidly go
elsewhere.
Among the positive assets of
the UK’s Argos retail chain is
its fine multichannel integration,
offering a number of channel
combinations across catalogues,
online and its 700 stores in the
UK and Ireland, such as ‘check
and reserve’ of any product
across the mobile phone and
internet and its iPhone and iPad
applications.
The firm recently launched
interactive pop-up stores in two
London rail stations, enabling
commuters to buy by scanning
QR codes with their
smartphones. Customers can
collect their purchases later in
the day from any Argos stores
across the UK, exemplifying the
convenience and consistency of
its operating model.
Experience insight
is key
As in other sectors, great retail
experience starts with great
insight. Insight is key to
department store chain
Debenhams’ recently launched
Customer Experience
Management programme, which
includes a shift away from
mystery shopping to feedback
from actual customers. The
programme has identified more
than 22,000 brand advocates
who have made 2.2 million
recommendations to friends
and followers via Facebook and
Twitter.
It appears to be paying off
already, and the project has been
shortlisted in the 2012 UK
Customer Satisfaction Awards.
Aligning experience
with the brand
promise
So, how about the role of
communications in the customer
experience? Communications
can help customers connect with
the brand.
This connection can be
embodied in a brand promise,
such as supermarket chain
Tesco’s ‘Every little helps’. But
this strapline isn’t a slogan
developed in isolation by
marketers. It is an expression of
Tesco’s core values, constantly
emphasised in staff training:
‘No-one tries harder for
customers’, and ‘Treat people
how we like to be treated’.
It drives five key metrics
continually tracked in
customer research: ‘the aisles
are clear’; ‘I can get what I want’;
‘the prices are good’; ‘I don’t
queue’; and ‘the staff are great’.
It also drives the Clubcard
programme, in which
messaging is prioritised as much
by the need to say thank you to
customers as by the desire to
generate cross-sales.
True to its promise and
despite falling profits, Tesco
launched into the New Year with
another wave of price cuts as
part of its Big Price Drop
campaign, folllowing its recent
disappointing sales performance,
A DMAP mar ch 2012
43
Further reading on WARC.COM
The Branded Customer Experience, T Knight, Admap, October 2011
What Are The Benefits To A Brand Of A Satisfied Customer?
Millward Brown Knowledge Point, 2010
Customer Experience: Are We Measuring The Right Things?
S Maklan and P Klaus, International Journal of Market Research,
Vol. 53, No. 6, pp. 771-792, 2011
Service Quality Perceptions Of Solely Loyal Customers,
S Bogomolova, International Journal of Market Research, Vol. 53,
No. 6, pp. 793-810, 2011
other recommended reading
Assessing The Affects Of Quality, Value And Customer
Satisfaction on Consumer Behavioural Intentions In Service
Environments, J Cronin, M Brady and GT Hult, Journal of Retailing.
76 (2) pp. 139-218, 2000
Customer Experience Quality: An Exploration In Business And
Consumer Contexts Using Repertory Grid Technique, F Lemke,
M Clark and H Wilson, Journal of Academy of Marketing Science,
2010
Alternative Scales For Measuring Service Quality: A
Comparative Assessment Based On Psychometric And
Diagnostic Criteria. A Parasuraman, V Zeithaml and LL Berry,
Journal of Retailing, 70 (5),201-230, 1994
some of which could be
attributed to such campaigns.
To retain any credibility,
brand promises must clearly
be kept. A broken promise by
a firm, just as by a friend or
partner, can have an immensely
damaging effect. We recently
worked with a major retailer that
restricted its returns policy just
at the moment of a new
customer service campaign,
leaving front-of-house staff
feeling undermined by head office
when facing the customer.
As so often, the issue came
down to structure and metrics:
a head office customer service
team managed separately from
marketing. Only the chief
executive can keep a brand
promise. So until she or he is
committed, marketers simply
have no right to tell the market
about it. Until it’s in the tin, we
can’t put it on the tin.
Research at Cranfield is being
conducted on improving the service
experience for retailers. If you
want to get involved please contact
Tamira.King@cranfield.ac.uk.
more on customer
experience at
www.warc.com