How To Engage with the Customer at the Point-of-Experience

Customer engagement strategies are increasingly challenging, especially for brick and mortar retailers. Not only is there competition between other brick and mortar locations, there is also competition with online retailers. Therefore, the importance of engaging with a customer base is ever-important. Even more important, is how to engage with the customer at the point-of-experience. Too often retailers default to the standard form of engagement; for example, intercept surveys, online surveys, mobile surveys, and so on.

Traditional methods of gathering feedback and engaging with the customer yields some benefits, however they normally do not yield a high percentage of customer responses. Traditional methods generally result in low response rates of 1% – 2%. Although these methods dive into a deeper understanding of the customer’s experience, they fall short on a few elements. For one, they do not represent a large enough customer base to truly represent enough segments in order to properly and accurately make corrective operational decisions.

Businesses need to offer a survey method in the store at the point-of-experience. This method also needs to make the feedback experience quick and focused for the customer. By asking one pertinent question at the point-of-experience and allowing for an anonymous response can lead to ten times the gain or more over traditional response methods.

Customers are busier than ever these days. Therefore, it is important to engage with them at the point-of-experience and in a fun way. This methodology will lead to more accurate and timely feedback, as the experience is fresh in the customer’s mind. In addition, this will also lead to an increase of responses due to the inviting, easy and pertinent manner in which the survey is displayed and implemented.

Another thing to keep in mind is to keep it simple. Utilizing technology can sometimes lead to adverse results. Keep this in mind when you are selecting a method to engage with your customers. To attract and gain feedback from all demographics you need to deploy a method that is inviting to all. Stay away from the complicated kiosks with tablets and multi-layers of questioning. You will only detract your customers from engaging and providing feedback with these kiosks.

These days it is more important to engage in a more simplistic and inviting manner. Looking at ways to gain instant customer feedback and strengthening your social media messaging are essential in today’s challenging environment. How do you engage with your customers?

via Business 2 Community http://www.business2community.com/customer-experience/engage-customer-point-experience-0692602?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=engage-customer-point-experience