With more store closings announced almost daily, it’s clear that only those retailers with a differentiated customer experience will survive.
While the experiences themselves will vary greatly, retailers need to get two things right. Whether they’re offering personal stylists or merchandising treasure hunts, they must make an emotional connection to the shopper and must assure the basics are correct.
Go back and closer you must look
Executives need only look at the travel industry, which has been studying differentiated customer experiences for years, for guidance.
One of the visionaries on customer satisfaction in the airline industry, JetBlue founder David Neeleman, recently shared that his Azul Brazilian Airlines relies on Net Promoter Scores (NPS) to measure the customer experience. He explained that all executive officers have a dashboard tracking key data points like service levels and revenue per passenger, which is updated in near real-time.
Neeleman himself looks primarily at one data point on his dashboard – baggage delays. He said it doesn’t matter how good the rest of the experience is — from the reservation through the flight — if it takes more than 20 minutes for a customer’s bags to reach the baggage carousel, you’ve failed the passenger.
Satisfaction levels drop along with NPS. So, he wants his team to know right away if there are baggage handling delays, because the sooner they know, the faster they can discover the cause and fix the problem. Neeleman says the long-term loyalty of his customer base depends on it.
But why does he give that last step in a customer’s journey such a large impact on the airline’s NPS? There is some science behind it.
Patience you must have
We all know the expression “first impressions count.” It’s called the Primacy Effect in psychology, and refers to the fact that people tend to remember the first information presented about something far better than information presented later.
Your customers’ first experience with your brand and products is important because it drives sales and creates a significant part of your reputation. Marketers spend countless hours perfecting that first touch, but a study by Luchins shows there is something more important that the Primacy Effect and impacts NPS.
Psychologists define the Recency Effect as an ‘order of presentation’ effect that occurs when more recent information is better remembered and (importantly) receives greater weight in forming a judgment than earlier-presented information.
Think about trial lawyers – they spend a lot of time perfecting their closing argument because they understand the effect on a juror’s decision. Strong closing remarks have the power to change the outcome of a trial. They’re the easiest to recall. And what we’re exposed to most recently impacts our decisions because it turns out our minds are lazy, which is no surprise considering how many decisions we make each day.
Think about all the little decisions you make. Can you afford to hit the snooze button on your alarm clock one more time? What are you going to wear? Breakfast? What errands do you need to run? Do you have meetings to schedule? Who should you invite? The list goes on and on.
In fact, according to some sources, we make around 35,000 decisions every day. Given that number, it’s not surprising that the brain takes a few shortcuts. They’re called ‘cognitive biases’.
Decide you must, how to serve them best
When evaluating your brand, customers will give the most weight to their last experience (see: availability heuristic). Neeleman states that in the case of an airline customer, it’s often the baggage claim experience.
For an e-commerce customer, it’s when they received their order. So, while a great customer experience leading up to the purchase is important for maximizing sales, the delivery experience may have a greater impact on your retail NPS, repeat purchases, and overall loyalty.
Whether it’s a click and collect order, or ship to home, reliability is key. Just like in the airline industry, late deliveries (late flights or baggage) or cancelled orders due to poor inventory visibility (cancelled flights) are inexcusable.
More importantly, these incidents are an invitation for customers to do business with your competitors. To keep your customers in today’s competitive retail landscape, you need to set clear, accurate expectations, and then meet or exceed them. That’s the best way to make an emotional connection to the shopper.
Should delivery challenges arise, orders need to be rerouted automatically, so they don’t impact your customer, or their experience. That’s the best way to get the basics right.
