The best insight on how to enhance, improve, advance and boost the retail customer experience comes from those retailers, whether online or in-store, which are doing just that. And readers love getting that deep knowledge, insight, tips and advice as illustrated by the most read articles and features this year.
https://www.retailcustomerexperience.com/articles/2017-in-review-top-5-features-highlight-retailer-experiences/
As any retailer knows, in today's society, the customer is always right; and is increasingly more demanding in terms of what they expect when making purchase decisions. The customer now wants to be able to start, continue and complete their purchases anytime, anywhere and anyhow. Our online society facilitates purchase decisions being made, verified, reconsidered, amended or reversed, in any situation and through any possible channel, or indeed a mixture of many. As a result, providing a seamless payment experience that can follow the customer along their journey across the plethora of touch points is essential for a merchant to succeed in the marketplace.
https://www.retailcustomerexperience.com/blogs/why-omni-channel-is-a-must-and-how-to-make-it-successful/
Amazon, Williams-Sonoma and Kohl’s are the top three brands in ForeSee’s annual Retail Customer Experience (CX) Rankings, which are based on survey data from over 40,000 shoppers across their store, Web, and mobile experiences.
The report also examines the success of retailers by individual channel — store, Web, and mobile (See chart). Amazon, Costco, Kohl’s, and Nordstrom each took a top spot in two out of three channels, while Tractor Supply ranked No. 1 in Web.
https://www.chainstoreage.com/technology/retailers-tops-omnichannel-customer-experience/
We're in the age of voice of the customer. Of course, for retailers, this isn't news. But every year yields new evidence that the digital age continues to restructure the buyer-seller dynamic. In today's trust economy, customers are finding tremendous value — and leverage — in social proof. And brands are seeing it become a powerful and persuasive form of digital marketing.
https://www.retailcustomerexperience.com/blogs/social-proof-is-boosting-holiday-sales-5-steps-show-you-how/
With e-commerce’s stake in U.S. retail at less than 10 percent, suggestions of a “retail apocalypse” of brick-and-mortar stores is greatly exaggerated, panelists said during a ULI North Texas event on the retail sector. Still, panelists at an event in Dallas said the industry has to find new ways to reinvent itself and connect with customers in order to thrive.
“What we did . . . ten years ago doesn’t work anymore,” said Valerie Richardson, vice president of real estate for the Container Store Inc. “We are in a tectonic-plate shift in our industry. For those of us with longstanding brands, it’s critical that we go deep into our customer base and understand what our customer needs and respond to that appropriately.”
https://urbanland.uli.org/news/retailers-focusing-customer-experience-eye-e-commerce/
There's no nice way to say this - a bricks and mortar shopping trip can often be a stressful experience. Technology has long been touted as the saviour of the user experience in physical retail but there's a long history of false promises, high hopes and missed chances.
You could fill a graveyard with all the technologies that have been proclaimed as “the future of retail”. For example, QR codes were hailed as a way of bringing a richer, more informed experience to the real world, until it became apparent no one knew how to scan them!
https://www.mycustomer.com/experience/engagement/cx-in-retail-whats-hype-whats-hot-whats-not/
Being mobile centric, offering alternative payment options such as the ability to pay later and enabling one-click repeat purchase are all key to winning over online Christmas shoppers.
So says new research by payments provider Klarna, which harvests the views of more than 2,000 consumers to reveal that shoppers are so stressed out in the extended run up to Christmas that they’re overwhelmed when the day itself arrives.
http://internetretailing.net/2017/12/retailers-must-invest-mobile-payments-ease-pain-christmas-customer-experience/
Retailers know very well that this is the time of year to roll up their sleeves, get out of their comfort zone, and start thinking strategically about how to make the most of the upcoming holiday shopping season. But if you're looking to evaluate how well your business is capitalizing on this season, the real test will only come next year — when you start to see whether your 2017 holiday sales have brought in customers who are sticking around.
https://www.retailcustomerexperience.com/blogs/holiday-season-is-coming-want-a-second-date-with-your-customers/
In a world of hyper-adoption – and hyper-abandonment – successful retailing in 2018 comes down to obsessing about your customer’s experience. It’s a tall order: Digital and physical touchpoints now must work together flawlessly – yet also do what each touchpoint does best on its own. And organizations must remove silo shackles to unify disparate data to develop deep customer insights.
Forrester’s 2018 retail predictions call out that as retailers work towards these goals, they must navigate growing their business in an ever-changing world where...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forrester/2017/11/16/why-2018-is-all-about-customer-experience-for-the-retail-industry/#573f8de67783/
