It is more important now than ever before to provide excellent customer service. Consumers today have more choices than ever before, which creates a competitive business environment. Differentiating yourself from your competitors through superior customer service is imperative and shoppers can be converted from indifferent to loyal customers.
Meeting the needs of your customers quickly, efficiently, and with a smile are the hallmarks of good customer service. There are many factors that contribute to the in-store experience – merchandise, prices, store setting. Although you cannot control your competitors, you are completely in control of the service that you provide. Here are some of the ways that you can surprise your customers with wonderful service.
Why is it so important
With more informed customers coming in to shop, one might assume that they would want to carry on by themselves. But you cannot ignore the fact that customer service is one of the main factors that determine how shoppers perceive your brand.
You can boost your brand’s visibility with a strong customer experience in retail. This can improve the impression that potential customers have of your brand, letting them know how your brand stands out among other competitors. Retail customers can also give you positive reviews if they have positive experiences with your customer service, and this feedback draws in more potential customers to your retail store.
Good customer service is not about pestering customers to buy more items. It is aimed at ensuring customers continue to shop with you and promote your store to other potential customers. Satisfactory customer service will surely get customers to prefer shopping with your store than competitors. Return customers would be able to drive more sales and affirm your brand loyalty. You can always add more marketing strategies to boost word-of-mouth referrals and grow your retail business better.
Regular customers
Customer retention is key to enhancing your brand image among potential customers. Your regular customers would be shopping with you for a variety of reasons, so it is a good idea to provide a personalized experience to reward them for sticking with you. Even a small gesture like greeting them by their name would create a sense of familiarity and boost your relationship further.
Moving ahead with this, you could communicate on a personal level to regular customers over email – newsletters and flyers, or even reel them in as promotional partners on social media. This can work wonders for small businesses that work with a select group of customers, creating a strong brand identity to further expand your retail business to more customers.
A CRM would make it possible for you to keep track of regular customers and help maintain a detailed database of customers’ preferences and purchase history. This would enable the personalization of customer service based on their previous engagement with your store.
Proactive Sales Staff
Increasing sales is contingent upon customers leaving satisfied with their purchase. It is equally important to have a service-oriented workforce that is always ready to assist customers. With sales staff assisting customers from the moment they come into the store, your retail business would present a friendly atmosphere for customers to return in the future.
Upsell and Cross-Sell
Educating customers on the need to switch to a higher-priced alternative might appear an old-fashioned sales tactic, but with the right sales pitch, this can work really well with customers. This is not just about pushing a product but educating customers on how these products can fulfill their requirements better. This requires extensive sales staff training so they can determine customers who are in need of a better product.
Similarly, cross-selling additional items that supplement a product could lead to more satisfied customers who buy more than what they initially intended to. The crucial part of this engagement is suggesting products that actually benefit customers rather than simply adding to the basket for higher transactional value.
By analyzing product data, POS System Software can suggest add-ons that are more likely to be purchased. The sales staff can easily pull up a batch of products that fit the specific requirements of the customer without missing a beat.
Product knowledge
While customers may be browsing items at your store with a clear idea of what they wish to buy, it is up to your sales staff to keep up to date on merchandise details and to help them learn more about products. Use the “FAB” formula to make this information more understandable to both your employees as well as the customers – Features, Advantages, and Benefits. Features are the facts and information about the product itself; Advantages refer to the factual uses of these features; Benefits explain why these advantages are important.
With a Retail POS System Dubai, your employees will always be ready with complete information on any product. This will enable them to provide up-to-date knowledge about the product and convince customers of the need to buy these products to fulfill their specific needs. The latest POS systems also provide QR code scanning to help customers access store catalogs on their devices. This also allows stores to communicate promotional content directly to customers when they scan the QR code.
Managing Check-out and Returns
The thing about waiting in a queue is that most of your customers would hate it! Engaging customers while they wait used to be a thing. But why not remove the queue altogether? With a handheld POS device, sales staff themselves can help check out customers anywhere in the store. Customers can complete their purchases more conveniently with integrated mobile payment options.
Using a POS system can also help manage returns better. Sales records are always available for future reference, so you can match them up with customers who wish to return a product. This would also help you create promotional offers for products that customers may wish to buy instead.
Addressing Stock-outs
The easy way to address a customer who wants an item that is not in stock would be to just tell them you do not have it and move on. Simple, and to the point – the customer would then move to a store that would have the product in stock. One less customer for you.
Retail store managers must always be prepared for such situations and have a backup option in place. You could suggest an alternative product – preferably at a lower price – that could substitute for the product requested by the customer. Going a step ahead, you could offer to deliver the product to the customer from another store location or directly from the warehouse.
An inventory management feature in a POS system would be capable of maintaining the right amount of stock-based on customer preferences and expected demand. If the product is somehow unavailable at the store, it could automatically order more products to be delivered directly from the supplier.
Deliver Exceptional Customer Service
Customer expectations are always changing. More innovations in the retail business entail a different level of customer experience. At PromptTech Solutions, we help mold unique customer experiences for increased sales and make it easy for retail businesses to grow into business enterprises. Get in touch with us to deliver satisfaction to your customers.
