I just experienced really great customer service that got me thinking about the little things we can do to make a big impact on customer loyalty.
I’m the Commercial Specialist here at Triquestra and every couple of weeks I shop at a fruit and vegetable shop that’s about a 10 minute drive from the office. Last week I went at lunchtime, and when I went to pay for my items, I realised that I didn’t have my wallet in my bag or in my car.
The checkout person got the manager and I said I’d transfer the money using internet banking on my phone. The manager told me not to worry, gave me the receipt and told me to bring it in next time I shopped and pay then.
As you can imagine, I was blown away. I don’t do all my weekly fruit and veg shopping there and I don’t know the manager well. It was just under $40 – a reasonable amount of money – but he fully trusted me to come back in and pay. It made me think, “This is why I come here.”
It was such a nice, unexpected experience. I initially went because of the quality of the produce. Now I’ll go more often because of the quality of the service. And I’ll probably spend more because they went out of their way to help me.
Look out for loyalty building opportunities
While you can’t let every customer walk out the door without paying, you can empower store managers and staff to think beyond the transaction. Customer experiences create loyalty when they have the following characteristics. Share these with your staff and encourage them to look for the opportunities to make customers smile:
Relevant
What can you do for the customer at that exact moment? Letting me leave with my items and pay later solved the problem I had in that exact point in time – no wallet.
Unexpected
How can you surprise and delight? I never expected that consideration from a store I visit occasionally.
Personal
Can you make customers think you’re doing something only for them? I felt like I was being treated like someone special.
Emotional
How do you make them feel important, appreciated, and loved? I left feeling that the retailer trusted me, which made me more inclined to trust them.
Humans + technology = happier customers
When staff know customers on an individual level, the sales experience is better for both. With a platform like Infinity connecting all your data, that knowledge can be automated.
Infinity can show a customer’s purchase history, purchase frequency, loyalty program points, rewards available, and more. So your in-store, call centre and online teams can surprise, upsell, cross-sell, and offer advice based on what customers like and need.
In B2B environments, it’s common for a sales rep to have to call a credit team for permission to process an order if the customer is over their credit limit. If you had Infinity working for you, the system could allow for discretionary purchases up to a second limit, based on the customer’s history. The customer wouldn’t have to wait through an awkward approval process, and they’d feel valued because you ‘cut them some slack’.
Infinity is also very easy to use so sales people can pay more attention to their customers than their POS system.
