7 Ways to Create A Stand Out Customer Experience

Creating a stand out customer experience can be a challenge but it’s absolutely critical if you want your business to last.

Let’s say you have neck pain and have been researching a pain-relieving pillow for weeks. Finally, you find the perfect pillow online and purchase it.

Immediately following your purchase, you start receiving emails from the manufacturer begging you to review the pillow so they can use your recommendation on their product description.

The thing is…

You don’t know anything about the manufacturer of the pillow or their website. In fact, when people ask where you purchased it, you reply, “I got it on Amazon.”

Names can be hard to remember for anyone, but getting customers to remember your business name is a key part of successful selling and networking. When consumers remember your name, it helps to strengthen your branding, improve customer relationships, and directly benefit your sales numbers.

One of the ways to make your company more memorable is through marketing, which azcentral describes as “the art of making sure people remember your business, especially when they’re ready to make a purchase.” While advertising plays a role in that, too, good marketing involves way more than just creating advertising campaigns and placing ads. It requires a combination of good branding and excellent customer relationship management skills to make a truly memorable impression on your prospective customer base.

As The Retail Doctor points out:

“A lot of brands are pushing customers away with relentless and ill-conceived efforts to engage online. Few, other than Amazon, meet with success. That’s why so many online stores are opening their own brick and mortar shops.”

The Retail Doctor goes on to say that, “Brick and mortar retailing at its best offers the stickiness that shoppers remember so they return again and again. It’s one of the best ways to attract customers to a retail business.”

That’s the reason online players like Amazon are scrambling to open stores. They recognize the value of a brick-and-mortar presence.

How to Become Memorable to Your Customers

Already have a brick-and-mortar store? Here are 7 ways you can get visitors and customers to remember you:

1. Go above and beyond to establish a stand out customer experience

Whether you greet a customer in the parking lot with an umbrella when it is raining or carry out a large purchase for a customer without being asked, these extra details go a long way in creating a memorable impression of your business.

2. Welcome everyone to your store, literally 

Greet all customers within 15 seconds by saying, “Welcome to (name of your store). It will help solidify where the shopper is. Why? Your unique greeting will convey the message that shopping with you is different, (i.e. better than the competition).

3. Maintain accurate inventory records

According to research by Accenture, almost 50% of consumers want to check stock availability before visiting a store. Ideally, your entire inventory should provide real-time transparency of your stock with the use of a reliable and integrated POS & E-commerce system. You never want to be the store that’s remembered for NOT having the products the customer wants.

4. Speak the customer’s language

For example, instead of spouting the numbers of pixels and resolution a camera is capable of, you need to talk in terms of the number of photos that fit on different sizes of memory cards. The idea is to make the shopping experience as easy as possible to facilitate quick purchasing decisions.

5. Train your staff how to add on, not just upsell

Providing your sales associates with advanced sales training will help them to upsell customers from a cheaper item to one that’s more expensive because it offers more and requires less work. Make sure they know how to add on to a sale after the customer has decided to buy the target item by showing them an additional item that makes the original purchase more valuable.

6. Remind customers where they are, again

While it’s easy to say, “Thanks” or “Come again”, handing the shopping bag over to the customer is your last opportunity to stand out. Make sure you insert your business name into your farewell, too (“Thanks for shopping at (name of your store”).

7. Keep in Touch

Back in 2016, the average American received 88 pieces of email a day, as well as 33 text messages. Because shoppers are constantly being marketed to, the chance that you’ll be forgotten grows with each day you don’t communicate with them.

Today’s technology enables shoppers to exist in a perpetual state of “buy”. Brick and mortar retailers need to embrace the omnichannel mentality and engage customers both in-store and online to provide service that’s memorable so that whenever and wherever a consumer considers their next purchase, they remember you and make a beeline for your store.

Conclusion for Creating A Stand Out Customer Experience

A name is a powerful marketing tool in a world where small businesses are fighting for visibility and foot traffic. “Unless you are memorable,” says The Retail Doctor, “you’re like the pillow manufacturer, providing what is needed but not standing out.”

If you’ve got a brick-and-mortar store, you’ve already got an advantage over online-only businesses. The 7 tips above will help you use your store as a means of providing exceptional experiences that will make you more memorable to your customers and bring them back again and again.

Sign up with Jewel360 to further grow your jewelry retail business.