According to Salesforce, 92% of consumers agree that a positive customer service experience makes them more likely to make another purchase.

From the time they first walk into your shop, you have only a matter of seconds to make an impression that will last and be seared into their memory banks. What remains to be seen, but when all is said and done, they will be remembering something, whether it be positive or negative.

In this article, we’ll highlight the ways to improve retail customer service, its benefits, and its importance. 

What is Retail Customer Service? 

Customer service is a system of policies and methods used by an enterprise to provide service to customers before, during, and after a purchase. There are several types of retail marketing programs and customer service among them.

Whether you’re a small business owner or a marketing professional at one of the world’s largest corporations, you have one thing in common: Customers expect nothing less than great customer service.

Great customer service is vital to your success. According to Harris Interactive study, “A majority of customers (57 percent) would pay more for better service from their favorite brands. And the numbers don’t lie: a retailer’s failure to meet customer expectations leads to lost sales.”

10 Great Ways to Improve Customer Service in Retail?

A customer can be your best friend or they can be your worst enemy. It all depends on what kind of experience they have in your store. Every time a customer walks into your store, it is an opportunity for you to make a good sale, to up-sell a customer, or turn them into a brand advocate. 

1. Provide Immediate Support with Live Chat
2. Deploy Chatbot to Automate Retail Customer Service
3. Offer Phone Call Support 
4. Don’t Make Fake Promises
5. Listen Carefully to Your Clients
6. Don’t Avoid Your Customer Complaints
7. Train Your Customer Service Staff
8. Give Extra Effort
9. Provide Outstanding Retail Customer Service
10. Personalize the Customer Experience

Now, let’s take a look at 10 great ways to improve customer service in retail. 

1. Provide Immediate Support with Live Chat

Having someone to guide them when customers are online is a great help that makes them feel happy.

The easiest way to remove frustration and make them happy is by live chat software.

62% of customers are likely to return to a website that offers live chat support & 38% say they make purchases due to the chat session itself. 

Here is how the live chat tool helps to deliver better retail customer service.

• Learn customer pain points – Live chat helps to analyze the chat histories to understand customer pain points and create effective ways to address and resolve the problems.
• Boost sales conversions – You can empower support reps to respond faster to customers’ queries and positively impact sales. Using live chat increases sales and higher average order value.
• Reduce support tickets – Using live chat for retail business is the fastest way to help customers. It provides immediate answers to the sales and support queries and reduces the number of support requests.  
• Increase customer loyalty – Having live chat instills trust and increase customer loyalty over time. Moreover, customers who chat prior to purchasing tend to spend more money and are more apt to become loyal customers.

2. Deploy Chatbot to Automate Retail Customer Service

An AI chatbot can conduct a conversation via auditory or textual methods. The objective of a chatbot is to simulate human-like communication in the form of text or speech. 

As technology enables people to use a wider range of devices, customers have increased expectations concerning customer service. 

No matter which channel a customer uses to communicate with their company, whether it be e-mail, web chat, or social media.

How will it be beneficial for you?

• It works as a virtual assistant to help your customers in their shopping experience, with a seamless and personalized experience.
• An artificial intelligence (AI) powered customer service chatbot (or virtual) assistant, is the ultimate tool for retailers to scale their business and increase customer satisfaction by delivering the most personalized customer service over the chat.
• A customer service chatbot is able to deliver a great customer experience through personalized, contextual, and real-time interactions.

3. Offer Phone Call Support

A phone call is the most effective way to determine whether your customers are satisfied with your company, products, and services. You should not avoid the calls from the customer because not all customers are comfortable with chatting online. 

Key reasons to pick up the customer’s phone:

• Not all customers would like to chat online. There are still many people who prefer to communicate with the seller directly. Not only because of safety issues but also because they want to get the answer they are looking for. 
• Chat cannot fully replace the call, especially during busy hours when the normal chat service is overloaded or the customer needs immediate assistance.
• Different customers have different needs and preferences. Some are willing to provide more information online while some want to do business with you face-to-face.

4. Don’t Make Fake Promises

The example of “fake promises” is not only the attempts to sell any product.

There are often made by people whose skills are aimed at achieving quick results, or who do not have all the necessary information about the goods or services, or for some other reason, such as limited time, do not want to fully understand the situation. 

When you guarantee or promise your customers something, e.g. free delivery, keep the promise and spare the disappointment in the future.

It shows that you can’t respect your duties regarding your customer for reasons outside your ability to control them. So, never being over-promising to customers is one of the best live chat etiquettes.

Another example of common “false promises” is usually a result of the desire to quickly return money or goods to customers who have found that the goods do not meet their expectations.

5. Listen Actively to Your Clients

When people are unhappy, it’s your job to make them happy. One of the ways is to delight customers is to practice active listening. If you’re not listening to your clients, they’re going to find someone. 

Listening attentively to the customers should be the chat etiquette at work. One main reason why businesses receive a large number of customer complaints is just the fact that agents do not “listen” to them.

Active listening to them helps to figure out what exactly your customers want, their opinions, feedback, etc. The information collected can be passed to the teams across respective business teams to implement it.

You don’t want to create customer service problems by being too tough or snobbish. No matter how successful you’ve handled things in your life, you need to listen to your customer feedback,” says Keith Cunningham-Reid, owner of a global staffing and consulting firm, three restaurants, and a bar in Atlanta. 

6. Don’t Avoid Your Customer Complaints

Customer complaints are inevitable. One of the biggest mistakes business owners make is to avoid complaints rather than address them.

The business owner runs the risk of making the situation even worse; it’s an ineffective way to deal with the client’s issues. The volatile emotions come from the customer which leads to a downward spiral. 

It’s important to understand that criticism is an opportunity to improve, rather than something to be afraid of. A negative experience can become positive if you manage it correctly.

How complaints can benefit your business? 

• Complaints play a very important role in the success of any business. Complaints from the customers help in maintaining the quality and standard of services offered by the business. 
• Moreover, complaints are the only method through which customers can express their dissatisfaction with a product or service that they have received. 
• Without customer complaints, businesses would be unable to improve themselves and go ahead on the path of growth.

7. Train Your Customer Support Staff

The number one reason why businesses fail is that they don’t understand and apply the basic principles of customer service. A few minor changes to your service process can mean the difference between success and failure.

Training your staff on how to deliver great customer service will bring you and your business much further.

There is no doubt that it is important to provide a good service to all your customers, so they remember you and come back again to buy from you.

How training your staff can benefit you?

• Helps staff how to deal with angry customers in the office and how to leave the conversation without making it worse.
• Allows them to personally grow their talents and their skills.

8. Give Extra Effort

Giving customers extraordinary service is a challenge, and it’s an art. It’s easy to become so focused on the bottom line — getting customers through the door and selling products — that we forget our ultimate goal of exceeding their expectations.

The good news is that extraordinary customer service can be achieved by focusing on improving your sales and service teams’ efforts in a handful of key areas:

• Make a positive first impression.
• Listen actively, anticipating needs.
• Act on the customer’s behalf.
• Do what you say you will.
• Show the customer you care.
• Make it easy to do business with you.
• Give customers reasons to give extra effort to make them happy.

9. Provide Outstanding Retail Customer Service

Your customer service experience is often the difference-maker between a brand that converts or gives up. You should be confident that your customer service team is there to help you and your customers. 

But not all businesses understand what it means to have great customer service. Even more importantly, not every business knows how to deliver great customer service. 

Benefits of providing extra service: 

• Providing extra service for your customer can actually increase your business.
• By providing support beyond the ticket, businesses can lessen the appearance of poor service, troubleshoot problems before they escalate, and make sure customers are happy.

10. Personalize the Customer Experience

Personalization isn’t a buzzword anymore. It’s table stakes for today’s customer-obsessed businesses. From prioritizing individual interests to building trust and empathy, there are endless benefits to personalizing the customer experience. 

What may surprise you is that all of these benefits start with one thing: The ability to communicate with customers at scale.

Ways to improve customer service:

• Deliver intelligent answers and recommendations using customizable surveys and self-service options.
• Automatically attribute customer issues to the correct support user based on real-time data collection.
• Prioritize issues to identify and solve the most critical ones first.
• Flexible segment customers for targeted campaigns and automated content delivery.

Retail Customer Service Skills

Retail customer service skill is a tough job to command among employees. The retail customers are demanding and rude most of the time. Thus, the employee in the retail store should be well trained with soft skills and hard skills to handle the situation if a customer is rude or breaks any policy rules. 

Key customer service skills in retail include 

• Communication skills
• Emotional intelligence
• Patience, service recovery
• Handling difficult customer situations. 

In addition, they should also have hard skills such as cash handling, POS and retail inventory management software knowledge.

The customer service representative (CSR) or an order taker needs to be friendly, soft-spoken, and calm at all times because angry customers are one of their biggest challenges. 

These people should have good listening skills and know-how to keep calm under any circumstances. Being polite and respectful is another must-have trait because they have to deal with people all day long. 

In addition, they need to be well organized and able to multi-task, as they will often have several customers in line, along with a telephone ringing in their ear with someone else wanting help.

Why Customer Service in Retail Is Vital?

Customer service is vital in retail. Neglecting to pay attention to your customer’s needs and complaints could be the end of your business, so it is crucial to treat customers well. 

Your image as a store, whether good or bad, is often based on your customer service. Many stores that have good products and services can still get negative feedback because they have an inexperienced staff or a poor attitude. If you want to be known as a great company, invest in the right people and the right tools.

Key reasons why customer service is important in retail;

• If you provide good customer service, customers will come back again and again.
• If they have a good experience when they visit your store, they’ll be sure to look out for your brand online. – Good customer service will make you stand out from your competitors.
• Customers who are satisfied with your company will be more inclined to make repeat purchases and tell their friends about your product or services
• It will boost your business’ online search rankings and visibility.

Key Benefits of Retail Customer Service

Retail customer service is one of the most important factors a company must consider when it comes to establishing and maintaining a successful retail business. Correct customer service will establish good relationships between your company and your customers.

89% of consumers are more likely to make another purchase after a positive customer service experience. – Salesforce Research

Customer loyalty – As a retail business owner, you know that how you treat your customers can make or break your business. To put it plainly, happy customers are great customers. There is no doubt that customer loyalty is the name of the game in business today. If you want to win the race then you have to provide excellent customer service to build customer loyalty. 

Increase conversion – According to experts, the primary goal of any business is to make the most profit possible. The best way for that to happen is for businesses to provide excellent service to their customers. If you want to repeat customers then make sure you’re providing the best customer service in logistics or your retail business. 

Customer retention – This is more than a benefit for your own business; it’s also a benefit for the local community. After all, when you keep loyal customers buying from your company, you’re spending money with other local businesses, helping them to grow as well.

Customer satisfaction – Successful retail companies focus on keeping their current customers happy. Companies should do everything they can to assure that existing customers are happy with their products and services so they will be prone to returning or recommending the company to their family and friends.

Resolve the issue – For the consumer, this often means resolving an issue with a product or service purchased. For the retailer, customer service may be about addressing internal issues in their businesses (i.e. increasing sales, growing profits, improving efficiency, etc.

How Can REVE Chat Help You to Provide Seamless Customer Service for Retail?

The world of commerce is changing fast and it’s important to recognize that the way we interact with companies and the way that companies interact with us is shifting. We’re getting more comfortable with AI, and when thinking about it, customer service chatbots are a natural extension of our current expectations from technology.

Chatbots are simple programs that let you communicate over the internet in natural language with computers and other people.

Bringing in a chatbot to help with customer service is a great way to optimize your business. You can handle many of the issues that come up with customers to free up time for you to focus on more pressing matters. So, what are you waiting for? Sign Up for REVE Chat and enjoy 14 day free trial. 

88% of retailers say personalization has improved their marketing effectiveness.

Retail customer engagement is not just about giving customers a satisfactory experience during their sales journey. It is also about personalizing interactions and encouraging customers to partake in the experiences created by the retailers. Because driving relevant contextual customer experience improves sales and profitability.

Excellent retail consumer engagement isn’t difficult, but it does require training and planning, which is much easier to achieve with a retail learning management system. Hence, having focused on a well planned retail engagement strategy is the key to long-term retail success.  

What is retail customer engagement? 

Retail customer engagement refers to how a brand interacts with its customers across touchpoints and channels, both in-store & online. It determines the extent of the relationship a customer develops with a brand and further can be strengthened.

Having an omnichannel retail strategy helps brands to engage customers closely across their preferred channels in their entire journey from making a purchase to join a loyalty program. A personalized retailing experience can always increase the revenue and profit margins, while also strengthening customer loyalty.

Here are the key benefits of a well-defined retail engagement strategy.

Increase customer loyalty

Value your customers with a well-planned retail engagement strategy to deliver a holistic experience across touchpoints. Personalized experiences that are contextual and coherent make a huge difference to their overall perception and continued association with a brand. 

Drive sales conversions

When customers have a smooth shopping experience, they are likely to return for frequent purchases. Also, customers tend to share their positive experiences on social media which impacts sales conversions.

Improve customer lifetime value (CLTV)

Personalized experiences contribute towards higher customer lifetime value (CTLV). It is calculated as the value of a customer to a brand, over the entire duration of their relationship. Higher CLTV is the advantage earned from providing an impeccable overall experience.

 10 Innovative ideas to improve retail customer engagement

For retail marketers, it is extremely crucial to focus on customer engagement for value creation. They give people something meaningful beyond a sales pitch: real time customer support and end-to-end customer experience. 

Here are the top 10 best practices on how to improve retail engagement with your customers.

1. Focus on omnichannel retailing
2. Use live chat for retail customer engagement
3. Deliver better experience with Augmented Reality
4. Leverage AI chatbots for retail customer engagement
5. Merge in-store & online purchase behaviors
6. Engage customers in real time with visual tools
7. Drive retail engagement with social media
8. Prioritize mobile shopping experiences
9. Use store relationship management (SRM) technology
10. Personalize your communication

Let us discuss the ideas comprehensively to understand retail consumer engagement. 

1. Focus on omnichannel retailing

Customers expect a personalized consistent experience across all channels like brick-and-visual mortar stores, online catalogs, social media platforms, etc. By being available to your customers over all the channels, you ensure never to miss an opportunity to impress or delight. And you can achieve this goal easily by leveraging the power of an omnichannel contact center solution. 

If you’re not available everywhere, your limited presence will derail both the user experience and your bottom line.

Your omnichannel retail strategy should offer customers different ways to request and receive service like submitting a ticket, calling for support, direct messaging to the social media accounts, chatting with a live agent, interacting with a chatbot, and looking for information in a knowledge base.

Here is how shifting to omnichannel improves retail consumer engagement.

• Capture a better view on the customer journey – An omnichannel retail engagement strategy streamlines all the interactions under one platform and provides insights into the right actions for improving your business.
• Deliver enhanced customer experience –  When brands engage across all online and offline customer service channels and deliver consistent support, there is a boost in customer experience.
• Increase customer retention – Omnichannel customer experience strategy empowers customers to connect with the brand through their preferred channels. The smooth transition in the same interaction, which increases customer retention.

2. Use live chat for retail customer engagement

Stay ahead of your competitors and communicate quickly with your customers in real time. Live chat support generates higher customer satisfaction levels, and 79% of customers prefer online chat support because of the immediacy it provides. 

Implementing live chat support helps retail brands to guide customers in their buying journey through proactive chat. Also, provides customers the ease to connect whenever they face issues after purchase of products or services.

How to engage customers in retail with live chat?

• Post purchase support – Live chat empowers your customers to reach out to you instantly during and after purchase to raise their queries. 
• Insights into customer behavior – You can understand customer needs based on their page visits and enable chat surveys to collect feedback. You can also identify your customer’s pain points and their overall experience.
• Build strong customer relationships – Providing the digital live chat platform to the customers to connect with your brand after-sales for support strengthens relationships and creates a better brand image.

3. Deliver better experience with Augmented Reality

When we narrow it down to Augmented Reality in retail, approximately 32% of shoppers are regular users of AR, and 73% of smartphone AR users are highly contented with the experiences.

Deploying AR for the right use cases can prove to be a successful tool for capturing consumer’s attention and driving successful campaigns. The impact of AR on retail is from streamlining the process to making shopping easier for people (both online and offline).

Sephora’s beauty retail concept allows customers to try on thousands of shades of lipstick, eyeshadow, false lashes, and other makeup products and allow them to personalize their shopping experience.

By using advanced AI and AR  technology for consumer engagement, Sephora has been able to improve customer interaction. The company has experienced more than 8.5 million visits to its Sephora Virtual Artist feature since its launch.

Here is how AR can be used to enhance retail consumer engagement.

• AR in advertising and marketing – With the introduction of web-based AR platforms, advertisers and marketers have a big opportunity to create innovative campaigns that integrate the digital world into the physical world.
• Merges traditional retailing and online shopping – With so many retail stores, shopping for the right things becomes jarring at times. AR for retail consumer engagement replicates the feeling of traditional shopping ways that excludes the inventory costs and long queues. 
• Personalization of user content – Retailers often personalize content to engage their audiences and meet their expectations. The retail stores’ filter out content so that you look for relatable items without wasting time. 

4. Leverage AI chatbots for retail consumer engagement

Customers demand quick, personal, and real time convenient support, 24×7, on their preferred channels. To build brand value and retain customers via quality customer support, retailers need to rely on artificial intelligence to resolve issues within seconds.

Retail chatbots provide a smart way to scale exceptional customer experiences. Retailers can leverage bots as a user engagement tool and grow far quicker with loyal customers. 

HelloFresh, a meal-kit delivery service, offers discounts to people looking through their meal boxes. Additionally, by offering chatbot-exclusive discount codes, they can track exactly how many customers they are getting through their chatbot.  

Businesses that provide a range of products and services at different price-points can use this chatbot use case to offer upsells, downsells and cross-sells, to increase sales.

Here is how AI chatbots help in boosting retail consumer engagement.

• Engage customers 24×7 – Customer service chatbots efficiently operate round the clock, process multiple queries simultaneously, and offload human teams from routine for more intellectual work.
• Send product notifications –  Deploy chatbots to redefine marketing strategies by sending promotional emails and nurturing customers through pre-defined flows. Brands can use bots to promote products in real-time in a conversational way. 
• Bots as in-store assistants – Bot can be used to assist the retail sales executives to interact with customers and minimize their time behind workstations handling repetitive tasks. You can also use an AI-powered chatbot to track some of the popular metrics to measure customer engagement. 

5. Merge in-store & online purchase behaviors

Retailers today are transforming both physical and online offerings by prioritizing the overall customer experience. It is achieved through the addition of digital technology designed to make frictionless connections between the physical and digital shopping channels. 

As today’s customers want a seamless transition throughout their shopping journey, from their mobile device and desktop all the way to the store — and they want this journey to be easy and convenient.

Hyundai Motors has launched live video chat to digitalize the car-buying process, making it easier for consumers to get personalized information.

The video chat technology requires no additional software installation. The customer just has to click a button to request a video chat. This feature can be used on any device with a browser, including tablets and smartphones. Customers can book a slot at a time that is convenient to them.

Here are some innovations that focus on retail customer engagement.

• Proximity marketing – It uses geomagnetic technology to send targeted offers like coupons, discounts, directly to customers’ mobile based on their in-store location via push notifications.
• Buy online, pickup in-store – It enables consumers to purchase items online and collect from the store at their convenience with the safety and immediacy they desire.
• Browse full product catalog – Customers can browse items that are not physically in stock. When they order the products are shipped directly to their door. It removes customers’ frustration of looking for items that aren’t in stock and saves retailers from having to carry inventory at all store locations.

6. Engage customers in real time with visual tools

Visual engagement is a great way to improve customer engagement for retail businesses. The conversational tools can be used across banking, finance, healthcare, or the automotive industry. 

B2B buyers can also benefit from video chat, as it builds rapport with personal interaction. Visualization allows customers to see the company’s physical space, the look, and the professionalism of the support agents, which can be a key factor to pursue a business relationship.

Lowe’s Inc, an American retail company uses an AR video chat tool to help professionals visit clients or homeowners. The video chat tool is viable to those who are members of the retailer’s loyalty program free of cost. 

Video chat offers immense opportunities for enhanced customer service and customer conversion during the information research phase.

Here are key ways how visual tools can increase retail customer engagement.

• Increase sales with live interaction – Automobile dealership reps can instantly engage website visitors with video chat and help them in making quick sales decisions thus, converting visitors into customers.
• High-end customer service – While agents can engage customers with live chat or video chat for personalized support in real time, they can collaborate with co-browsing to instantly guide them to fill up application forms for car insurance, offers for their old car, or price quotes.
• Complete security of online transactions – When the agent co-browses with the customer to complete the financial transaction, all the fields related to private information are “masked” and the reps do not have access to any of that information.

7. Drive retail engagement with social media

Social media has now become indispensable for brands to ensure they not only have the right presence on major social media networks but also work consistently towards engaging their customer base on those networks.

Customers see more value in owning a product or being associated with a brand that they feel worthy of telling their network about. Even when visiting a store, they look for experiences that they can talk about on social media.

Best Buy adopted the retail engagement strategy of asking playful questions while subtly featuring their products at the same time.

Key ways to drive retail customer engagement across social networks 

• Build robust content strategy – It is crucial to deliver informative, refreshing content, rather than merely providing product descriptions. 
• Supplement your paid campaigns – If you are running a promotion, launching a product, or have time-sensitive offers – allow your followers to learn about them. Consistently publishing coupon codes, offers and discounts is fair game for encouraging impulse buyers.
• Collect feedback from social customers – Customers tend to follow retailers in pursuit of a sale, hence you need to go beyond selling in making good connections. The feedback gathered from customers can not only inform your content & product strategies.

8. Prioritize mobile shopping experiences

Mobile experiences can no longer be an afterthought. The keys to fine-tuning mobile are simplicity and accessibility. Retailers should pay special attention to delivering effortless navigation, clear on-page elements, and mobile-specific web page designs.

39% of consumers said they frequently make purchases through their mobile devices, and 41% of those surveyed said they plan to increase their frequency of mobile shopping via smartphones or tablets.

Consumers have shifted greatly towards buying products via mobile than other devices. They actually prefer shopping on mobile apps compared to websites, as it is more convenient, faster, and easier to store settings.

Tips to improve the mobile app shopping experience.

• Identify problem areas – Pinpoint the key challenges encountered by mobile shoppers that impact digital experience in real time and respond quickly to avoid customer frustration.
• Quantify mobile app experiences – After making clear adjustments to the app as behaviors, retailers should measure against their initial score to understand how the mobile app experience has improved over time. It helps brands to identify the improvements that have been made and the areas to focus forward in the future.
• Capture experience data – Understanding how a customer interacts with the brand, across all digital and offline properties, enables departments to operate more efficiently. Insights into how customers interact with mobile apps can inform experience strategies and help the advertising team to prepare for the next campaign. 

9. Use store relationship management (SRM) technology

Strengthening the in-store locations by implementing store relationship management (SRM) technology is another retail engagement strategy. SRM system basically fits the current scenario created by the COVID-19 pandemic, where customers were restricted to the in-store locations. 

SRM systems can help retailers in ways that impact customer engagement. They are:

• The technology helps to update associate training programs
• Easily track key store performance metrics
• Leverage the customer engagement best practices

Actually, SRM technology streamlines the retail business processes on the back end so that you can focus on providing a better overall experience to your customers.

The data collected by SRM can also provide valuable insights into store operations, such as what a store’s peak hours are, and which touchpoints customers most frequently come into contact with, as well as targeted recommendations on how to optimize existing processes. With an SRM, retailers can deliver an in-store experience that delights customers.

10. Personalize your communication

Today’s customers generally ask for digital receipts. When customers request a digital receipt, they have to provide a valid email address, which helps to increase the retailer’s reach and engagement potential. 

Big retail brands like Aldo shoes are adding up to 25% more emails to their databases, and leaders like GNC reducing their bounce rate by as much as 25% by the same retail engagement idea. 

When brands put efforts to capture more, valid emails and enrich customer profiles, it can be monetized in different ways including by sending smarter, more personalized post-purchase shopper communications.

Drive retail customer experience with innovation

Hyperpersonalization and the use of modern technologies is the future of retail customer engagement. It enables retailers to give customers exactly what they are looking for. Combining new tools with a personal touch can help you to improve your retail consumer engagement and achieve lasting customer loyalty.

Retail customer experience should not be limited to just in-store experience but can be enhanced across all touchpoints, be it offline or online. It establishes trust, which is becoming increasingly difficult to ensure in an ever-crowded market