I have been fortunate enough to see a fast evolution in business, the retail industry, technology, and in customer experience. I witnessed supermarkets from analog to digital while becoming havens for data mining consumer behavior. I’ve seen storage grow from 1.44-megabyte swappable disks to 100-megabyte cylinder disk drives to multi-terabyte solid-state storage.
My first customer experience “dashboard” reports were over a thousand printed copies of some data tables. Weeks later, I started work on one of the first internet-based reporting portals for customer experience data.
Then taking mountains of data from the data warehouse to create a financial linkage analysis that was revolutionary for the time. Now we work on a customer experience strategy that spans multiple customer experience touchpoints on CX Enterprise Software that integrates customer journey template into reporting dashboards.
However, not all innovations are great. I am a big fan of technology, but sometimes it can create a division between brand, customer, and employee. On a recent work trip, I had the opportunity to spend a couple of days in my old hometown in Colorado. While there, I even shopped in the grocery store that I spent the last eighteen years shopping at for my children before moving to my new hometown.
Thinking I was going to just get a couple of provisions for my hotel room, I figured the customer journey would be a very quick trip in my old familiar grocery shopping domain. Definitely thought it would be quick…then I entered the store.
Or I should say I attempted to enter the store. It must have been peak time to get to this grocery store – there was a line to get in. No, not restricting volume, rather gates that have been put into place to prevent theft. Controlling traffic into and out of the store. Instead of walking into the wide-open doorway, everything funneled through this small gate – inbound and outbound.
So much for a 5-minute trip; it took nearly five minutes just to get in. Once in, I was well within my assumption that I could quickly find what I needed and quickly head to checkout. Even with my items spread across opposite ends of the store, it probably only took me three to four minutes.
As I made my way to the self-checkout (because there is no other option), I found another new “innovation”. Instead of the condensed self-checkout stands that are usually three on each side, it was just one each lane with a self-activated grocery belt. Scan your item, place it on the belt, the system would take over…the automated security system. Check the weight, compare a picture of the item to what it is expecting, move it across the security barrier, then let you scan the next item.
Good thing I only had six items. For the first one, the “picture” didn’t match the expectation of the system, so it would not let me scan the next item while waiting for assistance. Item two, a produce item, the item code was not properly coded into the system, so I had to wait for assistance to get it manually coded and weighed. This carried on for all six items; each one required assistance to get it entered into the register or across the security barrier.
A process that took almost ten minutes. To finish it off, because of all the interventions, the security personnel at the gate stopping people from getting in and out wanted to check my receipt. Not quite empathy at scale.
This kind of security may become typical in cities that contend with problems such as product shrinkage. It does not really bother me except that – in this case – what should have been a five-minute shopping trip ultimately turned into a twenty-minute exercise in patience. The other problem, they are demonstrating that they do not trust their customers. Not just me but all their customers. They trust us to scan our own items, but not to do it correctly – even people like me whose first job was doing the same job they don’t trust me to do. They are treating all their customers equally – as a threat to their bottom line.
Why are the retailers not treating us differently? It is a two-fold problem. There is certainly enough data but not enough information to tie everything together. Even with all the data, information is not communicated properly to those that need it in a way that empowers them.
The first one is easy since most retail brands have a customer experience software platform. However, most Voice-of-the-Customer programs do not do a great job of looking across the entire customer journey map to bring a consolidated view of customer groups to the front-line teams tasked with meeting the customer needs. Instead of linking information together, most retail brands focus on the customer feedback loop for fixing tactical issues.
Brands should be seeking out Root Causes as we utilize in the QuestionPro NPS+ question type to find strategic fixes using an Outer Loop tool. These empowerment tools can extend into the Employee Experience, where common root causes can be the core of presenting information to the front line to serve customer segments or even individual customers best.
The second part can be more challenging because it requires investment. In a B2B focused business, this is considered a baseline requirement. It can take many forms, from a simple business-wide spreadsheet to a customer relationship management (CRM) tool – but it gives account managers and relationship developers the information they need to speak intelligently with the customer – from the business they conduct with the customer to even personal information about key contacts in the organization.
In retail stores, there is the opportunity to feed information to the frontline to serve customers better; it will require effort to integrate that information and training on how the frontline can leverage that information to serve better customers – investments that include money and time – which can limit how far an organization will take it.
But when you consider the information the largest e-commerce retailers use to propose items to customers, you’ll understand why such a use case can be very advantageous. Until then, we’ll just need to stop every customer at the door.
Is there something wrong with your customer experience?
When you complete an honest assessment, the outcome can be beneficial. Particularly when it comes to your Customer Experience program.
Take five minutes and complete an audit for your organization here.
You may discover a gap in measurement, an opportunity to improve a process, the place where an organizational shift needs to take place or an opportunity to win a greater share of your customers’ wallets.
We all want that bigger “return.” In this situation, the worst case scenario is that you’ll get some information that will help your organization since there is no cost or obligation in completing this audit.
