Creating a positive consumer experience through the point of sale, through to post-purchase is the bread and butter of your modern retail business. However many individuals and businesses at large have struggled to really adapt to this changing landscape. Why is this?
Many of our retail clients are now looking for ‘hybrid’ professionals who bring with them an understanding of the customer roadmap and all interaction points with a modern brand. ‘Ridged’ roles that are only concentrating on one element of the customer journey are being overtaken along with the businesses that still operate in this ‘silo’ fashion. Modern retail support functions have a need for professionals who have flexible skills & a genuine understanding of the interaction a customer has with its brand(s)
Many ‘traditional’ marketing & e-commerce professionals we engage with are now trying to heighten their skill-set to accommodate this shift. One of the key areas is demonstration of interaction & management of ‘internal stakeholders’
Here’s a few pointers from experts in the industry;
- Understanding Customer Requirements-Start with the obvious questions like going and talking to potential customers to see how they’ve used existing products and what was missing to make their lives easier. Propose features and products and rank how important customer segments think they might be. (@faderp)
- Map your customer’s journey-A customer journey map allows you to empathetically travel the customer journey with them as they interact with your company. Research-based and focused on desired outcomes from the customer’s perspective, you’ll see what their needs are at each interaction, how well you meet them, and where opportunities for improvement lie. (@MichaelHinshaw)
- Start with the customer and work backward- Each Amazon product manager writes up an internal press release that centres around the customer problem, how current solutions fail, and how the new product will blow them away. If the benefits don’t sound interesting, the product manager will need to iterate until they actually have a list of useful benefits. Once the product gets into development, the press release becomes the guiding light. (@zachcb1)
Our clients believe it’s essential to create a customer service culture that’s devoted top to bottom to the customer experience. Being Customer Centric means looking at a customer’s lifetime value and concentrating your marketing efforts on a real world, high value customer segment. By looking at their own career in a similar light, successful multi-channel candidates are changing the face of what effective marketing looks like in the 2015 retail environment.
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