Back it Up: The Customer Service Experience Does Matter!
We all know that bad customer service experiences abound in the retail world, but how influential are they really? Does a consumer really think about those bad experiences when they are making a decision to purchase a product or frequent a certain location? A recent report in the Toronto Star found that they most definitely do!! The customer service experience and customer loyalty go hand in hand. Fail with the former and the latter will undeniably suffer.
Covering the 2012 American Express Global Customer Service Barometer, an international study that looks at customer service experience, the Star reported that over 60% of those surveyed said that a bad customer service experience in the past year had negatively influenced their decision to buy a product or brand. In Canada specifically, the study found that 43% of respondents considered switching to a competitor after a bad customer service experience – clearly this does not bode well for customer loyalty.
We have all had our own bad customer service experience,¬†and they usually follow a common thread. Customer service representatives with no knowledge base are not going to be very effective when it comes to promoting your product. Poor product merchandising and product placement are not going to increase customer loyalty, they’ll kill it. Any number of things can contribute to a consumer feeling fed up by a bad customer service experience.
Don’t ignore the power of social media. People are not willing to sit idly by and deal with a bad customer service experience anymore. Instead, the study found that 63% of respondents admitted to taking to their social networks to vent about bad service, a stat that seems to be continually growing. And these numbers are influential, since it is also true that people feel heavily influenced by reports on products given by those in their social networks. Facebook and Twitter are used for a lot more than sharing pictures of that weekend getaway and sharing about what you ate for lunch!
So how can you turn that around and ensure that those customers are leaving the store happy with YOUR brand in their bag? Differentiation is key, so setting yourself apart from the competition is going to get you the brand recognition you need ‚Äì and ensuring a good customer service experience will work to increase customer loyalty. This is where a merchandising company, and merchandising services come into play.
So what kinds of merchandising services are important? Experiential marketing, including product demonstrations, ensuring correct product placement and planogram execution, as well as making sure that your product is being continually re-stocked, all work towards creating the right customer service experience that is going to increase customer loyalty and get those tweets and status updates working for you!
For more information about how merchandising services offered by an experienced merchandising company can help banish the bad customer service experiences and increase customer loyalty, please contact Marketsupport at 1-877-421-5081 or visit www.storesupport.ca.
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