4 Tips for Creating Brand Advocates Out of Father’s Day Shoppers This Year

Featured article by Johann Wrede, Global Senior Director, SAP Customer Engagement Solutions

Today, customers actively engage with brands in a variety of ways. In our newly minted customer-centric world, this development has had a direct effect on the bottom line. A recent Customer Experience Index report from Forrester shows companies that outperform competitors in customer experience are more likely to turn customers into repeat customers, and repeat customers into loyal and engaged brand ambassadors. Simply stated? “Customer service is king” is no longer just a marketing tagline, but a mantra that governs how organizations will continue to survive. This is something especially important to keep in mind as a major shopping holiday like Father’s Day approaches, which the NRF predicts will see $12.7B in spending. Below are five key tips to make sure your organization is up to the task.

1. Ensure You’re Utilizing a Holistic Approach

Part of a brand promise is being able to deliver the consistent experience a customer is accustomed to year-round, but especially on major shopping holidays. It’s a challenge that requires preparation to meet, especially when you consider recent research shows 66 percent of customers are willing to spend more with a company they believe provides excellent customer service. Take the time to map your customer’s journey. After all, you can’t know where your customer is going if you don’t know how they arrived.

2. Personalize Your Web Presence

Without question, retailers must deliver a customized digital experience – it’s simply what modern consumers expect. Fortunately, today, retailers have the ability to start the personalization process before first contact is even made by immediately determining customer method of referral (i.e. direct, via search, via deal websites, etc.) and then based upon lead source, optimizing experience by device or browser, and then placing emphasis on the products they are most likely to buy based upon browsing behavior.

3. Guarantee Ability to Respond to Social Service Requests

Some retailers have carved out their own teams dedicated strictly to social support, while others have combined it with the traditional call center. No matter what structure employed, retailers must ensure social support staff is properly trained. Why? Because channels such as Twitter are open to the public, which means customer service misfires are on display for the entire world to see. To mitigate such risk, the right set of tools is required to capture each social post and guarantee responses are timely, effective and “on-brand.” Overall, it’s vital that through education and guidance, staff is trained to use such technology appropriately. They must be able to effectively differentiate between raw data and customer insight, and be able to gauge customer sentiment before responding – often in the blink of an eye. The result of such planning is undeniable – almost 50 percent of customers will praise a company for a great service experience via social media.

4. Advance In-store Capabilities

An emerging trend is that of modern retailers equipping in-store staff with technology such as iPads, etc. so they are able to perform inventory searches in real time and access on-file customer information in order to make educated purchasing recommendations. Retailers must also train staff so they are aware of how to appropriately deal with both “showrooming” and customers who actively access reviews via mobile devices while in store. It’s a matter of properly integrating the physical and digital experience in a manner that benefits both the customer and the company.

The customer experience is one of the few ways retailers can differentiate themselves from the competition.  Done right, creating memorable, personalized and sharable experiences can create sustainable growth. Done wrong, well, a quick search of “customer service nightmare” online will show you the consequences.

Johann Wrede is Senior Director of Product Marketing for Customer Line of Business (CRM) Solutions at SAP. He has written, implemented, sold, and marketed software for a variety of companies both large and small. Johann is passionate about transformative technologies and the opportunities for change they create. He currently spends his days thinking about how companies can leverage technology to create customer engagement.