Category: Customer Experience

Don’t let your business fall short when it comes to delighting customers with great customer service.
Every time a customer interacts with one of your sales associates or call center agents, the outcome will impact how shoppers perceive your retail brand. Here are 5 best practices for customer service to empower your associates.
1. Master the “FAB” Formula.
This technique is a great way to sell products to customers without sounding too ‘salesy’, and it is the cornerstone of a well-architected customer service approach. The “FAB” formula, which stands for “Features, Advantages and Benefits” helps your associates to easily remember how to present each product to customers.

The FAB formula is a technique that can helps your agents and associates remember how to present each product to customers. @shoppopdisplays #CustomerService #RetailClick To Tweet

Features are the characteristics of a product while advantages concern what the features can do. The benefit is the most important element, telling customers what they can personally get out of the product and its features. It is always best to personalize the benefits to match the unique circumstances of each individual customer, and doing this well requires listening to customers and then matching the right product.
For example, let’s say you’re selling shampoo to an outdoor enthusiast. Features could include the fragrance, the ingredients it’s made from, or the fact that it restores a scalp’s pH balance. The advantages could be the dual cleansing plus conditioning action of the product. Finally, the unique benefit could be that it protects hair from the harmful UV rays in sunlight—something of particular benefit to this individual customer. Encourage your agents and sales associates to familiarize themselves with the top sellers in your store, as well as product trends, so they will always have these products in mind when customers ask for recommendations.
2. Upsell products that match a customer’s need.
This shouldn’t be about pushing products. On the contrary, upselling and cross-selling are natural next-level customer service boosters after a successful FAB presentation. Once you have explained the unique product benefits, and convinced the customer about the solution your product provides—why not introduce a logical add-on product?
Customers will appreciate your suggestion, since it follows logically from their original enquiry. In the example above, an outdoor enthusiast may also be interested in sunscreen, if your agent or sales associate presents the product right by tailoring the recommendation to the unique customer’s needs. Start by encouraging your contact center agents and sales associates to practice active listening, and determine what other products may fulfill their unique requirements. Understanding customer needs combined with a knowledge of best-selling products is a sure-fire combination that will help you deliver excellent customer service and brisk sales.
Why Active Listening is the Best Customer Service Skill
3. Be readily available for your customers.
If your customers have questions about products or online orders, they need to be able to reach you quickly and easily. 60% of customers feel that long wait times are the most frustrating parts of a service experience. Your team must be equipped to quickly answer questions via phone, email, or even SMS to provide a good customer experience and increase brand loyalty.
Call-back technology is one of the best ways to tackle call queues and hold times. It’s as simple as offering the customer a call-back as an alternative to waiting on hold. This way, your customers can go about their day knowing an agent will reach out to support them later. Learn more about call-backs here.
4. Find a way around stock-outs.
There will be times when products are not in stock or services are unavailable. This may be out of your team’s direct control, but you can help your agents and associates create a positive experience using  customer service techniques.
Having a backup plan for stock-outs is key. When a customer asks you for a product that is not available, always be ready with substitutes so you don’t lose the momentum of the sale. You can also try to find the item in another location or channel, and then have it shipped to the customer for free — for example, from your online store. Once you do this, don’t forget to follow-up and make sure that your customer has received it on time. Agents and sales associates should have a tracking system that lets them keep an eye on the status of customer orders and shipments. This way, they can stay ahead of any situation and proactively reach out to customers when shipments go awry.
5. Appreciate repeat customers.
80% of retail profits are generated by the most loyal 20% of customers. These repeat customers are the life-blood of any successful business, and showing appreciation will encourage their loyalty. A sincere note of gratitude for making a second purchase is one way you can do this — however, it’s important to be creative in your delivery.
Customer relationship management (CRM) software is one of the best tools to achieve this. It is so important to keep track of not only your customers’ contact details, but also their purchase history. You can put that information to good use in your customer service strategy. For example, when you see an order from a customer who has already made a recent purchase, acknowledge them by sending a note of gratitude, or even a discount or free product.
A Complete Guide to Customer Perception
6. Empower your associates with training.
The heart of great customer service is to be helpful, rather than hard-selling your products. But do you know how your agents and sales associates rank in terms of customer-centricity? Empathy is very important, which follows when sales associates listen to your customers’ needs with humility. If regular reminders to listen and be empathetic are not working, training may be in order.
Take some time to investigate and identify any gaps in training, product knowledge, and/or processes. Is your team in touch with the needs of your customers? Do they know enough about your product line to make quick decisions and recommendations? When providing additional training and coaching, utilize tactics that will help instill confidence in your agents and associates and allow them to use their best judgement when service customers.
Retail consumers have more choices than ever before, so building lasting relationships with your customers is essential. Don’t underestimate the value of agents and sales associates who are good at person-to-person customer service. Attitude is more important than skills here — as long as your team possesses the right values and service-based disposition, you’ll have a strong foundation to provide winning customer service for your retail brand.
Ray Ko is the Senior Ecommerce Manager at ShopPOPDisplays. With years of experience in the retail space, Ray is an expert in formulating and implementing ecommerce strategies to increase revenue.The post Blog first appeared on Fonolo.

The dog needs to be fed, there’s a blog post to write, a report is due, there’s a meeting at 10, this form from the bank has to be submitted…

We can measure our performance (and our days) by how well we’re doing the jobs to be done. They focus our attention and our effort and create positive outcomes when we do them on time (and negative ones when we don’t).

12 or more years of school are nothing but this. Training in awareness of jobs to be done, and applying the minimum amount of effort to get those jobs done. Show me your list of jobs to be done and I’ll have a good idea of how you spend your time and the impact you’re making.

Easily overlooked, though, is the process of how something gets on our agenda or doesn’t. Working on voting rights, paying attention to voices unheard, grabbing possibilities for learning or growth or contribution–these are easy to ignore if they’re not on the list of jobs to be done.

And the people who do have these on their list… part of their job is to put their issue on our lists.

As soon as you sign up for a social network, it becomes a job to be done. And the moment you take investment for a new company, your jobs to be done completely change.

This gets meta pretty quick: one of the jobs to be done is to be clear about what the jobs to be done are, and whether or not they are the right jobs.

And another one of the jobs to be done is helping other people see that the things we care about belong on their list of jobs to be done.

If all you’re doing is the jobs you used to do, you’re certainly missing out on the contributions you’re capable of.

The optimism and possibility that come from training and learning in groups is a miracle. It means that, with a little effort, we can level up, become more productive and enjoy the work more tomorrow than we did yesterday.

The folks at Akimbo are offering some proven and tested workshops… here’s their schedule for signups in April:

The altMBA is the first and most powerful workshop of its kind. The July session has its Early Decision Deadline tomorrow, Tuesday. Ask someone who has done it–70 countries, 5,000 alumni so far.

The magical Podcasting Workshop, with Alex DiPalma, has enrollment beginning tomorrow. It’s now in its eighth session, and there are thousands of podcasters out in the world today because of the foundation and framework this community workshop created for them. It will clarify your thinking and help you find your voice.

And the fabled Freelancer’s Workshop begins in about a week. You can sign up today and be sure you don’t miss a thing. If you are working on your own (like most of us) this workshop will help you stop running in place and find the clients you deserve.

This might be your moment to move forward.

Spent my weekend analyzing video types published by our users with Vidjet. Here is what I found 👇 Your Facebook Ads videos won’t work on your website. ❌ Each video type should be used at a certain moment of your customer journey. Something needs to be clear: Video Ads ≠ On-site Videos❗️ Also called ‘media buying’, video ads are designed to bring traffic to your store. On-site videos work towards creating a relationship of trust with your visitors. 🤝 For example, an animation video on a product page doesn’t work as well as an authentic video showing people using the product. The animation video is watched less than 40% of its duration, while the authentic video reaches 75+%. 📈 Important note: this analysis was performed on a sample of 100 short videos, between 15 and 55 seconds. https://preview.redd.it/qr8mtsx81cr61.png?width=2208&format=png&auto=webp&s=f30d5191e7855ced2c1e8111c5582171c6a58700
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It’s more productive to offer directions to someone who has already decided to go on the journey.

“How do I get there?” is a much easier transaction than, “you must go.”

When there’s mutual enrollment, we call it alignment. If people in the organization are all committed to a similar destination, management becomes more like coaching. In fact, we end up calling them a team instead of a company or a division. Instead of using authority, discipline and extrinsic rewards, teams that are enrolled in the journey are more likely to look for signposts of progress. Instead of focusing on shortcuts, competition and scarcity, teams that are enrolled are more resilient, cooperative and committed.

Public school has confused us about how important enrollment can be. That’s because organized schooling is mandatory, and ‘enrollment’ is simply something that happens on paper, not emotionally.

It’s far easier to coach a spirited cricket team than it is to teach those very same kids improper fractions. That’s obvious–in the first case, they’re enrolled in the game, and in the second, they’re simply complying with as little effort as possible.

As Anthony Iannarino says, “too many leaders use their organizational authority instead of inviting people to an adventure, one with meaning, and one that will require growth. Leaders mistakenly believe everyone is motivated by money.”

There’s a hierarchy to enrollment.

At the most primitive level, it’s a desire to evade punishment, to avoid banishment, to stay alive and preserve the status quo. There are no dreams here, simply fear.

Sometimes, this evolves into a mutually beneficial entanglement between the boss and the bossed. The enrollment turns into a desire to please, a figurehead-focused loyalty and dedication that often ends poorly because there’s nothing beyond the dyad. Without external signposts, solipsism and dittoheads result.

More common and more resilient is the enrollment in the tribe. “People like us do things like this.” This is the culture we each choose to live in, the narrative of what it means to choose to be an insider. Status roles and affiliation in a perpetual dance. Enrollment in the group seems to be the dominant form of the human condition, and it’s a place where many leaders and marketers do their best work.

But peer-to-peer enrollment can co-exist with the individual’s desire for meaning and contribution. This is where dreams live and leaders come from. When people enroll in a journey to make things better through effort and contribution, they’re finding a source of inspiration and sustenance from within.

Money, cash money, is a blunt instrument used by organizations and individuals to short circuit much of the hierarchy of enrollment. The idea is that it’s a multi-purpose signifier, an easy way to say, “whatever you seek, whether it’s money for food or money to build a hospital wing, do this and you’ll get some.” And then, to make it even more brutally effective, money as an inducement is combined with the threat of banishment, with keeping someone on the knife’s edge of survival, either financial or emotional.

But money is a story, and it’s a story that is interpreted differently by different people in different moments. When we default to a simple number, we dehumanize the transaction and fail to see what people really need and want.

Where does enrollment come from? It’s certainly easier to start by hiring or leading people who are already enrolled. This is what happens with Major League Baseball calls someone up from the minors. They’re not trying to persuade this person to like baseball, and the promotion from sub-minimum wage to hundreds of thousands of dollars isn’t the lever, either. Dreams realized is enough.

But where do the dreams come from in the first place? I think it might be a combination of two things:

The situation/indoctrination/culture we live in.
The experiences we have.

Enrollment is a combination of what we do and what we’ve been surrounded by. Appropriate difficulty followed by learning. Peer support and peer pressure. Expectations understood and perhaps met. Small steps that lead to an appetite for effort and outcomes.

It’s almost impossible to manage someone to enrollment, but we can lead them there.

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So you created a product MVP, thinking about a new product feature, or just want to validate idea? Surveys surely will help. You spent hours editing and polishing your cool and creative Survey to cust dev your product or SaaS. You’ve put an effort and soul into it. Finally, you bump into a glass wall. Your favorite Surveys simply don’t involve users as it supposed… and have a low Survey Response Rate (RR). MetaSurvey team has developed a set of simple but essential tips on how to tune up your Survey to be more involving and making higher RR. They work best when applied together. Here are 5 Pro tips:

Segment your audience Whatever channel you use (email, on-site, social network) — segment your audience. Choose different questions and tones for each user group. For example, you can create two different Surveys for male and female audiences.
Talk the language of your users As a business, startup, or social group leader, try to know your audience better. What they do (don’t) love, what topics do they discuss, what are their hobbies. Choose audience type – general, knowledgeable, or expert. Select formality – formal or informal. Finally, choose the correct tone: respectful, neutral, friendly, optimistic, or analytical.
Try <Swipe Reply> question type Swipe Reply questions provide the most joyful and engaging user experience. This makes taking a Survey fun and improves the Response rate. Swipe Reply was initially introduced by Tinder. It is MetaSurvey’s unique feature 😉
Give a shoutout to your users In the end, follow up respondents with a warm message, using the Custom Goodbye text feature. Everybody likes to be thanked. Giving a few words of gratitude to your respondents increases brand/person trust and improves the chance user will take your Surveys in the future.
Make it short and simple Users don`t like to read much. Neither, they will not take a 40-step 10-minute Survey. Even if they love your product or community. Making just three to four short questions will give valuable feedback and the Response Rate will grow.

We hope you will create your high-conversion and engaging Survey, be user-driven and grow! Check our survey creator and build your High-response Survey 😉 Thanks!
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Qualified means that you’ve done the work, earned our trust and could be invited to join us. More than ever, our current technology and the lack of gatekeepers mean that your body of work could earn you the benefit of the doubt and give you a chance to speak up.
Disqualified is what happens if you make big promises but don’t keep them, or if you expose intent that isn’t in alignment with what the rest of us expect or need.
Unqualified is rare. As in, “you have our unqualified support.” Getting the benefit of the doubt long after most people would have lost our trust is a hard-won privilege. It’s hard to earn unqualified support, and if you do, careful to not waste it.
And too often, before we even begin looking at skill, we’re judging people for other reasons. That’s wrong and it’s wasteful as well. Being confused about what makes someone qualified or not perpetuates injustice.

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Well, actually, “after a long slog” is a much more accurate way to describe it.

An overnight success almost never is.

Might as well plan for the journey.