By: Forbes Magazine
Translation : feedbacksmiley.ae
As one of the most disrupted industries throughout the pandemic, retail companies have worked hard to best serve customers while meeting ever-changing constraints.
With new technological innovations allowing shoppers to make convenient purchases at the touch of a button, consumers are becoming more empowered than ever. Consequently, customers prioritize experience over everything else when choosing where to store. Not surprisingly, retailers’ ability to provide a first-class customer experience (CX) can have a significant impact on the company’s so-called bottom line.
With customer expectations changing rapidly, there are three ways that retail companies can adopt a data-inspired mindset within the company to drive growth and improve business performance.
1. Involve the workforce
When it comes to customer experience, the real impact is made on the shop floor. Simply filtering down orders from the top creates a false sense of “customer experience is not something I need to worry about – management will just tell me what to do.” As a result, active steps are rarely taken to improve CX. To counteract this, an open dialogue with the shop floor will need to be established from management, involving stakeholders in the creative processes.
Encourage all staff members – after these conversations – to do their own research and test their ideas in the store to try to achieve desired results.
Use the data employees collect to validate these tests and provide feedback that can be used to improve processes within an organization, rather than relying solely on whether something feels like it is working or not.
2. Share important findings
Recent studies have shown that employees who feel engaged in the workplace are more likely to improve customer relationships, which in turn drives sales. This makes it important for retail companies to take steps to increase engagement in the company’s overall strategy. One way to do this is by widely sharing data-validated learning experiences with staff at all levels of the company, such as:
- Sharing data-validated learnings will help foster a data-driven mindset within the company and encourages all employees to look to the data for guidance in improving company performance
- Through regular updates, retailers can help build an infrastructure that recognizes the hard work of staff on the shop floor. Knowing that the work they do has a positive impact on the company, they will be more willing to further contribute to company strategies in the future.
3. Implement a reward system
One of the best ways to ensure that a growth mindset becomes an integral part of business strategy is to offer rewards to staff who work hard every day to find better ways to meet the company’s goals. Some ideas include:
- Offering incentives to staff, such as a summer party, cash bonuses, as well as physical prizes they can take home and keep, are great ways to ensure that staff feel recognized, appreciated during the success and growth of the company
- In turn, a reward system like this creates a positive feedback loop that also ensures that employees continue to work optimally to make the customer a top priority every time she visits the store.
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