Managing, measuring and improving customer experience is critical in retail. Customer needs and perceptions change constantly. The one constant is the need to measure and improve customer experience and provide a consistently positive shopping experience. That means listening to the customer – to their kudos and complaints – and then being equipped to take rapid and decisive action based on customer feedback.

Consider these facts according to recent retail industry study:

• Chances of a smooth shopping experience are only 50:50. Half of shoppers encounter at least one problem when shopping.
• Customers experiencing problems are more than five times as likely to tell a friend about it than to tell store management. On average, they will tell at least 4 people about their bad experience. The retailer may be the last to know!
• For every customer who complains, 20 to 30 do not.
• Bad shopping experiences erode loyalty. Shoppers encountering one or more problems are less likely to continue shopping at a store, to recommend the product or item purchased to others, and are particularly less inclined to recommend the store.

Simply put, “disloyal” attitudes can have widespread consequences. The effect of customer defections and negative word of mouth can go unnoticed for weeks or months; it can be irreversible or take years to recover from. By the time the impact hits a retailer’s bottom line, it may be too late! Continuously measuring customer feedback allows retailers to align service quality with customer expectations, foster customer loyalty, engage in service recovery for dissatisfied customers, and minimize negative word-of-mouth.

The Challenge for Retailers

Customer experience happens at the store-level and that is where it needs to be measured and monitored. The business challenge for retailers is to gather customer feedback at the store-level across all locations in a continuous and timely way and to supply meaningful and actionable reports to appropriate personnel and store managers for prompt action.

While conventional measurement and evaluation methods, such as mystery shopping, comments cards and traditional store-intercept surveys, have their benefits, they don’t always capture critical customer experience metrics in a timely and effective manner. Issues go largely unnoticed or are rectified too late to save the customer. In many instances, survey data never reaches the store-level or takes months to arrive. Since retailers are not able to quickly align service quality with customer expectations, dissatisfied customers defect.