The offline retail industry is facing declining sales and are now searching for an updated purpose in the customer journey. Of course they want to increase sales again but also explore how to attract customers to meet and exceed their expectations of the brand and build loyalty.
One of our clients had just finished their yearly customer satisfaction survey and the results in two key categories were… not so satisfactory anymore. Something had to be done to lift the performance in the Simplicity and Sustainability categories. Especially knowing that these two key words are present in our client’s brand statement just put more weight on the matter. In today’s world where customers expect a seamless experience and customer loyalty comes at a price of a stand-out experience something had to be done.
At the same time discussions with the store owners of the client found that the central material distributed during shopping peaks such as Easter and Christmas were not contributing to sales. Hence, the material was many times not used but rather went straight in the rubbish bin.
A project was initiated for establishing a framework for What, Where and How to communicate with customers in-store but also in other channels prior to and after the visit. First, we had to understand why we didn’t meet the customer’s needs. Two surveys were conducted where customers were tasked to document when our client or its competitors failed to live up to their needs in terms of simplicity and sustainability. These surveys served as a starting point for designing solutions to meet these challenges. In the end ten key customer needs were focused on and solutions were built around these.
Together with the client’s creative agency we developed concepts and communication to respond to these ten customer needs and pilots were executed in two stores. The ambition with these pilots were to meet the customer’s needs but also increase sales and strengthen customer loyalty to the stores by highlighting the work they do and value they bring to their local community.
Now our client has a framework in place to make sure a customer who enters their store have their needs in focus, not the brands. The framework also forms a stronger relationship with store owners and allowed our client to move the old communication assets to channels with better fit or scrap some altogether.
Here at Cupole we believe we are on the verge of the brick-and-mortar presence for brands being just as important in building customer loyalty and meeting increasing customer needs as well as driving sales in whatever channel available. They just need a bit of an update. As long as the customer is in focus, and there’s a dedication to serving their needs, there will be value for offline retail far in the future.
