How customer’s expectations are changing and what you can do about it
Whether you run a traditional brick and mortar shop or you make your living selling online, you need to understand something about your customers. They want different things than they used to … and they want them offered in different ways. While this may not be true for certain individuals, it’s an across-the-board reality that all business leaders need to understand in an actionable way. Thanks to the increase in webbased commerce, customer service and more to the point, customer expectation of services, has changed dramatically in some very specific ways you need to fully understand. People have different expectations of how they should pay. While some stores still insist on lines and registers, think about the typical online environment. How long does a customer have to wait? Not at all, right? This is why companies such as Apple have gone to a checkout method where just about every employee has a tablet and can do checkouts right there on the spot.
Some fast food joints have gone to this method as well. To help deal with the longer lines, certain Chick-Fil-A franchises have gone to tablet-based ordering in the drive-thru, helping customers feel as if they are getting through the line much faster. So, how can your business use technology to make the checkout experience easier and faster, while still keeping it safe and simple? Think on that, because, increasingly, your customers are expecting it. Be reachable always. The days of customers leaving messages on machines are over. When they want customer support, they want it now. That’s how the internet has trained them. A company that can deliver on this expectation is much more likely to satisfactorily resolve a customer’s concern before it becomes a complaint. Remember, even if your customer service line can’t connect round the clock, the online “complaint” sites certainly can … and social media never closes. The tech interfaces your customers experience must be simple and intuitive. Many retail stores are adding self-checkout options, but these have not proven to be as consistently helpful and easy to navigate as hoped. How many times have you seen a frustrated customer trying to get a self-checkout kiosk to work so they could be on their way. How many times has that person been you? Think about that experience in relation to your tech interfaces. Are they easy to understand, even if you’ve never seen them before? If not, you have some work to do. Finally, experience is everything. How the customer feels when they complete the transaction, in store or online, is one of the most important metrics to determine if that customer will come back and if your business will be successful. If your customers are not having the best experience or, worse, you don’t know what sort of experience they are having; you need to act on that immediately. Phil Shawe is a CEO in New York.