The Role of Customer Service in Omnichannel Retail: What is happening in the customer front right now.

Today we talk about the most important trends that are shaping the future of customer service right now and how Digital Goodie’s solutions can help you to answer each of them.

The landscape of traditional retail is changing. Consumers expect to be interacted with in various new and original ways and to know their shopping preferences at each interaction, despite the channel. All retailers strive to provide phenomenal customer service, however, many are falling short in the eyes of their customers. A recent study shows more than half of shoppers have switched their provider in the past year due to poor customer service. Further, research shows that 94% of the customers that had their issue resolved would continue shopping with a given brand again, so taking care of your customer’s concerns in the right way is truly the most important thing you can do. On top of that, these customers also end up staying with that particular brand seven times longer than with its competitors and spend 2.5 times more time than they did before.
As today’s well-informed consumers are learning to expect more from you every day, keeping up with their standards and developing new ways to interact with your customers is imperative.

Here are five of the most important trends that are shaping the future of customer service right now and how Digital Foodie’s solutions can help you in answering to each of them.

1. Social-based customer service
We start with an obvious but nonetheless important trend. By now, everyone knows that the way consumers are interacting across various commerce channels is dramatically shifting. Customer service is no different. Gartner predicts that social media-based customer service will increase its share from 7% in 2014 to 28% in 2018 – an overall increase of 400%. As a result, phone-based service will continue to decrease in share as social and web-based chat become more popular means of interacting and resolving customer issues. Against this backdrop, consumers increasingly expect responses to their social inquiries in a timely fashion.

Solution: With Digital Foodie’s Commerce solution, implementing social-based customer service is a natural extension to your store – in addition to your traditional email and phone service, you can link your social media pages to the store or set up an online chat service. All customer, store and product information, full online shopping history as well as all current orders is available to your customer service and the delivery personnel in real time, enabling them to provide your customers with exact, up-to-date and well-informed responses.

2. Device Hopping
The customer experience begins at a consumer’s first interaction with your brand. They expect to establish a connection with you at every interaction, regardless the touchpoint or device. From 2014 to 2015, the percentage of customers that said they wanted a technology connected shopping experience increased from 18% to 42%. Last year, 67% of consumers said they are using smartphones to enhance their shopping experiences; up from 26% in 2014. (Lee Resources)

Solution: Foodie Store is available as responsive website and as native mobile apps on Android, iPhone and iPad, allowing your customers to plan their baskets and placing orders anytime, anywhere. Both website and store application are branded to match the look and feel of your store – creating consistency and guaranteeing your customers the same high quality service they already trust.
Your customer can start planning recipes and shopping lists on their lunch break using phone, continue with iPad on the subway, and wrap it up on their home laptop. Some of the savvier consumers even do their grocery shopping on the plane while on work trips, making sure their families have food on the table when they’re gone.

3.Knowledge (not content) is King
The fact is that customers are willing to share more information about themselves if it will be used to improve their shopping experience. They also expect all of your brand representatives, both customer service and store associates, to have awareness and insights into their shopping preferences and history, and interact with them accordingly.

Solution: The core of the Digital Foodie solution is our powerful recommendation engine specifically designed for grocery. The engine is based on detailed user information that each user is free to provide at their will. It uses a predictive model to rate relevancy of each product based on the user’s individual preferences, allergies and ingredients, family size, seasonality, as well as the preferences of like-minded shoppers. All products and recipes are shown to the user accordingly. E-circulars and campaigns can be strategically placed for different customer groups and the system is able to suggest just the right recipes, seasonal products as well as category-related items for each shopper. This highly personalized service that takes into account each and every visitor’s shopping preferences and history, keeps people returning to the store and increases customer loyalty.

4. Resolution Has Become Hyper-Critical
This point may seem obvious, but it’s so important that we’d like to put a spotlight on it. To be effective in resolving negative customer experiences, retailers must do more than just respond; they need to ensure that the consumer is fully satisfied. We can’t stress enough the impact the proper resolution has on perception, future customer engagement, and loyalty. Achieving resolution during the first contact (FCR) significantly improves customer satisfaction scores and brand loyalty. Although we should strive for increased FCR, consumers are happy and will continue to shop provided they feel the resolution to their issue was acceptable and they feel valued. While FCR is key to achieving customer satisfaction, retailers should strive toward achieving one-touch resolution. 73% of consumers indicate they have experienced inconsistencies in price and/or promotions online vs. in-store; of those, 56% said they are willing to continue shopping if they get the best price offered. So the ability for service agents to make those concessions can make or break the experience.

Solution: Key to successfully resolving customer issues is fluent information flow between all parties involved. Digital Foodie platform is designed to provide excellent customer experiences – the whole process from shopping list to driver location tracking is easily monitored by customer service professionals in real time. Transparent emails and SMS notification lets the customer stay on top of what is happening and be informed of the order status as well as possible changes or unexpected occurrences. By letting customers leave item-specific comments to their orders, the amount of errors and/or unsatisfactory products in customer orders can be decreased to minimum. The more information you offer on your deliveries, substitution policies and other principals, the less contacts you receive. As for avoiding inconsistencies in pricing, in the Digital Foodie Admin Panel it is easy to sync your on-demand and in-store prices.

5. The Growing Appetite for Self-Service
The final trend we’ll touch on is perhaps the most recent factor that has emerged across commerce. With the rapid increase of mobile and automated technologies, customers are increasingly seeking the ability to handle simple issues on their own. Providing self-service not only allows consumers to do things on their own time versus during service hours, but also decreases the amount of time waiting on hold or for an email response. The new generation of shoppers is also more inclined to figure it out with self-help versus contacting service. While the benefits of supporting a self-help infrastructure should be obvious, it can be challenging to implement and maintain in a way that is intuitive for the consumer. An improperly implemented system may in some cases do more harm to the customer experience than good.

Solution:

On-demand shopping in itself is the perfect solution for the independent, self-managing consumer – the customer decides when and where to do their shopping, as well as when and how to receive their groceries. With the Digital Foodie solution, the customer can independently take care of the shopping process from product information search to choosing the optimal delivery slot, any time and any place.
Transparency is cited by 70% of customers as their top need for a satisfying online experience. With our solution, the customer stays constantly up-to-date on their order and able to check the status of their delivery. Effective communication and abundant information offer customers the chance to resolve most issues quickly and on their own.

As for brick-and-mortar customers, there are a number of in-store digital features you can take advantage of. In-store kiosks are one way of adding digital enablement within the physical space. By checking in to the nearest kiosk (it doesn’t have to be in your store!), your customers can explore your full assortment, get more details on their favorite products and check out without queues. The products can be shipped to the customer from your own or any third party warehouse.

One of the most liked features by the shoppers today is barcode scanning with their phones to get access to more information of any given product in the store. Barcode scanning gives you an option for adding the kind of inspiring, customer-engaging content that you wouldn’t normally have room for between the shelves. Think about content such as food recipes, user guide videos or assembling instructions for a few examples.

Self-checkout is a customer friendly and cost-efficient alternative to the traditional cashier-staffed checkout. Self-checkout provides an opportunity for your customers to process their own purchases using their phone or tablet. The shopper logs in to their shopping app, and using either a pre-planned shopping list or by choosing items on-the-go, uses their mobile device’s barcode scanner functionality to scan the products. Finally, the system processes the payment and the customer is free to exit the store.

The Role of Customer Service in Omnichannel Retail: What is happening in the customer front right now.

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