The Retail Conference 2017

1. Ensure your strategy is one of Customer Love so that a customers centric experience is core to your mission.

2. Understand your customers journey and note the critical touch points. Remember your investment in technology and the way this drives your process. It  should be aligned to this all-important journey if its going to be an easy, exceptional and seamless one.

3. Listen to your complaints and never underestimate the significance of engaging with front line staff to understand the real customer experience challenges.

4. Prioritise the key touch points to fix and set a timeline for this. Remember you need to move from random to intentional, before you can achieve differentiating customer experience.

5. Ensure that your staff completely understand and believe in the value of these touch points by communicating internally. Our Cafétouch coffee machines include a video and touch screen function which means that when staff are making a freshly ground coffee, hot chocolate or tea these touch points can be replayed before their very eyes.

6. Once you have fixed the basics, look at how you can create that Emotional Experience. One nationwide retailer has recently found the benefit of providing premium hot drinks in their stores from Liquidline. Their customer time spent in stores has increased in conjunction with the average customer spend.

7. Engage digital but first look to understand what success looks like. Providing an interactive touch screen experience in store has been proven to increase sales. Again Liquidline’s coffee systems have a video touch screen which can be used to communicate new products and service offerings to customers whilst they wait for their freshly ground espresso, flat white, cappuccino or latte.

8. Discuss the opportunities of personalisation and understand you can demonstrate that genuine personal care and understanding.

9. Read ‘The One Minute Manager’ by Spencer Johnson and constantly look to catch people doing something right.

10. Gavin Pooley, Liquidline Managing Director said, “Another great book by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles is ‘Raving Fans’. In 2014, Liquidline provided a copy to every team member and that customer love culture has been so key to us ever since. I would highly recommend this quick read if you too are passionate on exceptional client experiences.”