In a competitive business like gourmet retailing, loyal customers
are worth their weight in platinum. They don’t beat you up on
price. They aren’t fickle – they don’t run across the street for the
latest teaser offer from the competition. They are actually
interested when you have something new to offer. They forgive your
inevitable small foibles. And they serve – especially in these days
of social media – as the most powerful marketing “department”
possible. With this in mind, here are six ways to get the process
started of building customer loyalty – and a more solid bottom line.
#1
The entrance experience
is everything
– and the entrance encounter may happen
long before you think it does at your store.
Try entering your store as your customers
would: park where they park, enter where
they enter – the experience may startle you.
A store in our neighborhood looks spiffy
once you actually get to the front door, but
10 feet away (and on the route a customer
takes to the front door) are abandoned
newspaper vending machines clogged with
garbage bags featuring that same store’s
logo… If the merchant had scoped out the
entrance experience from a customer’s
perspective, he would have realized that
he was getting a bad rap before they were
ever even introduced! Make sure that the
first and final elements of your customer
interactions are particularly well-engineered,
because – as psychological research proves
– they are going to stick in the customer’s
memory.
Micah
Solomon’s
6 Tips for
You build a strong
competitive advantage
when you remember
– and acknowledge –
your customers
in a personal manner. When a customer
visits you, she wants to be welcomed.
And when that particular customer hasn’t
shopped with you in some time, she
wants to know that she was missed. As
service legend Danny Meyer puts it, a
key goal of the customer experience is a
feeling of acknowledgment, and of being
remembered. So no matter the size –
and pace – of your store, work to achieve
the (computer-assisted) effectiveness of
a beloved doorman or bartender – the
kind who would know Joanne’s preferences, the name of Joanne’s pet, when
Joanne was there last ... Superb client
tracking systems and an attentive staff
can create that same “at home” feeling at
your store. And it will pay off in spades.
Building
Customer
Loyalty
Decide on the language
you will use in your store –
don’t leave it up to chance.
Develop and rehearse a list of vocabulary
words and expressions that fit your “brand”
perfectly. For example, the expression “no
worries” sounds appropriate at a surfer-themed
sunglass shop, but is it really appropriate
for gourmet retailing? Decide: What type of
language impression fits your brand? Even
more important: Search out and destroy any
vocabulary words that could hurt customer
feelings. For example, you should never baldly
tell a corporate account “you owe us X.” (Try
instead: “our records appear to show a balance
of X…”) 25
