7 ways to create a personal customer experience in your point of sale

Customer experience refers to all the experiences, emotions and memories that customers face when interacting with the brand and the value they associate with each of them. Considering the other side of the medal, customer experience is the way in which companies succeed in satisfying their customers and the emotion they arouse in them during  every interaction.
In fact, customer experience is based on the six following pillars:

   1. Personalisation: focusing on single customers in order to create a unique emotional
   relationship

   2. Expectations: getting to know, managing and exceeding customers' expectations

   3. Time and Effort: minimising the effort required by customers thanks to simple and clear
   processes

   4. Integrity: being credible and trustworthy 

   5. Resolution: turn a simple experience into a brilliant one

   6. Empathy: understanding customers' needs in order to create a significant relationship


In this article we'll analyse the first pillar and we'll explore the 7 ways to create a unique personal customer experience in a store.

Creating personal customer experience

Why is it crucial to create a personal customer experience? Because in the digital and 4.0 era, during a purchasing experience customers strive for much more articulated experiences compared to the past, especially when interacting with the brands that operate on the market. These experiences end up involving both the rational aspect and the more specific emotional aspect that hide behind a purchasing experience. This is the reason why customer experience is a goal to be pursued by any point of sale and store in keeping with the times.

Creating personal customer experience makes it possible for the brand to grow and earn itself a place on the market. But which techniques must we implement to create a personal customer experience for our customers?
It is undoubtedly recommended to start with the following preconditions:

1. Creating a clear view of customer experience
2. Understanding who your actual and potential customers are
3. Creating an emotional connection with customers
4. Getting real-time feedback from customers
5. Using a quality framework to build your team
6. Guiding strategies and customers by leveraging collected feedback
7. Assessing results

These are only 7 ways of creating personal customer experience in your point of sale; however, by following them step by step and integrating them in your CX strategy, we are sure you will get the expected results. How? Let us see together.

Creating a clear view of customer experience

The first step on the customer experience strategy is to have a clear, focused customer-oriented view. This view should be shared with all the staff of your organisation and to succeed in this, it might be useful to establish a check-list to be used as guiding principles.
Once these principles are codified, shared and implemented, they will guide the behaviour of the entire organisation. Establishing rules and sharing them with the team is the first step to create personal customer experience within your point of sale.

Understanding who your actual and potential customers are

The second step is to build your whole customer experience strategy on the principles that have been codified and shared with your organisation.
If your store seriously intends to understand the needs and desires of your customers, it must be also capable of connecting and creating empathy links in the different situations your customers will face in your store.

One way to achieve this is by creating accurate descriptions of your customers, as if they were characters in a play and give everyone a name and a personality. For example, Anna is 35, very keen on new technologies and quite an expert in this field, so much so that in her free time she enjoys following video tutorials on the topic.

By viewing these characters, your customer service team will be able to identify their target and have a better and faster understanding of the needs of everyone.

Creating an emotional connection with customers

Ever heard the expression "it is not what you say, but how you say it"?

Good, the best way to create a personal customer experience for your customers if to make sure your team shows the right attitude towards them.
Customers become fond of a shop and remain loyal to it because they feel emotionally bound and, every time they think about your point of sale, they remember how they were greeted, how the staff treated them and how they felt when using the goods they bought there. A store that aims at emotional connections with its customers outperforms its competitors by 85% in sales growth.

Moreover, according to a recent survey by Harvard Business Review entitled "The New Science of Customers Emotions", emotionally connected customers:

• Are at least three times as much likely to recommend your product or service;
• The probability for them to make a further purchase in your store is 3 % higher.
• The probability that they might start to look around other shops decreases (44% say they rarely or never look around).
• The perception of the price factor decreases (they are ready to spend a few € more in exchange for the right treatment).

Getting real-time feedback from customers

How can you check if you were able to create a personal customer experience?

The answer comes directly from your customers. There are many tools to assess the customer experience of your customers and all are easy to implement: interviews, surveys, etc.
From phone calls to surveys on social networks, every means is legitimate, especially when it comes to assess the level of satisfaction and analyse the feedback in an honest and in-depth way.

Defining and planning the building of your team

If you have followed all the advice above, at this stage you have matured a clear notion of what your customers think about your store. Now let us focus on your team members: the time has come to identify the training needs of each customer assistance team member.

Many companies are already assessing the quality level through of phone and e-mail communications. However, to take it a step further, a quality development plan should be drawn up and monitored in the various areas.
In this way it is possible to plan and observe the work of the team including during coaching, eLearning and group training.

Guiding strategies and customers by leveraging collected feedback

Most organisations run yearly assessments from which to acquire exhaustive feedback from all members of your customer experience team.

But what happens over the eleven months' period that elapses between one survey and the next?

Usually the most sincere answer is to say that nothing actually happens. And yet collecting constant feedback from employees may play a truly decisive part when it comes to creating a personal customer experience in your store. Using tools that allow the staff to share ideas on how to improve CX and managers to check how much the staff feels they are a part of the organisation are considered crucial for the growth of the company.

Assessing results

This last passage is everything but mundane. So your customers are known, your team is built, your strategy shared, it is now high time you assessed the results achieved. How can you be sure you have succeeded in creating a customer experience in your point of sale? And how can you understand if this strategy is bearing fruit?

The answer is in the business results.

Assessing customer experience is one of the major challenged faced by organisations and the reason why many companies use the "Net Promoter Score" or NPS, which collects valuable information by asking only one simple question:

"Would you recommend this company to a friend or relative?"

Conclusion

Nowadays customers' expectations are higher and higher and the word of mouth travels faster than ever. Given that customers have all this power in the sales process, creating a personal customer experience on your point of sale becomes a key activity.

In this article we have analysed 7 ways and as many suggestions of creating a personal customer experience and now, all that is left to do is to go ahead. Creating a Customer Experience strategy and starting to implement all the actions that will drive you to reach your objectives.