An unhappy customer seldom lets the retailer know about their bad experience. According to a study conducted by the Verde Group, nearly 81% of consumers do not share their feedback with the businesses they transact with. Close to 32% of these retailers were also unlikely to recommend the business to friends and family. This is a dangerous situation for business owners – how does one infer whether a perceived drop in revenues is because of customer experience or other factors like price and competition?
One way to gauge customer feedback better is by engaging with customers at the point of sale. Most retailers treat POS solely as a technology interface to complete a business transaction. However, in brick and mortar stores, POS systems are handled by retail staff and businesses should use this human engagement to understand the customer’s pain points and serve them better. Various studies have shown that enabling this engagement brings about the greatest reward relative to the cost among all customer experience strategies.
But having said that, this is not a scalable strategy. For big retailers with thousands of retail staff, gathering data points from such engagements and translating them into actionable strategies is nigh impossible. Ultimately, the onus is on deploying technology tools that will help businesses understand customer satisfaction at the point of sale in order to address their needs and concerns better. There are various ways to effect this.
Happiness Meter: A number of retailers today have happiness meters at the point of sale that let customers express their satisfaction with their experience. These meters often provide retail managers with the necessary charts and reports that help them understand customer satisfaction on a day-to-day basis. Such meters can be tagged with other parameters like price increases, store layout changes, etc. that give managers a bird’s eye-view of how the most minute of changes can affect customer experience.
Integrated POS: The point of sales systems have come a long way since the incorruptible cash registers were invented in mid-1800s. Today’s POS tools are integrated on the cloud and can accept payments from your website, mobile, iPad or the standard POS hardware. These cloud-centric systems are also tied with other services to manage loyalty points, cashbacks and refunds so that unhappy customers can sort their issues without jumping through hoops.
Social Media Management: No matter how big or small you are, your social media strategy can make or break customer service. From a customer’s perspective, social media is a great leveler – it helps them take on the biggest businesses through sharing their experience. Left unattended, such social media posts often take a viral turn and can cost businesses several hundreds or thousands of dollars in lost sale and brand equity. So no matter how big or small a business you are, take social media management seriously. There are dozens of tools online to monitor your brand on social media. Invest in such tools to keep track of your brand reputation. At the same time, make sure to prominently promote your social media handles at the point of sale. It is always better for a disgruntled customer to share their bad experience with you directly than take it through their network.
What other strategies does your business deploy to gauge customer satisfaction on point of sale? Share your strategies in the comments.
