How Retailers Can Enhance their Customer Experience Strategy with CUBEngage
This retail marketing case study illustrates how a bespoke retailer (Custom Arch Supports) used CUBEngage to imprve their in-store customer experience.
You’re an active runner suffering from recurring knee pain. You have seen a doctor, but they weren’t much help. You have heard that arch supports might help, so you bought some machine dispensed supports from the local grocery store which helped a bit, but the pain persisted. Your friends mentioned some good things about a local retailer who sells custom arch support fittings. You have heard they are expensive, but you decide to visit anyway.
When you first walk into the store you are are not sure what to expect, but you’re greeted with some relaxing music that immediately puts you at ease. The salesperson is busy with another customer but rather than keep you waiting, they quickly introduce themselves, ask what brings you in, and hand you a tablet. The salesperson tells you that this dynamic tablet application will collect some information from you to narrow down your foot-related issues and give you some video information on possible solutions. The salesperson tells you that he will circle back in about 10-15 minutes to check in.
At first, you are skeptical, but as soon as you have entered the preliminary information, you find that the video content becomes increasingly relevant to your specific issue. It doesn’t take long before the app isolates your knee issue and begins playing some short informative videos from medical experts that give you a good understanding on how arch solutions have been very successful in solving your type of knee trouble. As it finishes this section, it plays a few videos from runners who had experienced an identical issue to you and how happy they were with the arch support solution they purchased. Your doubts begin to fade away when they say they are now ‘pain-free’ and talk about how their running has improved.
The salesperson seems to know when you finished the app as he comes around to check in on you. He also has all the information you had entered at his fingertips, on his tablet. The rest of the discussion is quick and efficient; it doesn’t take long before you agree to go ahead and complete the arch support fitting. When the salesperson gives you the final price, it doesn’t phase you as the value of the product is already clear to you. When it is time to pay you are pleasantly surprised; all the information you provided in the app (name, phone no., address, etc) is already in their payment system so you are on your way in record time.
A couple of days later you begin receiving some informative personalized emails from the salesperson you met at the store. He informs you when you can expect your new arch supports to be ready and then provides you with a calendar on daily wear time. As time goes by, these emails answer all the questions that you had already started to consider and there is no need to call the salesperson with further questions.
How has CUBEngage helped to improve customer experience in this retail case study?
Before CUBEngage:
- Different music was played in each store.
- Store managers chose the music based on what they liked, not what the customers preferred, and since it was time-consuming to add new music or messages, there was a lot of repetition.
- There were always more customers in the store than available salespeople. Customers were given a paper form to fill in while they waited but often left before the salesperson caught up with them.
- When a customer decided to make a purchase, the salesperson had to gather all the information again, even though the customer had already provided this information in paper form.
- After a sale was made, customer follow-up communications were sporadic and time-consuming for salespeople. In addition, the information and tone of customer follow-up varied for different salespeople.
- Store management had very patchy information on sales conversion. It was hard to identify why some salespeople did outperformed others, what worked and what didn’t, and why certain types of customers bought while others did not.
After CUBEngage:
- Music was consistent across all stores and was recommended by CUBE based on the customer profile.
- Music and message content were automatically scheduled, saving staff members time.
- Customer experience was improved by providing those waiting for a salesperson with the CUBEngage tablet app. This quickly captured their information, educated them on the product range, and pre-sold them with testimonials by customers with the same activity profiles and foot issues. Even when the store’s internet connection went down, the CUBEngage app continued to run without interruption.
- The salesperson received an automatic notification once the customer finished using the application, and when the salesperson returned the customers were pleased with the experience and were often ready to buy.
- The customer check-out process was fast and seamless. All the information the customer had previously entered on the tablet was automatically available on the check-out POS system. The customer did not have to provide this same information twice, saving the salespeople time.
- After a sale was made, follow-up communications with customers were automatically scheduled with consistent information and timing for all salespeople. Again, this freed up time for the salespeople.
- Store management could log into the system anytime to get powerful analytics on sales conversion ratios by an individual salesperson, reasons why sales were lost or won, the types of customer that bought (or did not buy) most often, etc. CUBEngage analytics were used by store management to substantially increase sales conversions.
- The Results: Since implementing CUBEngage, store sales increased by approximately 30% and salespeople increased their productivity by about the same percentage.
