Forget Customer Service. It's All About the Experience.

We define the Customer Experience as the perceptions, emotions, actions and reactions a customer has while interacting with a retailer’s environment, products, and employees.

It’s taking key in-store activities like selling, merchandising, and collateral and using them to better educate your customer and give them the best possible experience that leads to a sale.

Customers who receive above market experiences are more likely to purchase, be a loyal customer, and advocate your store to family and friends. You have no better advocate than a customer who receives a memorable in-store experience.

Years ago a retailer could compete on product selection and/or price. That is no longer the case today. Products and services now move from new and unique to a commodity faster than ever. The Internet has shifted the power from sellers to buyers with pricing more transparent than ever.

Consumers have so many options available to them that customer service is no longer enough of a differentiator for businesses. What’s a business to do to compete and succeed? We believe these forces of change can be overcome and leveraged by focusing on the customer experience. Experiences created and executed by their people.

Executing customer and employee experiences as a primary competitive position is what we at Dynamic Experiences Group refer to as Experience Based Retail. This is a systematic approach to implementing employee and customer experiences with a well-defined strategy, supporting training and development, and a management team committed to it.

There are numerous ways for retailers to begin to take action and create incredible customer and employee experiences. Many retailers may choose to put together a new strategic direction for their company while for others it is making smaller tweaks.

To deliver a great experience a retailer needs to design and execute a retail floor strategy. Most chains have a CRM strategy, an inventory replenishment strategy, an IT strategy, and so on. What scores of retailers lack is a well-defined retail floor strategy. Don’t confuse training employees with a floor strategy. A well-defined retail floor strategy should define the desired outcome for customers and create tools for the employee to engage the customers.

Expectations must be set for the employees along with mechanisms and rewards to drive the desired behaviors and outcomes. At Bose, our retail employees knew exactly what was to happen at any given time, much like a well diagramed football play. Most stores could execute it like clockwork.

You must also keep the focus on the customer: Well-kept stores are important. Replenishing inventory is also important. Focusing on the customer while they are in the store is the most important. Executives and managers need to make sure they are always communicating this.

And finally, you should integrate a sales process into the experience. The best experience a customer can have is when they leave your store with a purchase that meets their needs and served by employees who exceeded their expectations. Avoid the temptation of “treat people right and they’ll buy something”. Any retailer can make a sale, but a retailer who delivers a great experience with an integrated sales process can create them. The result to the bottom is enormous.

That’s why we at DEG believe any retailer of any size can profit from a customer experience. We'd like to discuss how together we can improve and profit from your customer experience. Please contact us for a free consultation.