Retail Gazette and Zendesk’s roundtable brings retailers together to discuss what is required to achieve customer experience champion status in retail.
The four levels of customer experience (CX) in retail, according to software provider Zendesk, are CX Starter, CX Emerger, CX Riser, and CX Champion.
Retail Gazette and Zendesk worked together on a white paper which defines each stage and highlights how retailers can continuously elevate their CX offering – and it was this subject that provided a backdrop to a breakfast roundtable discussion on 7 December.
Joining Retail Gazette and Zendesk for the discussion were representatives from Frasers Group, GuitarGuitar, John Lewis, Made.com, Next Beauty, River Island, Sainsbury’s, Specsavers, and Ted Baker.
From this conversation, it seems clear the retail industry is experiencing major issues around infrastructure investment and people power which are curtailing its ability to offer champion-level CX that is both good for the customer and the business.
Heroic recovery
Roundtable guests spoke of the retail industry’s great ability for “heroic recovery”, whereby customer service teams can provide free gifts and appease would-be unhappy customers when a situation goes wrong. But there was widespread agreement that there is a lack of finances and inclination at the top of businesses to fix the root causes of these problems.
As a result, customers are getting poor service and encountering difficult experiences with retailers on a regular basis. But alongside that, retailers are losing margin as they try to fight the initial problem to stop it escalating.
This “vicious cycle”, as one retailer described it, has to stop if progress is to be made and CX champion status reached within their organisation. Many retailers are giving away margin that they could use to upgrade the systems that are causing them these potentially CX damaging problems.
One retailer said their business has built a reputation as an organisation good at solving customer problems when they arise. Perhaps unintentionally, that has now meant the organisation is deemed to offer a positive CX. Since that upturn in consumer sentiment, this particular retailer is now focusing on improving data management and building out the right behind-the-scenes infrastructure to support a more compelling customer proposition in the future.
Other retailers spoke of the importance of clear communication. It is better, for example, for a retailer to be up front and proactive in customer communication when they know a delayed response is required or a consultation time has been shifted, rather than remaining quiet until the point the customer becomes frustrated.
“Managing customer expectations is a real skill and you also need to deliver on your promises,” advised one guest.
Automation in the support team
Another hot topic during the discussion was how best to use automation in customer service.
Delegates agreed there are conflicting consumer attitudes to the use of chatbots, for example. They come in useful when trying to resolve a query online while continuing to work, said one, and they are valuable as “triage” customer service tools that channel the query or complaint to the most suitable channel.
But in other circumstances they can frustrate consumers, said another retailer. “If people have a major problem, they want to talk to someone – and they want to talk to that person immediately.”
One of the roundtablers suggested customers have complained about the difficulty in distinguishing between the automation and the human customer support agent.
“The biggest complaints we get are when customers have a problem but they can’t get through,” said one retailer.
“And when they get through to a human customer service representative they don’t want the scripted answer. They need to be able to tell the difference between bots and agents.”
These experiences talk to a retail industry that still has some way to go to find the right blend of technology and human interaction in the CX and customer service teams. Customer service training is also needed to ensure agents adopt a tone in keeping with the consumers’ expectations.
However, retail is an ever-changing industry.
When asked which retailers do CX well, it was generally single-category and digital-first businesses referenced by the attendees. Matchesfashion and Net a Porter were held up as examples of retailers that could be classed as CX champions.
The state of flux in the industry means there are some companies in a strong position in acquisitive mode. Sainsbury’s acquired Habitat and Argos in 2016, but it is Next and Frasers Group, in particular, expanding their respective stables of retailers in 2022.
One retailer said: “The acquisitive nature of retailers right now means often very different businesses are falling under the same ownership.
“But that means you can quickly see a new perspective or approach when it comes to customer service. It can become clear that you need to change the way you’ve been doing things because a better way has been established.”
The chief customer officer 2.0
As retailers got to grips with the digital revolution in the early stages of last decade, the chief customer officer came to the fore as a job title to oversee a growing need to keep up with customer behaviour across multiple new sales channels.
Chief customer officer and customer director became popular titles in the retail boardroom, and then came the chief growth officer, whose role it was to merge traditional sales, marketing, IT, and transformation strategy departments through a customer lens.
For a while, this type of appointment slowed but there have been a raft of them again in recent months. Charlotte Lock has been appointed as John Lewis Partnership’s first customer director with responsibility for both John Lewis and Waitrose, while Michelle McEttrick left Tesco to become Primark’s first ever chief customer officer.
When asked about the importance of these roles in terms of setting the CX agenda within a retailer, roundtablers agreed “objectivity is everything” and it is crucial the person taking this position is not only focused on their personal comfort zone.
“For this role to be successful and of use in the retail organisation, it has to be end to end,” said one participant.
“The role needs to connect all the divisions: customer service, stores, online, and colleagues at the coal face.”
Another said: “These roles give a voice for CX at boardroom level, which is crucial.
“It is recognition that good CX and customer service is a profit centre and not a cost centre.”
Ashish Silodia, VP enterprise sales at Zendesk, who also attended the roundtable, said: “The discussions over breakfast indicate retailers face huge issues with legacy technology when it comes to being able to offer the optimum customer experience and service.
“The number of systems retailers use is a problem for so many businesses, but adopting APIs and the right integration strategy can really help these organisations fly.”
He added: “CX champions are defined as businesses with highly integrated tech and systems across their organisations, and they are able to access and act on real-time insights about the performance of their business and customer sentiment. They also tend to have a frictionless blend of automation and human support staff, and continue to offer new training and development opportunities to their customer service teams.”
As the economy becomes more challenging in the months ahead, the winning retailers will be the ones that are not afraid to hold back on their CX investments, he explained, because customers will be loyal to brands consistently going above and beyond.
The retailers attending the roundtable are preparing for another difficult 12 months ahead in 2023. From their discussions, it is clear they know the importance of good CX in order to keep shoppers returning to their stores and websites, but mapping out the suitable path to ongoing compelling customer service continues to be a challenging task.
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