Today it’s just not good enough to promise. Customers judge the retailers they use on the service that they deliver and social media channels means they can see for themselves what others before them thought. Ultimately, it’s only when they trust a retailer that theyll give them their business.
Thats something Mark Lewis, online director at John Lewis, recognised when he said at Internet Retailing Conference 2014: In this space of increased transparency for the customer, standing for something that allows you to differentiate your proposition becomes increasingly important. This is why the commitment to service and to trust and the commitment to be in there with our customers for the long term is increasingly important for us.
Lewis singled out areas such as extended warranties, customer service, and the consistent presentation of the brand across different touch-points. But retailers are working to inspire trust in a variety of different ways.
Trust to be relevant
Shopping can be emotional and buying online requires a leap of faith. Smart retail bosses reassure shoppers that they can trust the product is for them, using high-quality photographs to show what it looks like, video guides to show how it works, and sharing reviews and ratings both positive and negative to show what other people thought.
As personalisation comes to the fore, traders are harnessing data to show shoppers the items that are most relevant to them and their search. M&S, an elite retailer in Internet Retailings IRUK500 research, uses a range of relevant content, from blogs to style guides and in-depth features on its website, to answer readers questions and show, for example, how to style fashion trends in ways that work for them.
Read more on building trust:
- How to build brand trust in four steps
- Trust: The most important currency in politics and business
- Four ways to grow trust in your content
Inspire trust through service
Todays customers are empowered through technology that puts the latest shopping information before them at any moment and they expect service that lives to their exacting standards. Nowhere is that more evident than in the luxury market. As weve explored in the upcoming “The Customer Performance Dimension Report,” Burberry enables its loyal shoppers to opt into a Customer One-to-One app in order to get more personal service in-store.
It also uses analytics to track the behaviour of opted-in shoppers and understand what kind of service would best suit them, while also offering round the clock support in 14 languages through a variety of channels.
Delivering on the promise
No matter how well the product may suit the customers needs, it counts as nothing if it is not delivered on time and to the right place. Offering click and collect services brings a host of benefits to the retailer but only if the item they ordered is there to be collected. House of Fraser has worked to make delivery and collection ever more convenient for the customer. Its introduced order and pick-up points in dedicated HouseofFraser.com stores as well as a branch of Caffe Nero.
It responded to long queues in stores by trialling automated queueing technology that held the shoppers place, notifying them when they could collect their item, and it’s matched customers need for convenient delivery with early morning, evening and weekend delivery services.
