Is Customer Experience the Last Hope for Brick-and-Mortar Retailers?
posted by Jeff Hassemer
I have been watching The Great Retail Apocalypse of 2017 quite closely lately. Not only because I provide service for a number of retail companies, but also because I own a small retail franchise that my wife runs. And, let me tell you, it’s a frightening time for retail; stores are closing, profits are down, and it is more and more difficult to get lift from our direct marketing programs.
DISCOUNTS DON’T DELIVER
While the article linked above makes some fantastic points about why retail has it hard, I think they miss an important point about why spend is shifting. Retail has spent the past decade or so using discounts to generate sales instead of focusing on the customer experience, and it’s coming back to haunt us now. I get it, discounts are a very compelling way to generate sales—they have an intrinsic incentive to act quickly lest the consumer miss out—but they are both temporary and costly to the overall customer value.
The only true differentiation a retailer has left, and the only long-term path to value, is the customer experience. Without it, you have very little loyalty from the customer and if the experience is poor, they don’t come back. Companies with a “good” or “excellent” customer experience grow, while those without struggle to maintain any real growth. Yet retailers tend to be content focusing on the short-term over the longer-term effort; this is all spelled out in the “State of the Customer Experience” infographic from Temkin.
MARKETERS MUST ADAPT
This is why we created the Adaptive Marketer™ program—to help marketers usher in a new era. To create an Adaptive Customer Experience™ that automatically adjusts to the unpredictable behavior of customers and naturally improves every single time a brand interaction occurs on any touchpoint. By merging both historical relationship information with in-the-moment behavior activity, Adaptive Marketers™ can always use the latest state of each customer relationship to send and optimize the right message as the interaction is occurring… in less than 100 milliseconds! Every time a brand interaction occurs, the new state is made readily available across all potential touchpoints; this ensures that each channel is ready to use the new information for all future interactions and provide the most intimate brand experience possible.
Jeff Hassemer, CSO
Jeff is a global product marketing executive known for his thought leadership and notable product achievements in the areas of customer experience, marketing technology, and advertising technology solutions. As CSO for Alterian, he oversees marketing and sales to effectively position and sell our Adaptive Customer Experience™ platform. His 20 years of experience in the industry and passion for teaching others make Jeff a strong and knowledgeable leader.
In his spare time, you can probably find Jeff at one of his kids’ many sporting events. From ice hockey, to fastpitch softball, to golf, and more, he and his family love sports so much he and his wife even have their own sporting goods franchise! Based in Denver, Jeff loves spending time out in the Colorado wilderness and going golfing.
