6 tips to improve retail sales with customer service.

The era of technology has brought great strides and changes in all sectors of the economy, especially in retail. The online sales format is considered by some to be the big retail villain without noticing that consumer behavior itself has changed with technology and new ways of ensuring customer satisfaction have become important in the face of such a change.

With this, good customer service has become the great asset to ensure that full consumer satisfaction occurs, since changes are always constant and adaptation is necessary. The so-called “offline retail” is just as important as “online selling,” since proximity to the consumer can be considered important in order to achieve sales success.

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Tips on how to improve retail sales through service

Even experiencing big changes in the environment of retail, some tips can be critical for business success in customer service.

Create a harmony of service between online and offline.

The harmony among the forms of customer service are essential to ensure engagement with the brand, product or service sold to the consumer. Knowing how to receive the customer and transform the service into a success case for the business is already a challenge in face-to-face, and on-line it gains new difficulties.

With a harmony between the service channels, presenting the same type of language and the same way of constructing the dialogues, one can then achieve the identity of the communication, which can be considered as a characteristic of the company.

Invest on online customer service.

As we all know, the era of technology has come to stay, not as a revolution but as an evolution of how we communicate and interact with our devices. With this, online service is a great way to gain customer trust and ensure success in service.

Customize the service.

This tip is one of the most important, both for online and offline retail: customize the service. Today customers have several shopping options and ways to contact companies. Serving this customer well is essential to ensuring success and showing that the company cares directly about him.

The customization is since the first contact, treating the customer not only as one but as the most important factor in the entire sales equation. It is showing that there is a brand commitment to the consumer, not just listening but understanding their needs.

Invest in connectivity through mobile devices.

Connectivity can bring much more dynamism and interaction between service channels, since online is close to offline retail. As a result, investing on mobile devices, in a way that helps the attendants during their sales day, is important to the company.

Using technology as an ally in customer service is an important step. It has a well-trained team that can easily adapt to the environment of constant changes that technology imposes.

Social Networks in Service.

Social networking is a great way to communicate with everyone who wants to stay in touch, even with businesses. This new form of communication can bring several challenges to the business, since the consumer happens to be an important and central piece in social media.

The relationship with consumers through this new service channel can make a difference to the success of sales, also with retail acting in this new field.

Integrate customer service + marketing + sales.

In this tip, shows the important concept of integration between the company’s sectors. All are important and have their place within a company and with their integration the work becomes much more complete, making the different teams work as if they were one, for the same purpose.

The multichannel integration is the term that gives to this new concept, with the areas being combined so that there are different channels of communication with the customer, always seeking to achieve their satisfaction. In addition, it is a good way to manage the channels of care, once combined facilitates the management and monitoring on the part of the company.

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The retail sector has evolved as well as all channels of customer service, that being integrated and combined to achieve customer satisfaction and the engagement on the part of the company. With this evolution, we can perceive the use of technology as an ally in all sectors and the steps of the journey of sale must bring the consumer more closely and helps understand their needs.

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The importance of a Help Desk for retail.

You already know how important is to preserve the satisfaction of a customer, and this satisfaction without any doubt goes through the service. When a customer buys something on your shop – whether on a virtual store or a physical store they expect that all the problems they face after the purchase are resolved quickly and efficiently. To ensure that this expectation will be answered, you need an excellent help desk.

The Expectation of a customer

It is illusion to believe that customers go to your retail just because they have the best prices or products.

Currently, most brands are present in many retail stores, to increase themselves. Therefore, the same product that a customer finds in your store, he also finds in the concurrent.

Besides that, with the high competition in the market, prices and payment terms are totally changeable. Right now, it may be that one of your competitors do some “super promotion”, offering discounts to overcome your store.

If these are not the weighing factors in the customer’s decision, then what is it? The answer is, in large part, on customer service.

How many times have you heard someone say (or do you even said) that would never return to a store, after having a negative experience of customer service?

When a customer buys a product, he already has some expectation of problems. It may be that the item is damaged with missing parts, that it is not exactly like the advertisement, or simply that it does not fully meet your needs. All this is already, to some extent, expected. So the customer wants to do business with a retailer that offers a good resolution to all of these problems.

In short, what really bothers the customer is not the problem itself, but the store’s apparent inability to solve the problem.

That’s where the help desk comes in.

Good and bad help desk in retail

The good help desk is one that is focused on the customer. In practice, this translates into a search for agility and efficiency. This is the minimum expected, although, in fact, the consumer is much more demanding than that. He wants personalized service and, above all, humanized.

Meanwhile, the bad help desk is one who:

applies phrases made of customer appreciation, without converting them into actions;

prioritizes procedures, not results;

“Pushes” the problem to other areas, rather than actively seeking the resolution of requests received;

treats all customers as if they were the same person, without taking into account the particularities of each case.

In the retail sector, the concern with the speed increases. The majority of care in this type of company involve a situation in which the customer has already bought and paid for a product, but for some problem, is unable to take advantage of it. It is natural that he feels prejudiced; and, the more your company takes to close the case, but this negative feeling is strengthened.

Help desk for offline vs. online retail

At this point, you may be wondering if there are differences between the help desk in the case of an offline retail (physical stores) and an online retail (e-commerce). The answer is yes, and these differences start from the customer relationship model in each of them.

In the physical store, there is greater customer trust with the company, thanks to the simple fact that the contact is direct. The customer enters his building, he sees the product before buying, he talks to the seller. At the very least, he knows the store actually exists. So when he looks for the help desk, it’s with some assurance that the problem will have to be solved. This, of course, greatly facilitates the service to this client, who is more open.

Meanwhile, in the case of an e-commerce, the entire relationship that the customer built with the store went through the internet. There was no right contact. If your store is not part of a large retail group, and it is the first time the customer is shopping with you, he will probably have “a foot behind”. When facing a problem, this event will only strengthen its defensive position. Therefore, when looking for the help desk, this will be a more complex customer service.

In this sense, an online retail help desk needs to develop even better quality care than its offline competitor. This is how you can ensure that even when facing some difficulty in the shopping experience, the customer will not lose confidence in your store.

Ensuring a high standard help desk

If you’ve already convinced yourself of the importance of the help desk for retail, you’re probably wondering how you can develop this activity with quality.

There are many ways to ensure a high-standard help desk.

It can be said that everything starts by developing in the company a culture of customer appreciation, without which it is impossible to have a service that meets the expectations of the modern consumer. It is also worth emphasizing the role of the team’s formation, from the elaboration of a rigorous selection process to the establishment of professional training and retraining policies.

However, one of the most important elements may be the use of good tools to help the day-to-day care. An example of a tool is the SSC, that is, Shared Services Center. This tool allows centralizing information that is necessary for service, ensuring greater agility and efficiency. In addition, it also allows for organizing and monitoring care through reports to identify opportunities for improvement.

Milldesk, for example, has a solution in SSC that you can apply to your retailer to obtain superior results in help desk. The system is entirely web, turning the implementation much easier. And it can still be configured to adapt to the specific needs of your business, whether it is a physical store or e-commerce.

In this post, we explore the importance of the help desk for offline and online retail, we talk about good and bad practices, and we present a tool that you need to adopt in your company: SSC.

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