Enhancing customer experience through customer-focused vision

Customer experience is the heart of marketing for every industry. You are required to review the current literature on the Integrated Customer Experience and write a literature review which could be suitable for publication in an academic marketing journal. Papers dealing with topics other than the specified unit will not be marked.

Customer experience in the retail industry in the nation of Australia has been seen to undergo evolution from a vague subset of customer service to that of a strategic priority that had in turn resulted in warranting dedicated business units. Researchers are of the opinion that customer experience has indeed become one of the largest drivers of any forms of business in the retail industry of companies that are both of small as well as of larger stature (Lewrick et al., 2015). The present day analysis of the different enterprises have shown that they are spending  millions of dollars in trying to understand the ways of improvement of the customer experience in the retail stores as well as through digital channels (Verhoef et al., 2015). This assignment would mainly help in establishing the relationship of customer experience with that of marketing decision making in the retail industry in Australia.  It will also depict the ways by which the professionals can take the help of the literature evidences to make more profits in the retail industry in Australai.

Customer experience can be defined as the effect of the interaction between a customer as well as an organization throughout their business relationship.  Such an interaction is mainly researched to include not only awareness of the customer about the retail organization but also about the discovery, cultivation, service, advocacy as well as the purchases. Researchers have claimed that customer experience is one of the integral parts of the customer relationship management (Ramanathan, Subramaniam & Parrot, 2017). It is seen that this attribute is important because a customer who has appositive experience with the retail organization and are satisfied by the products and the service are more likely to become a repeat as well as well as a loyal customer. His or her own experiences become the greatest method of marketing and advertising the product and the service through the word of mouth that will in turn being more profits in the form of more number of consumers. Therefore, researchers like Lemon and Verhoef (2016) are of the opinion that customer experiences have the ability to affect the willingness of the customer to be loyal advocate. Therefore, it is recommended to the organizations that if they want their customers to be loyal, they have to invest in the experiences of the customers. Different types of data can be produced here to shed more light on the concept. Studies have confirmed that customer experience affects the willingness to be loyal. Researchers Morenzo et al. (2016) have stated that customers have now got more power than they had about three years ago are quite fast in switching bands due to poor experiences. Customers nowadays are willing to pay for better experiences and all these facts should be kept in mind by the retail organizations, plan accordingly, and take market decisions. Woolworth is a leading retailer company in the nation of Australia. It has developed a three year strategy that will help the organization to be termed  as customer first business organization and will even be neutralizing its competitors. The three years of customer engagement are improvement of the core offer, developing innovating products and services so that the customer needs are met in better ways and through new “Lean retail” model, new efficiencies can be initiated for improvement of customer service and values. Managing director of the organization called Brad Banducci stated “What is clear is that while lower prices are essential, the true battleground is the overall customer experience.” He also stated, “We are placing the customer at the start of everything we do. This strategy will result in lower prices, more compelling offers and greater innovation.”

Understanding customer needs to enhance customer experience

One of the first steps of developing the customer experience strategy is to prepare a clear customer focused vision and this should be communicated within the organization. The organization should take the initiative to define this vision for creating the set of statements that would mainly act as guiding principles for the organization (Parise, Guinan & Kafka, 2016). Once the principles are discussed in details, these principles will become the main driver for the behavior of the organization and would be followed by heart by all team members as well as would be embedded in training. One of the retail organizations called the Zappos is seen to follow the Zappos core family values. These values are seen to be present into their culture that involves delivering wow-through service but at the same time be humble and can embrace changes.

Many of the researchers are of the opinion that one of the important steps in building proper customer experiences is to develop knowledge about the different types of customers who buy the products of the retail organizations and take service form them. They are of the opinion that if the retail organizations really want to ensure better customer experience, they need to understand the needs and wants of the customers (Rapp et al., (2015). They need to connect effectively and empathize with the situations that the customer’s face. Therefore, many papers had recommended the best ways to achieve this is to create customer personas and thereby giving each of the personas a proper name as well a personality. With the procedure of creating personas, the customer support team can effectively recognize who each of the customers are their requirements and linking and thereby understand them better. This would help them become truly customer centric (Celuch et al., 2015).

Many of the retail organizations try to make market decisions to enhance customer experience after developing emotional connection with the customers. Researchers are of the opinion that best customer experiences are achieved when a member of the team becomes successful in creating an emotional connection with the customers. One of the examples can be provided here (Linn & Bennet, 2014). A customer was being late in returning a pair of the shoe as her mother had passed away. When Zappos had found out the reason behind the delay, they took care of the return shipping and arranged for pick up the shoes without any cost. Moreover, the next day when the customer returned home, they found a bouquet of flowers with a note from the Zappos customer service team who were seen to get their condolences. Many of the researchers are of the opinion that 50% of an experience is based entirely o emotion because this mainly shapes the attitudes that drive decisions.  Customers are often seen to gradually become loyal as emotions are seen to shape the attitudes that are responsible for driving decisions (So et al., 2016). Customers have been seen to be loyal as they develop emotional attachment and they remember how they feel when they use the product or the service. Such emotionally attached customers will have at least three time more likely to recommend others about the product, thrice likely to re-purchase, less likely to shop around and are much less price sensitive (Kumar et al., 2017).

Developing emotional connection with customers for better experience

One of the market decisions making can be undertaken through the capturing of the customer feedback in the real time to understand the customer experience. Post interaction surveys help in capturing feedback of the customers in the real time. It can be delivered with the use of variety of using automated tools through emails and calls. To develop feedback that is more effective and that which gives insight about the customer experiences to develop proper marketing decisions, customer service representatives can also make outbound calls to consumers. Many of the other researchers are of the opinion that after the retail organizations develop ideas about what the customers think about the quality of their service with that of the customer experience principles (Jones et al., 2015). Following this, the next step would be the identification of the training needs of each of the members of the retail organization. Many of the retail organization customer service agents have stated that their organization assess the quality of phone calls and email communication to see how the customer service agents are communicating with consumers and how they are enhancing the customer experiences.

Many of the researchers argue about the affectivity of these aspects and they directly provide more significance to the measurement of ROI or the return of investment of the teamwork, process and technology used by the retail organizations to engage the consumers and satisfy them to have pleasant experiences. Many of the employers of the retail organizations are found to state that it becomes a challenge for them to measure the customer experience and therefore it becomes very tough for them to make proper market decisions (Stathopoulo & Balabanis, 2016). Therefore, one of the studies have talked about the utilization of the NPS or the Net Promoter Score. This tool is extremely helpful in the collection of the valuable information about the inner feeling and experience of the customers. This is mainly done through a simple question, “Would you recommend this company to a friend or relative?”

One of the paper was seen to depict ten important principles of developing customer strategy that would ensure better customer experience in the retail industry. This was done through a qualitative interview where the themes were chosen and discussed. These are mastering the art of the possible and thereby trying to know the consumers at the granular level (Bowen et al., 2015). The organization should try to link the customer strategy of the company to its overall identity and then target the customers with whom the organization has the chance for the right win. Customers should be treated as the assets that will grow in the value. Leveraging the ecosystem and thereby ensuring a seamless omnichannel experience are the other steps of the strategy (Kang & Kim, 2017). Excelling at the product and the service delivery, reorganizing around the customer and matching the culture with the customer strategy can ensure better customer experience.

Capturing customer feedback for real-time improvement

From the above literature review, it was seen that better the customer experience, the higher is the chance of the organization of the retail industry in Australia to make more profit due to customer loyalty. Such customers would also ensure recommendations to several other individuals thereby increasing the number of the consumer base. To ensure better customer experience, every organization needs to adapt to strategies that will enable customer satisfaction and enable them to commit to the organization

References:

Bowen, J. T., & Chen McCain, S. L. (2015). Transitioning loyalty programs: a commentary on “the relationship between customer loyalty and customer satisfaction”. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 27(3), 415-430.

Celuch, K., Robinson, N. M., & Walsh, A. M. (2015). A framework for encouraging retail customer feedback. Journal of Services Marketing, 29(4), 280-292.

Jones, M. A., Reynolds, K. E., Arnold, M. J., Gabler, C. B., Gillison, S. T., & Landers, V. M. (2015). Exploring consumers’ attitude towards relationship marketing. Journal of Services Marketing, 29(3), 188-199.

Kang, J. Y. M., & Kim, J. (2017). Online customer relationship marketing tactics through social media and perceived customer retention orientation of the green retailer. Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management: An International Journal, 21(3), 298-316.

Kumar, V., Anand, A., & Song, H. (2017). Future of retailer profitability: an organizing framework. Journal of Retailing, 93(1), 96-119.

Lemon, K. N., & Verhoef, P. C. (2016). Understanding customer experience throughout the customer journey. Journal of Marketing, 80(6), 69-96.

Lewrick, M., Omar, M., Williams Jr, R., Tjandra, N. C., & Lee, Z. C. (2015). Radical and incremental innovation effectiveness in relation to market orientation in the retail industry: triggers, drivers, and supporters. In Successful technological integration for competitive advantage in retail settings (pp. 239-268). IGI Global.

Lin, Z., & Bennett, D. (2014). Examining retail customer experience and the moderation effect of loyalty programmes. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 42(10), 929-947.

Moreno-Munoz, A., Bellido-Outeirino, F. J., Siano, P., & Gomez-Nieto, M. A. (2016). Mobile social media for smart grids customer engagement: Emerging trends and challenges. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 53, 1611-1616.

Parise, S., Guinan, P. J., & Kafka, R. (2016). Solving the crisis of immediacy: How digital technology can transform the customer experience. Business Horizons, 59(4), 411-420.

Ramanathan, U., Subramanian, N., & Parrott, G. (2017). Role of social media in retail network operations and marketing to enhance customer satisfaction. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 37(1), 105-123.

Rapp, A., Baker, T. L., Bachrach, D. G., Ogilvie, J., & Beitelspacher, L. S. (2015). Perceived customer showrooming behavior and the effect on retail salesperson self-efficacy and performance. Journal of Retailing, 91(2), 358-369.

So, K.K.F., King, C., Sparks, B.A. and Wang, Y., 2016. Enhancing customer relationships with retail service brands: The role of customer engagement. Journal of Service Management, 27(2), pp.170-193.

Stathopoulou, A., & Balabanis, G. (2016). The effects of loyalty programs on customer satisfaction, trust, and loyalty toward high-and low-end fashion retailers. Journal of Business Research, 69(12), 5801-5808.

Verhoef, P. C., Kannan, P. K., & Inman, J. J. (2015). From multi-channel retailing to omni-channel retailing: introduction to the special issue on multi-channel retailing. Journal of retailing, 91(2), 174-181