The online store is a common phenomenon these days. For some organizations, it is their main point of sale and reason for their growth. Remember Amazon? However, online shopping is not everyone's cup of tea. Some people prefer going to the regular brick & mortar establishments.
With this variety of customers, you would all have seen many innovations to make the improve the whole shopping experience whether it is on their online shops or the physical locations. One of the relatively recent changes that I have noticed is the ability to order online, but pick-up at an old-fashioned store location close to you. There is the obvious convenience of this facility and it helps the customer buy "faster" as they do not have to wait for shipping. From an organization's perspective, this provides additional marketing for their physical shop locations and thus helps with the inventory turn and shelf stock days. Both key indicators of retail store performance.
But can you use this convenience to really delight the customer? Customer Experience Management (CEM) is much talked about these days and it is really refreshing when you see real-life innovative practices that directly impact the very experience of being a customer. Specially when the are quite unexpected.
My friend ordered an iPhone 5 recently online at the Apple store. With the Apple Store app available in his existing iPhone, that was the most convenient method to place the order. Looking to get the iPhone quickly, he chose to pick it up from a nearby Apple Store (as soon as it was available in stock of course). Well, this is just the beginning of the creative methods to improve the experience by Apple. When he went to pick up his iPhone, as soon as he reached the vicinity of the Apple Store, he got a notification on his existing iPhone asking him if he is coming in to pick-up his new iPhone and if they should start preparing for his pick-up. Now, that is cool in itself. But wait, by the time he parked the car and was walking to the store, he got another alert that his iPhone was ready and David will be expecting him. And yes, as the note said, when he entered the store, there was a guy with "David" on his nametag waiting for him. Though David had never met my friend, he knew what he was there for, after the regular niceties, in a matter of a few seconds, my friend had his new iPhone in his hands.
Now, together with the fact that the process was so flawless, anticipating the customer, greeting him, knowing exactly what he is looking for and making sure that he quickly gets to it. All these are such key factors to the core of customer experience. All these were creatively put together to make the whole buying process from the Apple Store an experience worthy of a frequent flier walking into their most visited 5 star hotel. Is that an experience you will pass over the next time you shop for Apple products?
Have you also experienced such innovative ideas for taking the customer experience to that pinnacle where the organization just sets a new standard? What are your ideas and experiences?
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