A chasm has emerged between cus­tomer expec­ta­tions and the retail expe­ri­ence. While con­sumers tol­er­at­ed slow­er deliv­ery times and oth­er ser­vice issues at the height of the pan­dem­ic, their patience is wan­ing. Retail­ers must adapt – and fast. 

As cus­tomer desires evolve and loy­al­ties shift, omnichan­nel retail­ers are miss­ing the mark on even the most fun­da­men­tal ele­ments, such as returns and pay­ment options. Many sim­ply don’t under­stand what con­sumers expect. In the UK, com­plaints about poor ser­vice in the six months to July 2021 were at their high­est lev­el since 2009.

Clare Bai­ley is founder of the Retail Cham­pi­on con­sul­tan­cy. She notes that ini­tial cus­tomer expec­ta­tions are built by retail­ers. “When a brand puts their posi­tion­ing out there, they’re sell­ing a vision of what it would be like to be their con­sumer,” Bai­ley says. “Cus­tomer expe­ri­ence means liv­ing up to that.” 

Building blocks

Cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is often con­flat­ed with events and acti­va­tions, but it’s much broad­er, cov­er­ing every­thing from the in-store returns process to a website’s live chat func­tion. The small­er build­ing blocks of the wider con­sumer expe­ri­ence are cru­cial touch­points and should be placed at the heart of any retail strat­e­gy.  

The prob­lems begin when retail­ers don’t under­stand them­selves and so fail to artic­u­late a con­crete offer­ing. If you’re unsure whether your brand offers val­ue, lux­u­ry, or con­ve­nience, your cus­tomer can’t build expec­ta­tions around your posi­tion­ing with­in the mar­ket. 

For exam­ple, IKEA gives a great cus­tomer expe­ri­ence “because they do what they say they will do well”, says Bai­ley. “You know you’re not going to get lux­u­ry ser­vice but that’s ok because you’re get­ting qual­i­ty and val­ue for mon­ey.”

The Edel­man Trust Barom­e­ter 2021 revealed that trust is now ‘crit­i­cal’ or ‘impor­tant’ for 88% of con­sumers across 14 mar­kets when decid­ing which brands to buy or use. For 68% it’s more impor­tant to be able to trust a brand than it was in the past. With trust now a key con­sumer dri­ver, it’s vital that retail­ers first hone a clear brand propo­si­tion which they can then deliv­er con­sis­tent­ly.

A human connection

Only once a retail­er thor­ough­ly under­stands its own propo­si­tion can it begin to under­stand its audi­ence. How­ev­er, it’s no longer sim­ply about seg­ment­ing by age or dis­pos­able income. 

For Kate Nightin­gale, founder of the con­sul­tan­cy Style Psy­chol­o­gy, self-con­gru­ence the­o­ry is the key to iden­ti­fy­ing and under­stand­ing the con­sumer. This sug­gests that con­sumers respond more pos­i­tive­ly to brands whose val­ues align with their own. “It’s basi­cal­ly a per­son­al­i­ty match between the cus­tomer and the brand,” says Nightin­gale, “but I haven’t seen per­son­al­i­ty iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of that type in almost any cus­tomer pro­files.”

Research by Klar­na revealed that 40% of con­sumers seek out brand val­ues they can align with, while 35% seek human engage­ment. How­ev­er, a third of omnichan­nel retail­ers are held back by out­dat­ed tech, which could be a vital tool for deliv­er­ing the per­son­al, val­ues-dri­ven expe­ri­ence sought by today’s con­sumers. 

“As tech-enabled inter­ac­tions become increas­ing­ly per­son­alised, localised and mis­sion-led, more mean­ing­ful cus­tomer rela­tion­ships can be forged,” says Amy Lee, senior trends and insights man­ag­er for appar­el at Avery Den­ni­son, a mate­ri­als sci­ence com­pa­ny which designs and man­u­fac­tures func­tion­al mate­ri­als and labelling such as RFID tags. How­ev­er, for this strat­e­gy to work, retail­ers must be con­sis­tent across all plat­forms. 

A single voice

Avery Den­nison’s recent Dig­i­tal Con­sumer Behav­iour report found that shop­pers across Chi­na, the US and Europe grav­i­tate heav­i­ly towards a mixed retail expe­ri­ence between phys­i­cal and online. Break­ing these chan­nels into sep­a­rate silos hurts the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. For exam­ple, it can be jar­ring to go from a fric­tion­less online pay­ment to queu­ing for check­outs. Nightin­gale sug­gests enlist­ing a ‘brand guardian’ to ensure a sin­gu­lar brand voice per­me­ates all chan­nels. 

Per­son­al care and beau­ty prod­uct spe­cial­ist Sepho­ra has suc­cess­ful­ly pur­sued such an approach. In 2017, it merged its dig­i­tal and retail teams to cre­ate a uni­fied expe­ri­ence, bring­ing them togeth­er under one roof with cus­tomer ser­vice. If a cus­tomer receives a makeover, the brand’s beau­ty advi­sors scan the items used, which are then added to the customer’s app. The app can then alert cus­tomers when wish­list prod­ucts are in stock at a near­by store. 

MATCHESFASHION topped the 2020 Hit­ting the Mark report from online mar­ket­ing com­pa­ny Dot­dig­i­tal. The fash­ion retail­er main­tains a high lev­el, lux­u­ry ser­vice across all plat­forms, per­son­al­is­ing email rec­om­men­da­tions, allow­ing staff to use pur­chase his­to­ry to tai­lor per­son­al shop­ping expe­ri­ences, and pro­vid­ing 24-hour dig­i­tal access to the per­son­al shop­ping team. Such strate­gies help retail­ers to “embrace the blur”, mix­ing ser­vice with expe­ri­en­tial and per­son­al fac­tors, says Steve Den­nis, author of Remark­able Retail. 

There’s no quick fix for under­stand­ing the con­sumer. Suc­cess lies in the fun­da­men­tals. While per­son­al­i­sa­tion and tech­nol­o­gy are parts of the puz­zle, a com­pa­ny must first go back to basics, ensur­ing it under­stands itself and its offer­ing. 

Customer contribution: the benefits of co-creation 

Co-cre­ation is now a cen­tral strat­e­gy for brands look­ing to engage their audi­ence on a new lev­el, invit­ing the con­sumer into the design process. 

While some brands take to Insta­gram, Slack and What­sApp to elic­it con­sumer feed­back on ini­tial con­cepts and sam­ples, oth­ers – like South Kore­an beau­ty start-up Woohwa­man and toy giant Lego – invite cus­tomers to sub­mit orig­i­nal ideas via ded­i­cat­ed online plat­forms.

Of 554 senior exec­u­tives sur­veyed across Europe for a recent Hitachi Social Inno­va­tion report, 51% said co-cre­ation improved finan­cial per­for­mance. But is it any­thing new or sim­ply mar­ket research rebrand­ed? 

Sophie Slater is co-founder and CEO of eth­i­cal fash­ion brand Bird­song. She thinks the pub­lic fac­ing nature of co-cre­ation is key. “Our cus­tomers feel clos­er to the brand, it builds excite­ment and most impor­tant­ly, it ensures we’re mak­ing things peo­ple love and want. It’s a waste issue to cre­ate stock that no one wants to buy,” she says.

If someone’s con­tri­bu­tions are embod­ied in a co-cre­at­ed prod­uct, they’re like­ly to be espe­cial­ly keen to buy it. Hav­ing giv­en their time and cre­ativ­i­ty, co-cre­ators are reward­ed tan­gi­bly either by a prod­uct that encap­su­lates their pref­er­ences or, in some cas­es, a per­cent­age of sales rev­enue. An ele­ment of own­er­ship is at play. That’s the essen­tial dif­fer­ence: while mar­ket research takes, co-cre­ation gives back.