Free webinar offers tips, guidance for optimizing retail CX

Retailers are all about delivering a seamless omnichannel and personalized retail customer experience but where to start, what to invest in and how to prioritize are just a few challenges in the journey.

One of the best first steps is learning how successful retailers are improving CX and strategies for creating personal and satisfying experiences for both the new customer and longtime customer.

That's the focus of a free one-hour webinar, "A Retailer's Guide to CX Optimization," taking place Thursday, Dec. 7 at 2 p.m. sponsored by NICE.

Expert insight will be shared by Beth Schultz, VP of research and principal analyst at Metrigy, a research and advisory firm focusing on the changing areas of workplace collaboration, digital workplace, digital transformation, customer experience and employee experience.

To provide readers a sneak peek, RetailCustomerExperience reached out to Schultz, who conducts primary research and analysis to provide metrics-based guidance for business decision makers, in an email interview to get a glimpse of what she'll be sharing.

In her role at Metrigy, Schultz also manages the firm's multimedia thought leadership content and research agenda and has more than three decades of experience in the IT media and event business.

Q. When it comes to retail CX what are some of the challenges facing retailers?

A. Staying ahead of consumer sentiment — this is the perennial challenge, but difficulty intensifies as the number of digital channels supported increase. Metrigy's research with approximately 500 consumers in North America shows that people will allow a company three bad experiences, on average, before they stop doing business with it. And, when bad experiences do drive consumers away, they spread the word — about 44% will tell friends and family about it, more than 25% will leave negative reviews on ratings sites, and just about 12% will post on social media. Consumer ratings and feedback, posted on rating sites and social media, influence which products, brands, stores, and channels people will and won't use.
Fending off bad actors targeting retail outlets and brands — this challenge certainly isn't new either, but it is as important as ever. A data breach that exposes shoppers' personal information, including payment details, scars the retailer's reputation and leaves the retailer subject to legal action and regulatory fines. At the same time, it disintegrates customer trust and loyalty.
Keeping pace on AI adoption, particularly for predicting customer needs and personalizing service. Consumers tend to up level their overall expectations of customer service based on their last great experience. For retailers, much of a great experience comes from being able to understand what a shopper may want, perhaps even before the shopper themselves does, and deliver a personalized service. Retailers that provide impersonal, one-size-fits-all experiences may struggle to convert interest into sales and retain customers.

Q. In your webinar you'll provide insight on how retailers are improving CX — can you give us one to two examples as a sneak peek?

A. Most retailers have adopted a wide variety of AI apps as part of their CX transformation/improvement initiatives. Two examples:
• Agent assistance: Agent assist bots help out by automating manual tasks such as customer identification. They can also surface customer data, such as order history, that's contextually relevant to an interaction; provide next-best actions, such as offering a coupon code, discount, or additional purchase recommendations; and help resolve issues faster and with more context.
• Generative AI: This is early days, but we are already seeing some retailers use generative AI. A couple of examples of how they might use are delivering summaries of conversations regarding product exchanges or returns and supporting visual search based on product images.

Q. In assessing technology for better CX are there any questions or checklist items a retailer should answer/check off before making an investment?

A. Questions/checklist items will vary by technology. Here are a few general recommendations for CX/contact center platforms based on our research:

• If a retailer isn't using state-of-the-art means of protecting customer data, that should be a transformational priority in the short term. Retailers must thoroughly vet CX vendors on their security mechanisms, as well as compliance.
• Whether a retailer is using a full-service CX platform, a cloud contact center platform, or a legacy on-premises system, the ability to extend functionality and layer in new capabilities will often come through integrations. When evaluating CX/contact center platform providers, retailers should look carefully at their integration offerings, as well as the ease of adding their own integrations.
• Similarly, retailers should explore how the platform providers approach workflow automation. Do they support low-/no-code development? Offer visual workflow builders? Retailer CX professionals should be able to quickly and easily build and initiate automated processes for services like order confirmation, shipping updates, refund notices, etc., rather than having to tap specialized developers to implement for them.

To learn more, register for the free one-hour webinar.

The retail landscape is undergoing dramatic changes and without understanding and responding to industry pressures, retailers will struggle to find and retail customers. A white paper, from NICE, "Brick, Click, & Beyond: Dissecting Retail's Hurdles and Designing the Ultimate CX Blueprint," examines how retailers address the issues.