3 ways retailers can drive growth in 2021
As one of the most disrupted industries throughout the pandemic, retail businesses have been working hard to best serve customers while also complying with constantly changing restrictions.
With new technological innovations allowing shoppers to make convenient purchases at the click of a button, consumers are becoming more empowered than ever, and, consequently, customers are prioritizing experience over anything else when choosing where to shop. It is, therefore, no surprise that the ability for retailers to provide first-class customer experience (CX) can have a significant impact on the company’s bottom line.
With customer expectations rapidly changing, here are three ways in which retail businesses can adopt a data-inspired mindset within the company to help drive growth and improve business performance.
1. Get Staff Involved
When it comes to customer experience, the real impact is made on the shop floor. Simply filtering down orders from the top creates a false sense of “customer experience is not something I need to worry about – management will just tell me what to do” and, as a result, seldom take active steps to improve it. To combat this, business leaders should:
- Work on creating an open dialogue with staff and make the effort to involve stakeholders within the creative processes.
- Encourage all members of staff, following these discussions, to conduct their own research and test their ideas within the store in order to try and achieve the desired results.
- Use the data that employees gather to validate these tests and provide feedback that can be used to better the processes within an organization, rather than just relying on whether something feels like it’s working or not.
2. Share Important Findings
Recent studies have found that employees who feel engaged in the workplace are more likely to improve customer relations, which in turn drives an increase in sales. Knowing this, it is important that retail businesses take steps to increase engagement with the company’s overall strategy. One way to do this is to share data-validated learnings widely among staff at all levels of the business, as:
- Sharing data-validated learnings will help to foster a data-driven mindset within the company and encourages all employees to look to the data for guidance on how to improve the company’s performance.
- Through regular updates, retailers can help to build an infrastructure that acknowledges the hard work of the staff operating on the shop floor, and, knowing that the work they are doing is having a positive impact on the business, they will be more willing to further contribute to company strategies in the future.
3. Implement a Rewards System
One of the best ways to ensure that a growth mindset becomes an integral part of the company strategy is to offer rewards to the staff who are working hard every day to find better ways to meet the company’s targets. Some ideas include:
- Offering incentives to staff, such as a summer party, cash bonuses, as well as physical awards they can take home and keep, are fantastic ways to make sure staff feel recognized, valued and appreciated following the success and growth of the company.
- A rewards system like this, in turn, creates a positive feedback loop that also ensures employees continue to work hard to make the customer a top priority every time they visit the store.