A customer experience growth mindset will boost your retail business

In a time of unprecedented demand and increased adoption of online ordering, customer experience (CX) data has never played a more important role in increasing customer retention and ensuring businesses continue to succeed.

In order to successfully navigate the evolving e-commerce landscape, businesses must work on fostering a mindset that promotes the utilization of customer experience data to drive decision-making within the organization. Only through implementing new operational strategies can transforming businesses ensure that they are truly meeting the changing needs of the customer.

Set targets and invest time

Growth is not something that happens overnight, but rather as a result of an accumulation of small wins over a long period of time. By creating an environment where it is common practice to consistently set qualitative targets for customer experience, retail business leaders can ensure that CX plays a key role in employee KPIs and thus motivates staff to consider it as a crucial part of their jobs. Two key points to consider:

• Set appropriate targets, in line with the organization’s strategy and what is appropriate for the current market
• Don’t set them too high or they will be too expensive, yet not too low or they will lose their customer base

Analyze data and encourage creativity

When looking to change the mindset of the business and incorporate CX as a foundation from which to propel growth and development, it is important that stakeholders are given the opportunity to get involved in the process. Embracing a rapid testing and evaluation mindset is beneficial in the long run as this allows businesses to try new things regularly and gauge the reaction of the customer. To promote this behavior, businesses should:

• Encourage all employees to look at all data sets (including CX data) to help them to understand and encourage them to propose future changes to the business
• Foster an environment where employees feel safe to try new ideas quickly and aren’t afraid to fail

Document and share learnings

Understanding that customer experience data plays a key role in the success of the organization, retail businesses must ensure that documenting the learnings from tests does not become a burden, but instead proactively participated. To build a framework for financial success and can greatly benefit any incoming staff who are looking to hit the ground running, it is important for businesses to:

• Encourage employees to document their learnings through dedicated channels
• Learn from mistakes in order to be able to grow and move forward

Only through truly embracing customer experience as a vital tool within the business, will companies be able to navigate what is expected to be another unprecedented year of hurdles and challenges. Read the in-depth Forbes article here.