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Customer Experience

7 Examples of customer experience management in retail

In today’s ever-changing world of technology innovation and customer buying habits, it has become more important than ever for retailers to understand the customer experience and find ways to exceed customer expectations. Read below to see how seven retail brands are using Qualtrics Customer Experience™ to change how they do business.

In this post, we’ll show you examples of how seven companies are enhancing their CX management programs. These are tools and techniques you can implement in your CX program to improve your business. The following companies are all Qualtrics customers and to help them keep their confidentiality, we have anonymized their brand names and websites.

1. Women’s retailer uses exit survey

Transparency and internal benchmarking help retailers identify what is working and what isn’t to deliver an exceptional customer experience. There are many ways to accomplish this including kiosk, transactional, and after-purchase email surveys.

This retailer collects customer feedback and combines those insights with operational data to understand how certain metrics measure against each other, like NPS or satisfaction, spend, time of purchase, etc., to understand why customers bought what they did.

Use our free store survey template to measure your customers' experience with purchasing in-store.

In the example below, this retailer asks two simple questions when the customer is leaving the store. By asking if the customer would recommend the store to a friend, they can gather valuable NPS data, which allows them to measure the data over time and gauge the brand’s health. They can also identify service gaps, resolve issues, and discover better ways to combat customer attrition, drive loyalty and share of wallet, and attract new customers through word of mouth.

women's retailer exit survey

2. Top athletic brand uses a feedback tab on website

Understanding the “why” behind visitor behavior is crucial to making changes and
driving digital visitors to the outcomes that matter (purchase, visiting a store, sharing
products they like with their friends). This athletic brand wanted insights to create better experiences for visitors that would lead them to recommend their brand to others (NPS).

This brand’s NPS had been decreasing during new product launches, and by including a feedback tab on their website, they found the issues were related to inventory and checkout. A feedback tab is an easy way to get website feedback and understand why customers are visiting your site. From gaining this knowledge, they were able to implement improved digital features, such as creating a countdown timer for checkout, to combat issues that were creating bad experiences for customers.

athletic brand feedback tab

3. Home improvement retailer uses thumbs up or thumbs down button

The home improvement industry is highly competitive and this retailer realized a strong digital presence is necessary to drive customer loyalty and increase share of wallet. With so many products on their site, the internal search tool can be a hard experience to optimize. This retailer created a section in the search results of their website to measure the result quality. They used a thumbs up or thumbs down button to understand if their results were helping their customers find what they were looking for. With this data they could tailor their search engine by optimizing the search queries with poor scores. We commonly see companies using these tactics in product support sections of their sites to find help and documentation articles that need to be improved.

home improvement retailer

4. Consumer technology brand sends product satisfaction survey months after purchase

This leading consumer technology brand is committed to having an ongoing conversation with its customers—which features do they use most, which ones do they not use, which products and brands did they use prior to purchase, etc. Getting and analyzing answers to these questions months after purchase informs important product decisions and helps this brand push innovation.

A few months after a customer purchased the product, the brand sent a survey asking the customer about his experience with the device. The surveys are triggered at the right time to ensure maximum open rates. The feedback is invaluable for informing product, marketing, and other decisions, and because the marketplace is evolving, it is crucial that surveys be adjusted based on previous responses.

consumer technology brand

5. International digital retailer conducts a product study

Global digital retailers find profitability not just in the leading brands they sell, but in offering their customers house brands that provide quality and value. This digital retailer faced an ambitious challenge of developing and launching more than 100 quality house brands in a single year.

They used product testing in their CX surveys to get feedback and understand which features of a product would sell better. By uncovering that people said they would pay for a larger screen size and improved battery size, they could develop products that fit these criteria.

international digital retailer

6. Athletic retailer creates an in-house research panel

This athletic retail group’s research teams wanted to better understand deep insights beneath the core reasons why people work out and play sports so they could recommend by sport, product, and demographics, how to engage customers and non-customers better, improve brand perception, and increase share of wallet. Using Qualtircs' panel management software, they created a panel and sought to understand underlying motivations for their current customers and non-customers.

By asking questions about customer spend on specific sports, they were able to create brand profiles for panel members, and gain overall insights that helped the organization better understand its perception and market position in various categories. They could dissect the reasons for each sport, the frequency individuals played each sport, crossover of sports (which sports are more closely related to other sports), purchasing habits, which brands different athletes prefer, and underlying reasons for why people choose certain athletic brands. These insights are helping them identify areas of focus for cross-sport marketing and key customer segments.

athletic retailer in-house research panel

7. Large multinational department store chain surveys employees

Front-line employees are the face of retail organizations, each one interacting with hundreds of customers each day. How they feel about their job and the company they work for dramatically affects the work they do, the experiences they provide customers, and their longevity and growth. Check out more on employee engagement being the CX-factor.

This department store chain surveyed more than 100,000 global employees to see why employees like working for the brand and what motivates them. The retailer now has the ability to make adjustments by region, country, and brand, adapt surveys based on local/unique issues and needs, and motivate employees to retain a competitive edge in all regions and markets.

multinational department store chain surveys

To learn more about how you can improve your customer experience management program, download the "Become a Leader in Retail Customer Experience" eBook today.


eBook: Become a leader in retail customer experience

Juliana Holterhaus // Senior XM Consultant

Juliana joined the XM Scientist Team at Qualtrics in January of 2016. She has extensive experience in digital strategy and digital experience research. She has worked across solutions such as voice of the customer (VoC), brand health and communications (online reputation management), product and service innovation, healthcare, and retail strategy. In addition to her work at Qualtrics, Juliana currently sits on the Board of Directors for the Marketing Research International Institute (MRII) in a two-year, elected position. Before joining Qualtrics, Juliana was Head of Strategic Alliances for YouEye, a Silicon-Valley based start-up focused on quantifying video-based voice of the customer data. Juliana spent 5 years in the mobile tech space as General Manager of Lumi’s global market research business. In addition, Juliana spent two years as a part of the research team at Massachusetts General Hospital (DCRP) and one year in the marketing department at Harvard Business School. Juliana graduated with honors from Amherst College and received a Masters from Columbia University. Juliana went on to complete her PhD in Psychology and Decision Sciences at Columbia University. During her time in graduate school, Juliana researched environmental, financial, and medical decision making, as well as consumer preference construction. Her dissertation research focused on the motivational science of mobile technology use and engagement.

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