Are you ready for Retail Customer Experience 2.0

From Mom & Pop shops to Large Malls, and Computers to the Internet & Ecommerce, the shopping experience of customers has changed a lot in the past few decades, but nothing matches the degree the once-in-a-century pandemic has brought to the table.

The pandemic has not only changed What People buy but also Why and How they Buy.

At the same time, the “no-physical-contact” has left the retailers with little to no control over how they influence their customers.

But beyond the pandemic, since the customer’s behavior has changed drastically, the retailers also need to adapt accordingly. They will need to adopt a new Customer experience that is more empathetic.

Welcome RCE 2.0, it will be driven by Customer-centric thinking, service-centric thinking.

RCE 2.0 will inherit all the properties of 1.0 but will focus more on customer delight and meaningfulness/empathy.

We as human beings we are always looking towards a more empathetic treatment on all fronts. Shopping is one of those fronts. We need to create technology solutions that empathize with the customers.

Such an experience would benefit from following design principles …

Time Context – Important to map the time aspect to customer experience. Duration of interaction, time of day, year. How time can affect customer behavior?

Cultural Context – Social, Local and verbal aspects of demographics and the way they affect the customer’s thought process, and hence the customer experience.

Interactions – Can users choose the way of communication with our services – speech, typing, press, gestures …etc

Constraints – RCE has to adapt to different constraints human and digital constraints

Empathy – RCE should enable the customer to converse freely with technology so as to understand needs, emotions, constraints, and how they experience our services

Such an RCE will help us

• Identify and predict (eventually) behavior patterns
• Understand the context and personal behavior of customers
• Focus on individuals – personal attention to all customers

RCE 2.0 will help us address challenges arising sure to changed customer behavior towards shopping.

Mindfulness of the customers will be addressed by talking to them personally and empathizing with their needs.

The RCE2.0 will present more and more relevant options to satisfy a Budget Consciousness customer.

RCE2.0 will offer all benefits of contactless shopping to customers during shopping, payments, customer care.

In the new realm after the pandemic, Retail businesses that will embrace the new normal and prepare for RCE2.0 will continue to thrive.

What are you doing to ensure your team delivers the next level of customer experience to your customers?