How Socializing Results in A Learning Environment Drives Better Service & Sales
One of the biggest mistakes in retail today is the siloing of results in certain functions. Socializing results and insights on buyers helps retailers focus and improve on serving customers.
You have email marketing at Klayvio or MailChimp. You have Google Ads, MetaAds, Amazon Ads, Walmart sales, maybe even eBay sales. Your data is everywhere. Yor results from what people buy, where they buy and how they buy are trapped in those places. And it’s a critical mission to collect it in one place and share it with everyone from the pick pack team to the front office.
How Personas Can Socialize Customer Learning
A number of years ago I worked on persona models that were advanced statistical algorithms using factor analysis to sort through over 1000 columns of variables and cluster analysis to group customers by meaningful differences in buying behaviors.
When you saw those clusters, a very clear picture of HOW they buy was presented to executives. But that was not enough. We appended demographics and direct customer survey data and the result was tool we called Portraits.
Portraits described 8 segments of customers, and explained some of the key drivers of who they are an how they buy
The Brand Loyal had two similar and distinct customer groups: Brand Enthusiast and Power Shoppers. They both spend similar amounts, but buy with a different frequency and slightly different product price points:
Right away you see the AOV and are shocked. How can two customers be so different? One must be more wealthy? How do you describe these customers to your team so they understand who they are and the CONTEXT in which they shop?
The Brand Enthusiast is a high frequency shopper, she shops once a month, a smaller AOV but she loves the products with the brand and while she shops 4 categories, a quick look is that she spend 72% of the time in one category: jeans. She is a married woman with a job in finance and she lives a casual life style with her husband in an urban home where they can walk to events. She loves the jeans, they are the best quality and at a fair price and she wears them when working from home or at festivals in the park.
The Power Shopper is a low frequency shopper, she shops twice a year with a larger AOV and her purchases are concentrated in more formal attire. She is single, works in sales and travels often so getting into a store is harder for her with her busy schedule. She shops in multiple categories that is fairly evenly spread and lives in a condominium in a suburb in a major metropolitan area. She loves the appearance, style and fit of the clothing that givers her confidence in her appearance and wishes you had a clienteling app where you track all of her preferences so she can make the most our of each visit.
That’s a ton of work. A ton of research. A ton of profiling and grinding through data.
And you DO NOT HAVE TO DO THAT.
The vast majority of retailers have constrained resources, but are building products for a single persona in mind. Given the descriptions, when shared with people in the retail business, people perked right up and said “I know her, I see her in the store every month” or “I know her, she had a huge order and was a pleasure to work with. She even gave me tips on upselling” In e-commerce, that interaction is lost. But the process is still the same: socialize across your business WHO you are building products for, HOW they live and the CONTEXT in which they consume your products.
Centralizing and Publishing Your Work
Despite what you may think, sharing your insights, sharing the trending products, sharing the customer insights, sharing the customer experience and feedback is a powerful way to focus your organization.
When you create an environment where the learnings from campaigns, analyses, surveys, returns, exchanges, feedback and social engagement are shared, people start to humanize WHO they are serving. Instead of tossing items into a box for the next order, they take the time to package and ship it so it’s just right for their discerning buyers.
Culture is what you Enact, Encourage and Enable in your organization. If you enact policies and procedures to socialize customer learnings, their journey with you, their interests and experiences with you, you create a culture of service and selling. From the pick pack station to the front office, the alignment of the organization on service comes from making roles more than shoving an item in a box. It starts when you share with people as stakeholders in the success of the business and that starts with sharing how the business works, who the business serves, and the results of their hard work on how the customers experience your brand.
Four Steps To Socializing Your Performance
Reduce the KPIs to those most important to the brand and educate everyone on things they do that directly improve or harm the business.
Net Revenue Retention - let’s say NRR is a KPI for your business. You educate your team that NRR is the percent of revenues you earned last year from customers that flowed into this year. Are you retaining customers? And are they spending at the same levels?
Fulfillment: Return Rate from 17% to 14% and $75,000 in incremental profits
Fulfillment: Accuracy Rate from 92% to 94% and $65,000 in incremental profits
Marketing: Enable gift wrapping service free for orders over $100 or for prime customers
Align functional KPI’s to organizations KPIs to pull the levers that drive the organizational goals
Describe your Core Customer in Vivid Detail from Research and Feedback
Our customer is a retiree, she is 65 years old an enjoying her retirement. She is careful with her finances and every purchase is thoughtful and purposeful. She buys gifts for her grandchildren from us and wants every single gift to be special for her grandchildren. She and her husband live in a retirement community and assisted living and her aides help her repack and put notes into the gifts to her grandchildren. She spends over $642 a year with us and is one of our top customers.
Vivid, real life descriptions help people empathize and connect with a customer they serve and want to do a better job
Explain your Got To Market Motion and How it Works
Every brand goes to market with demand generation and demand capture activities. Demand generation being about awareness, interest and intent to buy your products. Demand capture being the mechanisms to capture the customer when the intent turns to action by being active in channels where the customer finds their solution.
Engage Your Employees to Participate in your Go to Market Motion
The one place where your employees can really support your GTM motion is the deployment of content using their personal brands. Brands are comprised of three levels:
Organizational brands - who we are and what we deliver
Product brands - features and benefits for the buyers
Personal brand - experts in the products who create authority and trust that the product deliver what they say they will
Your retail commerce brand can amplify demand generation by enabling your employees to post to social and talk about the products, the company, their experiences and how they serve customers.
Storytelling is a powerful construct. Your product developers educate people on materials and what quality is. Your buyers educate people on what is current new and interesting. Your service professionals relate stories on how they solve customer problems. Your executives tell stories of building the brand and dedicating it to a purpose.
All of the personal brands have separate and overlapping audiences. And where they all intersect, the customer hears from multiple people about your products, service and quality. They collectively establish VALUE in the mind of the customer.
Socializing Your Customer and Learning Environment Drives Alignment & Sales
The number one purpose of a retail business is to attract and retain customers. This comes from delivering on a promise of value. Value = fn(price, quality, service) and when you socialize your learnings and experiences in your business and with your customers, you expand your value position with your current and prospective customers. You also have the added value of making employees feel more connected and engaged with the business and proud of their work and how they serve others.
The Learning Environment is a repository of the stories and experiences your brand creates with customers and is way too valuable to be stuck on a google drive.