August 19, 2020 Posted by Pocketstop in Other Social Share
How important is customer engagement for your shopping mall? Take a look into the very near future:
- By the end of 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator, according to a Walker study.
- 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience, according to a study by PwC.
Feel that you may not be engaging enough for your mall shoppers? Relax. You probably know more about customer engagement than you think. It’s merely how (and how often) you interact with your mall shoppers. Instinctively, you probably already know that. What you may not yet know are some of the specific ways that the most successful shopping malls are supercharging their customer engagement strategies (we’ll show that to you here) to drive traffic to their centers in a safe manner during this current pandemic.
Customer engagement is not always easy to measure, but if you’re doing it right, the benefits are amazing:
- Gain new customer/shoppers
- Improve average sales price
- Increase customer visit frequency
Whether your shopping mall is large or small, take a few pointers from how these businesses around the country are specifically getting customer engagement right:
Apple
Their mantra: people over products. Walk into an Apple store at any mall, and feel the love right away. Their employees seem genuinely passionate about their products, and are eager to help you. Also offered: free troubleshooting. That’s so nice!
Bottom line: train your staff to share their passion with your customers. Hire the most passionate people.
Google
You might think that Google would have way too many customers to focus on customer engagement or relevant to your mall. However, their customer service is considered among the best in the world. By offering its customers a live video chat with a customer service rep, it has decreased its wait times and personalized its responses to customers who have questions and issues.
Bottom line: give your business a human face. Be there to listen to your customers, and be sure to respond to them. Always.
Wendy’s
This fast-food chain puts an intense amount of creative effort into their social media, creating memorable posts, interacting with customers (and even competitors). They’ve become legendary for their sassy responses. Check out some of their more hilarious tweets. Your takeaway: use social media to engage your mall shoppers. Answer them promptly, respond to both positive and negative comments, and show them that you appreciate interacting with them.
Bottom line: work on your social media and encourage interaction.
Trader Joe’s
This supermarket chain broke the traditional rules in order to go above and beyond for a customer. When an 89-year-old Pennsylvania man was snowed in and unable to go food shopping, his daughter called the store to see if they could help. Although Trader Joe’s did not normally deliver, they made an exception due to the circumstances. In fact, not only did they deliver groceries to the man, but they suggested items that would be best for his low-sodium diet. When it comes to customer engagement, that’s delivering!
Bottom line: go above and beyond, and be non-traditional in how you relate to your customers.
Barnes & Noble
This national bookstore chain’s customer engagement success is reinforced through its staff. As it continues to fight against the onslaught of eCommerce, they found and kept loyal customers who appreciate knowledgeable, helpful, enthusiastic employees. The store also offers appearances by authors, which attract customers, offering an in-store experience that eCommerce can’t match.
Bottom line: invite your customers to uniquely experience your shopping mall in person.
TOMS
This shoe retailer gave their in-store customers an experience to remember. In 100 of their stores, TOMS placed VR headsets containing imagery of Peru. That’s just one of the locations around the world where the company was donating shoes to those who couldn’t afford to buy new pairs. Through virtual reality, customers could see the immediate impact of that goodwill.
Bottom line: social responsibility can be satisfying for your mall shoppers, especially if there is a way for your customers to get involved in helping.
Casper
The online bed-in-a-box retailer opened a nap store in Manhattan, consisting of nine sleep pods and, of course, Casper beds and merchandise. A scheduled appointment could get you a 45-minute nap, which included a sleep mask and a cup of coffee. Visitors would surely remember Casper in a very crowded and competitive field.
Bottom line: distinguish yourself from your competition by giving your customers a unique experience that they’ll talk about.
Work toward making your customer engagement experience at your shopping mall one of a kind. Sure, they can shop online — and they do — but give your customers a reason to visit your mall and be glad that they did.
Want to supercharge your shopping mall’s customer engagement efforts? Try using a dedicated shopping mall marketing software solution such as M360. With M360, you will have an end-to-end shopping mall marketing solution which streamlines multi-channel marketing execution, delivers personalized messages to shoppers at the most influential moments, and provides user-friendly reporting on KPIs that matter.
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