In retail, customers are the fuel that keeps your business going. When a customer has a negative experience with a retail business, they'll find another one that does things better— more efficiently, more personalized, and more consistent. According to Zippia: The Career Expert, 91% of customers are willing to switch companies after one bad customer service experience.
Getting ahead of your customer pain points will help you get ahead in your retail business. Once you understand them, you'll begin attracting the customer base you want as well as retaining your current customers.
In this article, learn what your customer pain points might be and how to solve them through clienteling.
What are pain points?
Customer pain points are persistent issues with a product or a service that lead to unmet needs of buyers in their customer journey. Customer pain points prevent customers from engaging with a product or a business in a way that leads them to purchasing and returning for more.
Customer pain points can fall into any of the following pain point categories:
- Productivity pain: A business's efficiency, productivity, and convenience
- Support pain: Lack of support for customers
- Financial pain: Products are too expensive or are low-quality
- Process pain: The process to purchase a product is too inconvenient or not user-friendly
All of these types of customer pain are preventable and treatable—keep reading to find out how to identify common pain and optimize your buyer journey.
How do I identify customer pain points?
Now that you know what customer pain points are, we'll cover how to identify the most common ones at your retail store.
There are two main methods for finding the data you need: getting customer feedback by listening to your customers and getting feedback by listening and communicating with your sales team and support team.
Listen to your customers
Customers are one of your greatest resources when it comes to identifying customer pain points because they're the ones experiencing them. It's important to your buyers and to your business to really listen to the people you're serving. Customer feedback will help you to identify areas for improvement and to understand whether your current solutions are bringing the results that you want.
You can get this kind of feedback by inviting clients to participate in a roundtable event or an open forum. In this setting, customers can discuss their thoughts on common customer pain points and how they can be resolved.
Another way to hear from your clients is through customer testimonials and reviews. User experience is valuable data to a business owner, and understanding a customer's unique experience with a product can help you to eliminate potential pain.
Listen to your sales team and support team
Your sales reps are also an invaluable source of information for your retail business. They speak with potential customers all day and can be experts on prospective customers' pain points in your field. They can identify the issues that prevent potential customers from engaging with your product. Speaking with your sales reps regularly will help you to stay connected to the customer experience.
Your customer support team is another valuable asset to understanding customer issues. Through speaking with current and prospective customers to help them resolve issues, they know better than anyone what types of pain points your customer base is experiencing.
Top retail customer pain points
There are many pain points potential customers might have. In this section, we'll cover a few of the most common retail customer pain points and go over how clienteling can resolve them. Understanding genuine customer pain points will help you create solutions that are unique to your business.
Learn about how Clientbook helps you improve your clienteling by hearing from our current customers
Customer experience is generalized and not customized
Customers want to feel like they're receiving personalized service which meets their specific needs. When they are treated as just another number or someone who solely contributes to the financial gain of a business, they're less likely to become a loyal customer.
Customizing your service for your many different types of buyers will majorly increase customer satisfaction. You can do this through clienteling, or building long-term relationships with customers, getting to know them and their preferences, and being able to give them personalized offers and recommendations.
Poor customer service
Maintaining current customers and converting potential customers into buyers falls onto the shoulders of your customer support team and sales reps. If customer service reps are impatient, unwilling to work through the categories of customer pain to create solutions, and unavailable when customer issues arise, your customers are going to feel it. Unhappy customers won't stay customers for long.
An important part of clienteling is helping your customers feel taken care of. In developing a relationship with your clients, you're able to anticipate their needs and support them in the critical stages of the buying process. Providing a consistent experience through excellent customer service will keep your customers happy and satisfied.
Non-automated tasks
The last thing you want is for your customers to feel bogged down by their user experience. Whether this is on a website, in the checkout process, or calling a customer support line—lengthy or complicated processes will turn customers away.
Clienteling can eliminate the friction that current or potential customers experience in the buying process. Implementing technology to remove extra steps and provide streamlined experiences will allow your customers to focus on your product offers rather than have to navigate a messy process.
Use Clientbook to make clienteling easier
Clientbook is a software that provides sales reps and customer support teams a way to build long-term relationships with their clients. After identifying your customer's pain points, you can quickly and easily turn a negative customer experience into a positive one using Clientbook's customer profiles feature.
Customize your interactions with customers and offer them a unique client experience with automated reminders, wish lists, and product history. Your customers will feel taken care of throughout their buyer's journey and their pain points will quickly turn into positive points toward your business. Delight your customers and use Clientbook to eliminate business pain.
Schedule a demo today to see how Clientbook can help you gain and maintain loyal customers while eliminating pain points.
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