Both of my sons’ hands where all sweaty as they looked up at the huge snow-clad mountain. You could see the desire and fear battling in their eyes. Was it fun, was it dark, what would happen, was it to scary? You could see the result of the battle shifting as they heard the laughs and screams coming from all the people riding it. And here I was, the impatient dad, “Do you want to go on the ride or not? The line is 40 minutes long and I don’t want to stand in line for 40 minutes for you to back out in the last minute”.

I know, I’m a very patient and understanding father, I know. My ten year old looked at me, then at the ride, then back at me again… ”I don’t know… I want to, but what if it is too scary?” My six year old just looked at his brother with big eyes and squeezed my hand.

As a man of action, I finally went up to one of the staff (sorry cast member), and asked the young lady; “Is this ride scary? The reason I’m asking is that my kids are really hesitant and we don’t want to wait in line and then have a bad experience.” She looked at my kids, asked them, not me (also a pretty unique experience) what they wanted. Again, “don’t know, scary, want to but…”, from my 10-year old. Then came the magic, the young lady said to my sons “you know what, if you want, I can get you to the front of the line right now, and then you can decide right away… If you want to go on the ride, jump in, otherwise you can continue enjoying the rest of the park”. Speechless, my sons nodded their heads, and I gaped. What, just like that? She took my sons hands and led them around the whole line and spoke to her colleagues. The last I heard as we approached the ride was the young lady saying; “It’s a magic moment”, and that it truly was!

Two weeks ago, on a Christmas inspired round table discussion around customer experience with some of the industry’s leading CX experts, an interesting discussion emerged. What do companies that create a truly unique customer experience do, to get employees that are sincere in their will to create a truly exceptional customer experience

How do they do it?

I would say, thinking back on my own Disney experience, that each employee, given the right tools, can provide customers with magical experiences every day… But why don’t they?

I would argue that one of the major reasons are lack of empowerment. A common mistake is trying to micro-manage customer interactions, restricting the employee in servicing their customers. This is a growing trend that I have observed over the last 10 years. Today, all too often I hear the phrase “I have to check with my manager”, even for small things, like returning a 1,50 Apple at the local supermarket.

And it seems that Disney agrees with me.

I have been working with CX improvements for a long time and empowerment is one of a couple key areas that needs to be addressed if you want to create a magical customer experience. Contact me if you want to discuss how to use analytics to fuel empowerment, culture or something else that stand between you and magical customer experiences!

And yes, my kids went on the ride, and will forever remember the magic experience!

Erik Enecker
Chief Product Officer at Nepa USA & COO Global Product at Nepa

As the holiday spirit swept into New York in early December, Nepa hosted a round table discussion with CX leaders from the retail, hospitality and entertainment industries. Companies that are on the top of their games. Literally the Louisville City FC had just been crowned USL Champions, while a national retailer was riding high from a strong Black Friday performance, and an international hotel chain that is posting RevPar growth amidst difficult conditions.

I think I speak for all when I say one of the biggest takeaways was simply the value of meeting with leaders for other industries to share experiences. This open venue allowed for open dialogue about overcoming challenges to make an organization be customer led and brainstorm about the future.  My professional new year’s resolution is to organize similar discussions. Comment below if you’re interested!

Without further ado, here are 4 key themes from the discussion.

1. Measurement is necessary; Story-telling leads to Success

There was a lot of talk about Executive Support. Funding alone is not sufficient – executives must evangelize CX programs through (and beyond) the organization to demonstrate their importance. Chick-fil-a – a company that has not been shy about its commitment to service – was mentioned frequently as a company that delivers great customer experience.

Not all measurements are created equal though, and measurement alone is not sufficient. The ability to translate CX measurement into financial predictions gives them more weight with analytical leaders. And, the best measurements need to be woven into stories that inspire all staff to be customer-obsessed. This is important for an industry that has too long relied on dashboards to inspire change.

2. Customers’ Experience your brand at the Front Line

Whether it’s an employee that lacks the empathy for a customer’s situation or a Disney employee that turns a problem into a Magical Experience – customers’ experience your brand at the front lines.

A common problem shared by CX leaders across industries is motivating and empowering front-line staff to deliver great experiences. This is especially important amidst increased reliance on partners to carry out parts of the experience in the gig economy.

Serving up CX dashboards and analytics are not sufficient – as data analytics rules the day in many corporate HQs, it does not on the front lines. While we didn’t solve this problem in an afternoon, there were some great tips shared:

• Give authority to make the right decision for customers.
• Provide the right decision support (e.g. customer data and focus on what is most important to get right).
• Lead with passion and purpose – everyone need to see leaders putting customers first.
• Communicate in the language of those in the front lines of your business.

3. Focus on the Customer over the Competition

Jeff Bezos (not in attendance) has said “If you’re competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering.” This brilliant round table made similar points about the importance of being led by customers, not by your competitors.

A hotelier shared about how innovation to the room key by a competitor sent senior management into a frenzy to catch-up. But, their own customer data showed this innovation was not important to its customers. Chasing the competitor could have diverted valuable resources from delivering on what’s important to customers.

The point is simple here – have conversations with your customers and act on their needs and wants.

4. The attention economy – from Customer Experience to Customer Engagement

Anne Roggeveen, Professor of Retail and Marketing at Babson college, kicked off a discussion around the “owners” of different touchpoints – that is brand, partners, the customer, and externally (e.g. social/independent). In an increasingly connected and always-on world, the balance of touchpoints has shifted away from brand-owned and towards touchpoints owned by customers, partners, and other external sources.

With less control, Customer Experience needs to broaden to Customer Engagement. It is more important now to engage customers even at the touchpoints that you don’t own (e.g. review sites) and interact with customers beyond your traditional lines of business (e.g. branded credit card that builds loyalty through all a customer’s purchases). Journey Mapping and Path to Purchase solutions are making new strides in understanding all touchpoints along the journey, both on and off line.

You can also engage to help mitigate a bad experience at a partner touchpoint along the path to your brand (e.g. solving for a bad parking experience that is not owned by the sports club).

That’s it for now – there was some great content from this discussion that was left on the cutting room floor – please feel free to comment or email me (sean.dunn@nepa.com) to discuss more about CX trends heading into 2018. And, let me know if you can help me out with my resolution to participate/host more of these discussions this year.

Sean Dunn
Vice President, Client Solutions at Nepa USA

Know what drives customers to walk by your competitor’s store and into yours, to drive more visits and more sales

What is it that Draws shoppers to stores in less convenient locations? I mean, if convenience was the only deciding factor, that would never happen. How can you as a retailer understand the outside draw and take actions that influence shoppers into taking a “Detour” to your store?

Groceries, it is a recurring chore that I, as a family father of three sons, need to complete all too often (with 6 gallons of milk and similar amount of yogurt each week, they tend to reoccur often). I usually go to Publix because it’s convenient and has a great assortment. But lately I find myself wanting to go the long way, looking for another store. I frequent Costco more and more, visit Aldi and Walmart even though they are much further away. I take a detour, go the extra mile to shop at a different location. Why do I take a Detour?

The understanding of why your shoppers take detours is one of the golden key‘s to increase visitation, and sales!

Are your shoppers really your most valuable asset?

The retailer is still essentially a merchant who makes money from the supplier through its services: store, shelves, shoppers and displays. And advertising revenue from suppliers is still the No 1 profit driver for the retailer. While many retailers talk about shoppers being their most valuable asset, many treat them as a necessary evil to be made reasonably satisfied when they frequent the store.

In the words of Herb Sorenson, “Why are retailers not paying more attention to the shopper? They are not paid to! One trillion dollars are paid to supermarkets (from suppliers) to manage their stores in a certain way.”

This is a business model that has been cultivated, refined and profitable for over 100 years, so it’s easy to see that it’s hard for the retailer to change.

Focus entirely on your No 1 asset

But the truth is that it is the shopper that empties the shelves, no matter if the shelves are physical or digital. And here is the big surprise, to the suppliers you are just a channel – as good as any other channel. This is something retailers are acutely aware of in the last 10 years with the rise of new channels such as Amazon.

So, what to do? Every retailer needs to put the shopper in the center of everything they do, if they are to survive. That means changing the way the retailer sees its shoppers, their No 1 current and future asset.

If you want to increase sales, there are essentially 3 ways to do it:

1. Make existing customers buy more – increase basket size
2. Make existing customers frequent your store more often – increase loyalty
3. Increase number of customer – attract new shoppers

Looking at this list, all 3 are in the hands of the shopper. We are avid promotors of customer experience and loyalty, it is one of the best ways to be a profitable and successful business. But even if you are a star at customer experience and loyalty, you also need to attract new shoppers. This blog post focus on the last lever – attracting new shoppers.

Attract more Shoppers

For a business to survive, they must continually build and increase traffic to the point of sale at least enough to match natural attrition.

Simple in theory, but with the rapidly shrinking brick and mortar market, easier said than done. This is about leveraging all that you already have:

• Sales data
• Behavioral data
• Shopper insights

and combining them in a meaningful way. One such application area is shopper choice, i.e. why the shopper chose one store over another, and how that influence your business.

Location, location, location, right? It is immensely important. There is no arguing that the location is one of the deciding factors for a Brick and Mortar success or failure, but is that the whole story?

Yes, it is important to find the optimal store locations for a target group, housing, travel patterns, traffic, parking, competitors etc. But when the store is established, location analytics are irrelevant, right? I mean, why does it matter in the short term?

Location = only 1 of 4 drivers

If location is everything, how can a new IKEA store suddenly redefine what is prime commercial real estate in a market? The answer is quite simple. Shoppers like the IKEA experience and travel quite extensively to get to an IKEA store, and this is true for many different brands and stores. How is it that some customers are willing to go the extra mile to a store that is less convenient, and how can your stores become that “detour magnet”.

Models have long been used to model geography, sociodemographic data, travel patterns and competition using complex algorithms to understand how to place and position stores. But are they giving you the full picture?

For the shopper, only 4 major drivers exist for choosing which store to visit:

1. Value/Price
2. Convenience
3. Experience
4. Assortment

Examining this list, it is clear that location is not everything, just one of four decision criteria. In fact, convenience in form of a great location, can sometimes cost substantially more than the actual gains. It is therefore imperative for the retailer to understand how and why these choices are made.

Introducing “Detour” – learn from the shopper and grow your business

What is convenient? Well, it’s all in the mind of the shopper. What might be convenient for one shopper might not be for another.

Nepa has developed a Detour concept that leverages existing data flows in the shopper centric concept of subjective convenience, i.e. let the shopper define what is convenient and learn from that.

We use sophisticated data models based on purchase behavior, geolocation data, competitor sets and add the layer of shopper subjectivity to understand how the shoppers’ definition of convenience impacts each unique store.

Nepa Detour determines what drives the shopper to take the long way and how that can be nurtured, developed and expanded to grow your business.

4 cornerstones to drive sales growth

Detour is built on Nepa’s Consumer Science platform™. The platform brings to bear the true potential of data science to unleash consumer research’s full power. The detour application merges multiple data sources with shopper insights to deliver bottom-line results.

The Detour solution is a business development tool tailored to drive growth to your point of sales. The Detour application will provide you with powerful analytics and will help you understand the competitive landscape both in perceptions and sales. This understanding will provide you with insights into which specific departments you should focus on, either to improve or to communicate, to leverage your competitive strengths.

The four cornerstones of the Nepa Detour solution:

1. Think local. Each store has a unique set of local factors influencing shopper store choice.
2. Use multidimensional data. Use behavioral, geographical and sales data to understand behavioral patterns and how they influence each of your stores.
3. Inside the shoppers’ mind. No amount of behavioral data can alone bring understanding of the choice process of the shopper, you need him or her for that, and you know what – it is different for different shoppers!
4. Be inspired by data. The local store manager is best positioned to use the knowledge from the Detour application optimally. So, we developed Detour deliverables with him or her in mind – to inspire them in ways that promote action.

Nepa Detour analytics – download our product sheet

Want to know more? Download our product sheet or contact me or your Nepa account manager to discuss how to get more shoppers to take a “Detour” to your stores.

By the way, the reason for my own personal “detouring” that I mentioned in the beginning of this post is:

1. Even though Publix has a great assortment, their prices are just too high compared to the value that I feel they provide. Especially in the Dairy category.
2. If the customer experience would have been great at Publix, my Detours would likely be fewer.
3. Publix doesn’t provide me with incentives to be a loyal customer. I know they have some sort of rewards program, but none has ever been offered or explained to me. That means Publix doesn’t have a clue that I am removing more and more of my business from their stores. This might be the greatest threat to their existence, not knowing what might hit them!

Erik Enecker
Chief Product Officer at Nepa USA & COO Global Product at Nepa