Make customers your biggest fans

Retailers need to focus on how they treat and develop their workforce to meet customer needs, says Kate Sweetman, co-founder of SweetmanCragun

The key competitive question that every retailer should be asking themselves is, 'how do I make my customers our biggest fans?,' says Kate Sweetman, co-founder of SweetmanCragun and a part of Thinkers50.
"How do I make customers genuinely excited to visit my store or my mall? What can I offer them that will make them choose my venue before all others? What can I discover about my customer that enables me to meet their needs better than anyone else?," she elaborated. "To answer these questions, you really need to understand your customer and the other choices that they have. These choices may be other stores or malls. They may also be other forms of entertainment and leisure."
Speaking to Khaleej Times at the RECon Mena 2017 conference and exhibition, Sweetman noted that the GCC region is blessed with is many "gorgeous malls and shops", but this comes at the risk that people will see them all as the same.
"Thinking creatively about how to meet customer needs to make your offering truly distinctive in their minds is the essence of strategy," she said. "That is what gives you a competitive advantage, and entices customers to come to you and not your competitors. And, as we all know, success is a moving target. What was distinctive and innovative a few years ago, becomes common and ordinary today. Smart companies and smart retailers know how to keep moving and pushing and creating and innovating within their brand identity - or even shift their brand identity."
When it comes to adopting digital innovations, she revealed that the leading industries are technology, financial services, and media. The laggard industries are healthcare, education, and retail. The reason why any group lags in innovation usually boils down to not having a mindset of innovation.
"Perhaps they are victims of past success - why change when you are already winning? Perhaps they are such experts in what they do know, that they fail to realise that so much more can be done. Sometimes the issue is a lack of curiosity to look beyond the known boundaries. Perhaps the key decision-makers surround themselves with old friends and don't bring new people and new ideas into the mix," she said.
She also pointed out that the answer to delighting a customer may not be technology, such as having robot greeters, but the opportunity to capture data, convert it to information, and use it to gain customer insights that lead to better offerings.
"Be inspired by places like amazon.com and Disney; they really get customer insight," she advised. "How do they think about the customer experience from the moment the potential customer becomes aware of the brand, to interacting with the brand, to being inside the mall or store, to after they leave. How can every touch point be deeply satisfying? Make them want more? Technology can play a very big role in this."
But it is not only about the customer, she cautioned. Retailers also need to focus on how they treat and develop their workforce to meet customer needs, and the operational support that brings everything to life.
"You can think of this in three ways: digitisation of assets such as infrastructure, connected machines, data, data platforms; digitisation of operations including processes, payments, business models, customer and supply chain interactions; and the digitisation of the workforce to create digital tools, digitally skilled workers, and new digital jobs and roles. The companies that are at the top of the growth charts in and industry are using, pioneering and expanding in all these areas," she informed.
Sweetman also highlighted the importance of having more women as active decision makers in the retail industry. "It defies logic that women are not at the center with the men in developing the right offer. It has been proven over and over again that any team will get better outcomes, whether it is innovation or simply profit, when men and women are both on the team in more or less equal measure. Retailers that get that right will have an enormous competitive advantage."
- rohma@khaleejtimes.com