Customer Retention Tactics From Lands’ End, Home Depot, ProFlowers

Offer great customer service, make sure your messaging is personalized, and have a single view of the customer are some of the best ways to create brand loyalists. These were a few of the key takeaways from a panel discussion on customer retention that took place at the eTail West conference last week in Palm Desert, Calif.

While Lands’ End's catalogs, email program and social media pages are the retailer's primary customer retention vehicles, perhaps its biggest differentiator is its "Guaranteed. Period" policy, said Sam Norpel, vice president of digital transformation and acquisition at Lands’ End, who spoke on the panel. The policy enables Lands’ End customers who aren't satisfied with any item for any reason to simply return it at any time for an exchange or refund of its purchase price.

In addition, Lands’ End's call enter, which is located at the company's headquarters in Dodgeville, Wis., "is the surprise and delight aspect of our customer service and retention," Norpel said.

To illustrate this point, Norpel shared a story about how a Lands’ End customer was getting married and staying at a bed-and-brekfast and was concerned about getting a wakeup call. So she decided to call the Lands’ End's customer service center and asked a rep there to do it, and he complied.

Nitin Bhaskaran, senior manager of online product management at The Home Depot, who joined Norpel on the panel, agreed that great customer service is the best retention tool out there.

"We're succeeding in customer retention by doing the basics right," Bhaskaran said. "We give our customer an A-star experience every time they shop with us."

Jen Horsley, regional vice president of new business development at HelloWorld, a marketing solutions provider, discussed one of its retail clients in the beauty space that does a great job around personalization, which is driving customer retention and lifetime value for that company.