Customer Service

Forward-thinking retail organizations across the globe understand that nurturing the customer experience goes beyond the initial sales engagement. The importance of visibility into the customer journey and the seamless integration with manufacturers are vital as customer expectations rise. In fact, when it comes to making a purchase, 64 percent of people find customer experience more…

While consumer expectations for effortless, personal and speedy interactions with customer service agents have been steadily on the rise, these expectations have increased even more since the COVID-19 pandemic, as the shift to digital has accelerated. A company with artificial intelligence (AI)-first customer experience at its core, we at Netomi were keen to dig deeper…

Customer perceived value is an oft-used term in marketing that looks at how consumers view services and judge their value. Additionally, customer-perceived value looks at the ability of a business or sales team to adequately meet customer needs and/or expectations. To truly understand and maximize customer-perceived value, businesses must accumulate insights from all customer conversations…

Artificial intelligence-powered chatbots may be extremely common in customer service, but do they make sense for sales? Consumers seem mixed on the idea, but overall, they seem to prefer bots for uncomplicated tasks. Salesforce, for example, found that 69 percent of consumers prefer to use chatbots for getting answers to simple questions. But when people…

In this episode of Retail Right Now, Total Retail's Joe Keenan and Kristina Stidham discuss an article recently published by Total Retail titled “5 Steps to Make Sure Your Vendors Deliver a Seamless Shopping Experience,” authored by Tara Kelly, founder, president and CEO of SPLICE Software. Maintaining brand standards across vendor partners is essential to…

The interactive voice response (IVR) system has been with us for the better part of a century, with its origins dating back to the 1930s. Today’s IVRs do more than let consumers complete a range of routine tasks like checking product availability or store hours. Where brands have embraced conversational artificial intelligence (AI), they’ve found…

Whether you sell online, from a physical store, or both, there are probably people communicating with your customers on your brand’s behalf who are not on your payroll. It could be a delivery partner, a warranty or call center, an app that provides automated shipping updates, or a partner that provides online chat services. Each…

The convenience of online shopping is indisputable — and it continues to give brick-and-mortar retail a run for its money. While 2021 saw a rise in brick-and-mortar retail as a result of lifted pandemic restrictions and vaccine availability, e-commerce sales still grew at nearly three times the rate of brick-and-mortar. But digital retail does not…

The world of online shopping is here to stay. With retail and e-commerce so intricately connected, 2021 saw global e-commerce sales reach $4.2 trillion, and 2022 predictions are to surpass $5.5 trillion. This already growing trend to switch to online shopping was propelled forward when COVID-19 hit. This has brought about new challenges for the…

In episode 337 of Total Retail Talks, Editor-in-Chief Joe Keenan interviews Natalie Hurst, director of customer success at Nuuly, a clothing subscription rental experience from the Anthropologie, Free People and Urban Outfitters family. Hurst discusses Nuuly's rental and resale services, her role in creating a seamless rental experience for the brand's shoppers, and the customer…