Customer Service

It’s not April Fool’s Day! Just before the holidays, Lowe's really is introducing two robotic shopping assistants at one of its Orchard Supply Hardware stores in San Jose, Calif. According to a press release from the home improvement retailer, the autonomous robots — called OSHbots — were developed by Fellow Robots, a technology company that specializes in the design and development of autonomous service robots, in partnership with Lowe's own Innovation Labs.

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J.C. Penney says it's back in the business of giving its solidly middle-income customers what they want. The 112-year-old department store chain has switched itself off from survival mode and put the spotlight back on growth. The fixes for a failed transformation, including a mended balance sheet, were put in place over the last 18 months under CEO Mike Ullman. Now new president and CEO-designee Marvin Ellison will start work at the retailer's Plano, Texas headquarters Nov. 1, and a transition plan is ready to implement. 

Engagement is a word you hear over and over again in the retail industry. Companies are continuously looking to find ways to better engage customers and prospects in an effort to create lifelong relationships with them. B-to-B retailer New Pig, a seller of absorbents and spill containment and control products, has found an interactive way to engage some of its best customers. New Pig's Vice President of Direct Marketing Robert Cameron presented a session yesterday at NEMOA's directXchange Fall Conference in Groton, Conn. on the company's "pig panel."

Customers are angry at Hudson's Bay after the company cancelled some of their online orders, purchased at a deep discount by combining multiple rebate codes. Over the weekend, customers were sharing the discount codes on popular consumer forums such as Redflagdeals.com. Customers said they were able to purchase items at a major discount. In one post on RedFlagDeals.com, a user said he was able to purchase a Vitamix blender that regularly sells for $530 for 45 percent off. 

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L.L.Bean has done it again. For the third time this year, the Freeport, Maine-based apparel and outdoor gear retailer has topped the customer service charts. According to StellaService, a customer service benchmarking company, L.L.Bean was rated in the top 25 in all categories, earning the top spot for best overall customer service in July 2014.

A day after announcing a disappointing second quarter, Wal-Mart has made an aggressive holiday promise to its customers: the world's largest retailer says it will staff every cash register from the day after Thanksgiving through the days just before Christmas during peak shopping times. Wal-Mart's "checkout promise" is aimed at addressing lengthy waits in checkout lines. "We feel good about price and having the top gifts of the season, so the next priority is about getting customers in and out of the stores quickly," Duncan Mac Naughton, Wal-Mart's chief merchandising officer, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

Does the senior team at your company talk about superior service and the importance of going the extra mile for customers? If so, how many actually walk the talk? To steal an immortal line from the former Texas governor Ann Richards used when describing George W. Bush, it's typically "All hat, no cattle." Or more aptly, "All PowerPoint, no action." I recently received a message from a good friend named Eileen Scully. She shared a heartwarming story from her friend Michael John Mathis. Michael had posted the following message on Facebook recounting an episode of lost glasses on a train.

The ability to better understand customer buying behavior, and then being able to actually use that knowledge to create optimized (i.e., personalized) marketing campaigns, is a key differentiator for retailers in today's hypercompetitive market, particularly when it comes to reaching and communicating with consumers online. 
With this in mind, Macy's has invested in a predictive analytics solution from SAP. The national department store chain, and specifically its e-commerce operation, Macys.com, deployed SAP's InfiniteInsight solution in the first quarter of 2014.