Customer Service

In front of 6,000 Wal-Mart associates at the company's annual holiday meeting Wednesday, Chief Merchandising and Marketing Officer Duncan Mac Naughton introduced free layaway with no opening fee. Beginning Sept. 13 through Dec. 13, layaway will kick off the retailer's official start to the holiday season. "Times are tough and it's not easy for many Americans — they're watching every penny," said Mac Naughton. "All year long, but especially during the holidays, our customers need a low price leader. This year, we're committed to doing everything we did last year to help Americans save money — plus more." 

How can the retail customer experience matter when your customers are locked into buying from you? To get the answer, we need to back up a step or two: When you're a retailer, there are two possible commercial relationships you can have with your customers:

With the paradigm shift from brick-and-mortar to online retail, too many business owners think that great customer service has lost its importance. A customer, however, is always a customer, and whether the purchase process takes place in a store or on a laptop, in order to get repeat business, you want to give your buyer the easiest, most enjoyable experience possible. If you're unsure how to improve customer service online, follow these helpful pointers:

Customer service-focused companies pay attention to the needs of their customers. Such companies are amazing. They empower their employees to avoid such negative phrases. They hire the right people, train them properly, and motivate and praise them when they come up with solutions to their customers’ needs and problems. In other words, they empower their employees to come up with solutions where they can say, "Yes!"

In a session on Wednesday at the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition in Chicago, Eli Gurock, co-founder and head of e-commerce at Magic Beans, a cross-channel retailer of baby toys and baby gear, detailed how his company is dealing with showrooming — a term referring to the practice of consumers examining products in-store but without making a purchase, then going online to find the product at a lower price. 

PalmBeach Jewelry, a cross-channel retailer of fashion jewelry based in Boca Raton, Fla., is seeing its customer acquisition rates nearly double thanks to a cross-channel acquisition program it implemented last year. The program, which is based on eWayDirect's CertainSource 2.0 solution, works across

While the rise of digital media channels (e.g., social media sites, blogs, YouTube) in recent years has resulted in a distracted and fragmented consumer audience, it's also provided retail marketers the opportunity to engage customers and prospects at all times in multiple outlets. During a keynote session at IBM's Smarter Commerce Global Summit 2013 in Nashville yesterday, Jay Baer, president of social media and content marketing strategy firm Convince & Convert, laid out how brands can deliver highly personal and relevant experiences to consumers across all channels and touchpoints.

You've seen the public apology video. But, the better story is how J.C. Penney is engaging with customers commenting on the mea culpa. It seems the company has clearly learned a valuable lesson: Listen to your customers. The company is letting commenters know their feedback is being passed on to internal teams such as the buying department. Two days after the video was posted it had attracted about 200,000 views and nearly 900 comments. J.C. Penney was commenting about 30 times an hour, mostly in reply to other comments - both positive and negative.

Customers who have contacted customer service have elevated expectations of the brands with whom they do business — as well as continued frustrations. These are the conclusions we reached following  a recent survey conducted earlier this year to learn customers' attitudes about the kind of service they receive. Last month I pointed out that 42 percent of customers told us that they would rather stand in line at the DMV than contact customer service. This fact, as well as other key findings from the survey, are highlighted in the infographic below.

Officials in Taiwan are investigating claims that Samsung paid people to post favorable reviews about its products online while at the same time offering up negative feedback on rival HTC’s products. The investigation launched after the Fair Trade Commission received numerous complaints on the matter.