Best Practices for Improving In-Store Customer Experience

**Crafting an Unforgettable In-Store Experience** 🏬 In today's digital age, creating a memorable in-store experience is vital for brick-and-mortar retailers. Here’s how to make your store irresistible: 1. **Captivating Store Layout** - **Zoning:** Organize by product categories for easy navigation. - **Pathways:** Create logical paths with eye-catching displays. - **Flexibility:** Use modular furniture for easy reconfiguration. 2. **Interactive Displays** 🎥 - **Technology:** Integrate digital screens and AR. - **Demonstrations:** Host regular product demos. - **Customization:** Offer personalization stations. 3. **Sensory Atmosphere** ✨ - **Visuals:** Use creative lighting and appealing merchandising. - **Sound:** Play brand-aligned, comfortable background music. - **Scent:** Introduce a subtle, pleasant signature scent. - **Tactile:** Make products accessible for touch. 4. **Excellent Customer Service** 😊 - **Training:** Regularly update staff on product knowledge. - **Empowerment:** Allow employees to make quick, small decisions. 5. **Community Events** 📅 - **Schedule:** Maintain a calendar of engaging events. - **Inclusivity:** Cater to diverse groups for broad appeal. **Attention to detail transforms stores.** By focusing on layout, interactivity, sensory elements, customer service, and community, you ensure your store stands out, driving traffic, sales, and loyalty. Share your thoughts 👇 Let's start a conversation. ✍️ Your insights do make a difference! ——— ♻️ Reshare if this is helpful 👋 Follow me Joseph Stepke for more like this

I’ve been out of retail operations since 2014, but as a very frequent grocery shopper, I still have lot of opinions on how store operations could improve. I worked at 10 stores in 10 years and then delivered field support to 35 stores for 3 years. Finally, I developed technology and process improvements to all stores for another 3 years before moving into corporate purchasing. It’s likely that I’ll never have direct impact on retail operations again, but if I did, there are two processes I would implement that, I believe, would have an outsized impact on customer satisfaction: #1 - implement a traffic director. I think the most important part of the store for customer satisfaction is the front speedway. This is the horizontal “aisle” that separates the registers from the vertical grocery aisles. It’s the main artery that every single customer has to pass through to check-out and navigate between aisles. This traffic director, positioned on the front speedway, can direct traffic in two different ways: one, they can acknowledge and address issues at the registers and they can guide customers to the register that will expedite their checkout. Two, they can direct customers to what they’re looking for on the aisles. These are two pain points for customers that can be addressed with one person. This traffic director should have contact with both the front end and the departments through the store so they can remedy any customer requests- out of stocks, backed up registers, price or ad questions, etc. Long lines and out of stocks are frustrating but not nearly as much so when there is an employee that can acknowledge the inconvenience and work to fix it. #2 - empower employees to solve customer problems. They should never say “sorry, we’re out.” There are very few items in the store that aren’t substitutable. If associates are empowered to make decisions and solve customer problems, they can turn a negative situation into a positive one. I used to train newly promoted assistant grocery managers. They were shocked when I told them that if we were out of Coke 12-packs on a Sunday afternoon, I’d give customers a 2L to hold them over until the truck arrived the next day. They said “we’re allowed to do that?!?” Empowerment of your associates creates the opportunity for the best customer service outcomes. If you run grocery store operations, please steal these ideas and let me know where you implement them. I’ll be your newest, best customer. Image credit: publix.com

Have you ever gone down the wrong road trying to solve a problem? One project I reflect on often involved working with a client to address their stalling in-store bakery sales. Initially, the problem seemed clear: customers wanted healthier options. But by the end of our collaboration, we discovered the opposite—customers were craving indulgent, freshly baked goods. The real issue? The bakery wasn’t hitting the sensory cues of indulgence and freshness. How did we uncover this? We shopped with customers, letting them guide us. Observing their behaviors, we noticed they bypassed the bakery for the cookie aisle. They weren’t avoiding sweets; they were just buying them elsewhere. Why? The bakery departments were optimized for cleanliness and efficiency. Staff baked everything early in the morning and cleaned thoroughly afterward, leaving the space sparkling. The problem was, this pristine setup felt more like a hospital cafeteria than a bakery. There was no aroma of fresh baking—just the smell of cleaning products. Customers didn’t sense anything was freshly baked, so they skipped it for trusted options like Oreo cookies. What did we do? A simple tweak: we adjusted the baking schedule to produce fresh chocolate chip cookies during peak hours, letting the irresistible aroma waft through the department. The result? Customers were drawn back, buying far more than just the cookies. The takeaway? Before making major decisions, pause and consider all potential directions. Validate your assumptions by observing your customers in action. Don’t just ask questions—watch, listen, and probe thoughtfully when something piques your curiosity. Want to learn how to apply these insights quickly and efficiently? Follow me here for more tips, or reach out—I’d love to help you better understand your customers and in-store experiences. #retailexperts #innovation #execution #themindfulinnovator #bakery #instoreexperience #customerexperience #ethnography

Waiting is one of the worst experiences there is for customers. But not always. Why are some waits intolerable, while others are bearable or even better? Please share your examples of the best and worst waiting experiences in the comments. ⏲ Unattended vs. attended waits. 📉 Unattended waits are a bad #customerexperience. 📈 Attended waits are fine or even better parts of #CX. ❓ What's the difference between the two? Unattended waits are: 💡 Any time spent waiting when both the duration and the purpose of the wait are unclear, and the person waiting has not been acknowledged. You want to eliminate or minimze unattended waits whenever you find them. How do you do that? Here are 4 ways to address the root causes of what makes unattendend waits so frustrating: 💠Let your customers know that you know that they are waiting. 🏨 Eye contact plus A quick one-minute gesture from an employee at the hotel front desk who is on the phone goes a long way with a customer. It lets them relax and switch into a more passive mode of attention, rather than staying vigilant, which is tiring and frustrating. 💠Give customers an estimate of how long the wait will be – the more accurate the better. 🚉 Countdown clocks on public transit have significantly diminished wait time frustration at a fraction of the cost of running more trains or buses. 🎧 Estimates of how long until the next customer service rep will be available do something similar. 💠Give customers options other than waiting. ☎ Can they call back later? ☎ Can you call them back later? Can they make an appointment or reservation for another day? These options won’t work or even be taken up by every customer, but they will push many waiting customers into better options. And the availability of these options signal to all customers that you value them and their time. 💠 Manage the perception of the wait. Give customers a comfortable place to wait, enough chairs in the waiting room, good WiFi, pleasant hold music, and the like. Make it clear that the wait is fair, there is one line, and one way to wait. Or make it so it doesn’t feel like waiting - occupying their time by filling out paperwork, or keeping busy in some other way that makes them forget the wait. Follow these four steps, and you can eliminate the negative emotions like uncertainty, doubt and feeling unappreciated that customers associate with waiting.