Videos are an excellent tool for companies in the retail industry to improve their customer experience. There are plenty of video creation tools and devices to use, so even small retail stores can get their videos done in-house without much hassle.
Before the internet was a big thing, companies only used videos primarily for advertising. Nowadays, you can share a video with the whole world with just one click. Therefore, the availability and the benefits of using videos to improve a customer’s experience, leave no excuse for small or large-scale retailers to not implement it.
Aside from improving the overall customer experience in retail stores, videos are also a great digital asset for companies looking to build their online presence.
Now, let’s discuss one of the most effective tools for making your retail business stand out and offer a memorable experience to your audience: videos. But before we proceed on how a video can improve customer experience in the retail industry, you should keep in mind that there’s no clear-cut way to create an outstanding video. Many factors such as customer demographic, store location, product choices, and company branding play a role in creating a video that provides value to your customers.
Here are some ways that videos improve retail customers’ experience.
1. Improves in-store navigation
Retail stores are often jam-packed with products with a few dozen aisles that your customers have to navigate. Providing in-store navigation in the form of video could help your customers find the items they want more efficiently. If your retail store has more than a few aisles, you could also include a list of products in each aisle to better the customer experience.
Another perk of using a video in your retail store is to provide information about your store, such as checkout location, product testing area, and customer service area. Aside from improving the customer journey, it could also save your staff from repeatedly answering generic questions.
You can also use videos to provide a safety protocol video that shows the exits, fire hydrants, and evacuation route in case of emergencies. Having a safety protocol video available publicly in your stores also shows your commitment to ensuring the customers’ safety, which positively impacts their experience.
2. Provides on-demand assistant
While the retail industry generally relies on physical stores to make sales, a survey by Microsoft found that 63% of millennials begin their customer service interactions through online portals. The same survey also found that 74% of customers perceive a brand better when it provides a helpful solution to their complaints.
Having a video that addresses frequently asked questions on your website could save you plenty of time and resources to reply to those questions. Besides, videos have proven a better method of delivering information with a high retention rate.
Videos are a versatile tool to share helpful customer-oriented videos. Aside from posting a video on your website, you can quickly implement videos throughout your omnichannel customer engagement platforms, including social media.
3. Introduces new product organically
As a retail company, it’s always in your best interest to sell more items and get more revenue. Introducing new products to in-store customers with the help of promotional videos has never been easier unless you have a well-written product description.
While promoting new products in your retail stores by using sales promotion staff could be effective, it could also cause discomfort for your customers who just want to be left alone. An in-person sales approach could lead to a negative customer experience if not handled properly, taking up to 12 positive customer experiences to make up.
A survey found that 84% of people have bought a product or service after watching a video about it. Since the increased product sales are also in the manufacturer’s interest, you don’t even have to invest in making the videos yourselves.
Simply having a product video up in your retail stores can increase customers’ experience avoiding an aggressive and in-person sales approach.
4. Engaging customers with personalized service
Creating an engaging customer experience is a massive challenge for the retail industry. The massive scope of customer demographics in the retail industry is not easy to cover, making it almost impossible to create a personalized marketing campaign.
But you can make up for the lack of personalized marketing campaigns with personalized customer service using the power of video calls. 63% of consumers expect businesses to understand their unique needs and expectations, including their complaints.
While you can address the generally asked questions using a templated web page with a video, more complex problems often require intricate handling from a dedicated customer service agent. Leveraging the power of technology, especially video calls, can provide your retail customers with an engaging and personal experience that shows your dedication to solving their problems.
Why You Should Put Customer Experience First
Videos are one of the most effective tools for improving customer experience in the retail business. But why should you even bother improving it when your sales are still growing?
Here are several key statistics that should convince you to prioritize customer experience for your retail business above all else.
- When making a purchase, 6 out of 10 consumers prefer a better customer experience over lower prices (Gartner). Providing a better customer experience also helps your retail company to retain customers.
- A mere 5% increase in customer retention could lead to a 25% better profit for your company (Bain & Co.).
- Obtaining a new customer could be 25 times more expensive than retaining existing ones (Harvard Business Review).
- It’s also worth noting that 56% of businesses globally view customer experience as a competitive differentiator that makes their brand better than others (Statista).
With all the pros of having a top-tier customer experience, it makes sense that more than half of businesses are leveling up their customer experience standards. Providing a great customer experience is an easy task to achieve once, but keeping consistency is a real challenge.
Conclusions
There is plenty of research and surveys that acknowledge the importance of customer experience to a business’s growth, especially in the retail industry. While you must fix the underlying problem that causes a bad customer experience, it’s equally important to treat the customers with respect and courtesy.
You can leverage the amazing technologies available to address this issue, and one of them is implementing videos to help your customers find a helpful solution, which indirectly improves their business experience.
Author Bio
Andre Oentoro is the founder of Breadnbeyond, an award-winning explainer video company. He helps businesses increase conversion rates, close more sales, and get positive ROI from explainer videos (in that order).
Twitter: @breadnbeyond
Email: andre@breadnbeyond.com
LinkedIn: Andre Oentoro
