Retail customer service: The experience matters

Retail customer service is the support given to shoppers. Traditional retail support is an in-person experience—a shop assistant talking with a customer browsing racks of merchandise or an agent speaking with a customer by phone. Today, retail customer service has expanded beyond traditional methods to include social media, messaging platforms, and even AI agents.

• What is the importance of customer service in retail?
• Examples of good customer service in retail
• 5 necessary skills to improve retail customer service
• 6 best practices to improve retail customer service
• Frequently asked questions
• Boost your retail customer service with Zendesk

Retail customer service has always been important. Successful brands like Nordstrom and Costco have an almost mythical reputation for doing whatever it takes to provide their customers with excellent service. But that high level of service tended to be an outlier; for many companies, customer service was an afterthought. However, the growth of online stores and the saturation of the retail space has created a scenario where dissatisfied customers can easily abandon retailers, even ones they’ve been customers of for years, and move on to a competitor.

The result: customer experience, particularly in the digital world, is now a competitive differentiator among retailers, and the retailer who provides the best retail customer experience will win.

Now that we've covered why good customer service is important, here are some real-world examples from Dunlop Sports, Unity, and Lush.

Dunlop Sports

Dunlop Sports is a sports equipment company with a family of brands, including Cleveland Golf, Srixon, and XXIO. The business had spent years using an outdated, call-center-like approach to customer service and switched to help desk software for an omnichannel customer experience. With Zendesk, Dunlop maintained its call center operations while incorporating digital channels to meet their customers where they are—resulting in a 95.3 percent customer satisfaction score (CSAT).

“We have dramatically improved the level of service we’ve been able to provide both internal and external customers, which wouldn’t have been possible without Zendesk functionality and reporting.”

—Michael Mullen, vice president of operations at Dunlop Sports

Unity

Unity is a development platform that empowers creators worldwide to build real-time 3D projects across the games, animation, automotive, and architecture industries. From 2019 to 2020, Unity experienced explosive growth and relied on Zendesk to maintain positive customer service. Using an automated ticketing system, Unity was able to reduce operational costs and deflect tickets with automation, self-service options, and time-saving workflows—improvements that led to $1.3M in savings.

“Zendesk tools enabled us to quickly recognize a large increase in ticket volume, identify the cause, and create steps to mitigate the problem. Without Zendesk, our support team would have stayed underwater.”

—David Schroeder, senior manager of services support at Unity

Lush

Lush is a UK-based cosmetic brand that prioritizes fair-trade practices, sustainability credentials, and cruelty-free cosmetics. Lush adopted Zendesk in 2014 to power all of its customer support channels—email, live chat, text, and telephony system—to monitor and analyze customer inquiries. After adopting issue tracking software and AI tools, Lush was able to achieve an 82 percent one-touch resolution across 21 markets and 15 languages, and $434K in annual cost savings.

“Our six founders are still very involved in the business and they make these amazing products, and want everyone in the world to have them. But what might work in Dorset might not have the same cultural relevance in Japan or Eastern Europe. Zendesk enables us to quickly spot when a product, or perhaps a joke on our website, didn’t quite land right outside of the U.K.”

—Naomi Rankin, global CX manager at Lush

Support teams need to develop a wealth of customer service skills to provide an outstanding CX in every interaction. While there's more your team could focus on, here are five of the most important to get you started.

Empathy

Empathy helps support agents understand a customer's feelings and plays an important role in building customer relationships and de-escalating high-tension situations. In retail situations, customers could also have unique needs, so having customer support agents who understand consumers and work to find an acceptable solution for both parties is critical. Agents should actively listen and acknowledge client customer emotions to foster meaningful interactions and quality customer service.

Communication

All support agents should excel in written and verbal communication. Strong communication skills can help them interact with customers, escalate tickets, and ask for help effectively if they need assistance completing a customer request. Additionally, maintaining a positive tone, using simple language, and showing attentiveness can make all the difference in creating a smooth and enjoyable shopping experience.

Product knowledge

Agents need to be well-versed in your products, services, and policies to best assist customers. Without this information, customers may often be put on hold while support agents find the information they need—leading to bad customer service. Strong product knowledge allows employees to answer questions quickly and confidently, make recommendations, and assist shoppers in finding the best solutions for their needs.

Speed

Customers expect quick responses and fast resolutions—they don't want to be kept on hold or waiting for additional information. Speed is important for support agents in two ways. First, it can help them learn new concepts quickly and become proficient in your CX tools, like trouble ticketing systems. Also, speed in customer service interactions helps them solve issues in less time, helping to provide a good CX.

Reliability

Many businesses strive to improve first contact resolution—or resolving customer support issues in the first interaction. However, there will be instances where support agents need to do more fact-finding and contact the customer again at a later date. Fostering reliability helps support agents follow through on these customer commitments, provide accurate information, and ensure that issues are resolved efficiently.

With rising customer expectations and an ever-changing business landscape, it's not always easy for retailers to provide the level of service they'd like. That said, here are some best practices you can use to improve your service in every interaction.

Invest in AI and automation

Investing in AI and automation can help you take your customer service to the next level. One such example is AI agents—advanced chatbots that can handle even the most complex customer interactions from start to finish.

They can also autonomously resolve standard technical issues, process refunds, modify reservations, and more. This allows your customers to get instant answers while freeing support staff to focus on more important tasks.

Another way you can use this technology to improve your operations is with AI-powered workforce management. Tools like Zendesk WFM have capabilities like automated scheduling, AI-powered staffing forecasts, and advanced analytics to monitor team performance. Businesses can use these features to improve productivity, manage costs, and ensure there's always a support agent ready and available to help customers.

Embrace a customer-first approach

Being customer-first means putting the customer at the center of organizational decision-making rather than only focusing on products or profits. When businesses embrace this approach, they naturally create a better CX.

For example, let's say your organization's website will be down for a few hours at the end of the month. A customer-first approach would be to notify customers about the outage, either through email, social media posts, or another contact method. This ensures your customers are well-informed and won't be greeted with a 404 message when they desperately need help.

Listen to your customers

Sometimes, the simplest way of improving your customer service is to listen to them. Keep an eye on support tickets in your request management software to see if there are any recent trends that you should address. For example, maybe you introduced a new product, and consumers are confused about how best to use it. In this case, tweaking your offering or developing an instructional article or video can help you improve your CX and show your customers that you are listening to them.

Optimize self-service resources

Customers don’t always want to talk to an agent—sometimes, they just want to find answers themselves. Consider investing in help center software that can help you build self-service resources like knowledge bases, FAQ pages, community forums, and more.

You can also leverage an AI agent to answer commonly asked questions and surface relevant self-service articles—and free up your agents for questions that need more personal attention.

Meet your customers where they are

Your customers are unique; some may spend most of their time interacting with AI agents on your website, while others prefer email communication or social media support. It's crucial to meet your customers where they are and deliver omnichannel customer service.

But it's not enough to offer a mobile version of your online store or staff a sector of social media specialists. True conversational customer service means connecting the entire conversation across channels with key customer context that flows through effortlessly.

Create more personalized experiences

According to Zendesk Benchmark data, 76 percent of customers expect some level of personalization. To create individualized experiences, start by bringing together data from across the business—including marketing offers, past purchases and returns, ticket history, and communication channel preferences.

Use that information to make your customers feel like you are speaking directly to them, like surfacing product recommendations based on search history or having agents know the full context of the customer's situation when they reach out to your support team.