Why the Customer Experience Matters in Retail Banking, Pharmacies, and Other “Captive Customer” Situations

By Micah Solomon

An item that's become an emergency due to timing: supplies from Staples for something the customer needs to complete tonight (e.g., homework or a bound report, supplies from Michaels Arts & Crafts for a project the customer's community group is expecting to work on that afternoon).
An item the customer truly needs and can only, realistically speaking, get from you. For example, you're the pharmacy the customer's doctor called the prescription in to.

In retail scenario one, the customer experience is the entire point of, and the entire hope for, your enterprise. If your customer doesn't have a fabulous, pleasing-to-the-senses-and-psyche experience, she's not coming back to your store. (Or even more likely these days, when socially generated content predisposes customers to act or not act, she won't even show up the first time.) The value of the retail customer experience here is obvious: This is the classic scenario of "a man without a smile shouldn't become a merchant."