Customer Service

To reach consumers, brands need omnichannel strategies that deliver a consistent customer experience at every touchpoint. Yet today’s technical and business conversations about omnichannel are often too limited in scope to achieve what’s ultimately possible. Brands typically only focus on customer interactions across one or two channels or fail to break up the many information…

Thousands of companies today, large and small, are realizing the importance of building trust and giving customers a voice through functions such as customer consent and preference management. Regulations such as GDPR and CCPA, as well as customer backlash related to poor customer experiences, has forced much of this shifting environment for brands today. Why…

It has never been clearer that mobile channels are where customers are. In 2020, consumers spent an average of 4.2 hours per day on their phones. At the same time, conversion rates for e-commerce hit a record, reaching 3.5 percent on Black Friday and Cyber Monday this past year. While that is way up from…

TL;DR: Pandemic stress-related toxic communication can creep into your customer communication. Don’t let it! Set the example, nip toxicity in the bud, protect your team from incoming, build in rest, celebrate the good stuff, and codify that positive voice in your company style guide. As we think about healthy communication at work, we’re reminded of…

Of the many challenges that brands had to confront last year, the shifting behaviors and heightened expectations of consumers still remain the top issues in 2021. As such, one truth still sits above the rest for brands: the customer always comes first. Indeed, organizations were required to adapt to the status quo or risk losing…

2020 was a decisive and divisive year for retailers. Those that had already embraced or were quick to embrace e-commerce were able to capitalize on the accelerated shift toward digital spurred by the pandemic and leverage its infrastructure competitors. Those that were slower off the mark are either still playing catch-up or have shuttered entirely.…

In this episode of Retail Right Now, Total Retail's Melissa Campanelli and Kristina Stidham discuss the latest trends impacting retail customer communication methods, drawing on key insights from a recent survey conducted by NAPCO Research, sponsored by Podium. The subsequent report, "A Message for Retailers: Go Digital," details what retailers should be considering as they…

Many national retailers began announcing their 2020 holiday season plans and shopping promotions much earlier than in years past. The holiday shopping season was particularly different considering the COVID-19-induced drastic shift from a traditional brick-and-mortar shopping experience to an even more robust online environment. While stores ponder their physical store operations, retailers understand that 2021…

Customer service has become a competitive differentiator for retailers — on par with quality and price. When a person reaches out to a company with a question or issue, the experience has an immediate and direct impact on whether they will do business with a company again — now or in the future. Retailers like…

Like everything else last year, retail brands were forced to learn to live with a new reality. Since the beginning of the pandemic, as consumers adapted to quarantines, social distancing and masks, they also adapted how they interact with brands. More than ever before, they took to conversational artificial intelligence (AI) — the technology that…