Customer Service

Brands today are equipped with a bevy of digital tools and data to get an intimate look into consumers’ purchasing habits. But at a time when, unlike any other, we have a population that spans four generations — each with a distinctive relationship with brands, social media and technology — customer expectations are more unpredictable…

Brands have traditionally invested heavily in customer service as a central component of the customer experience. However, new research from project44 suggests that may be changing. The apps that power our lives, and specifically those that power our purchases, have continued to evolve, reshaping the customer experience. As a result, delivery, which was once a…

To stand out during the high-stakes holiday season, merchants should start a conversation with shoppers — literally. Conversational commerce that combines human and machine intelligence is crucial to delivering the interactive customer experience shoppers crave. The conversational commerce revolution is underway. Fueled by the swift adoption of voice-activated “smart speakers,” which Microsoft predicts 75 percent of…

Technology is great. It has fueled innovation, increased reach to larger customer audiences, and provided broader product access to everyone. However, we know that sometimes simplicity is powerful. In all of our racing to be best and first to win the customer, the art of a simple verbal thank you has been lost. Sincere appreciation…

Today’s retail landscape is undoubtedly competitive. As customers flock to direct-to-consumer (DTC) e-commerce brands (e.g., Warby Parker, Casper, Dollar Shave Club), many traditional brick-and-mortar retailers are struggling to stay afloat. This is evidenced by recent store closures from Dressbarn, Charlotte Russe, Payless ShoeSource, and Gymboree. With Coresight Research predicting that U.S. store closures could reach…

The back-to-school (BTS) shopping season is well underway, with total retail sales projected to reach a whopping $27.8 billion. However, despite claims that Amazon.com is destroying retail, more than half of U.S. consumers are planning to shop for supplies in-store instead of online this year. So, what does this mean for brick-and-mortar retailers? The BTS…

While retailers have traditionally competed on the basis of the “Four Ps” — product, price, promotion, and place — increasingly this isn't enough. According to Gartner, 81 percent of marketers say they expect to be competing mostly or completely on the basis of customer experience in the near future. Yet keeping up with the demands of…

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) struggle to compete on equal footing with the enterprise behemoths that dominate their industry. In other words, how do local retailers compete with the Amazon.com and Walmarts of the world? Providing a better customer experience is fast becoming the competitive differentiator and driver of success for businesses of all sizes…

In this week’s Retail Right Now, Total Retail's Kristina Stidham and Ashley Chiaradio discuss an article recently published on Total Retail titled “What Traditional Retailers Can Learn About Customer Service From Today’s DTC Brands,” written by Brad Birnbaum, CEO of Kustomer. The article focuses on how direct-to-consumer (DTC) businesses prioritize and excel at providing frictionless customer…

Today’s top direct-to-consumer (DTC) startups have built their businesses by creating differentiated, frictionless customer experiences that focus as much on how they serve customers post-sale as they do on the shopping experience. As a result, these new brands are building lasting customer relationships that are fueling e-commerce’s rapidly growing share of retail sales and the…