Customer Service

Deliv CEO Daphne Carmeli calls the startup she founded two-and-a-half years ago a disrupter for the retail world, and as CEO she's entitled to boast. But Carmeli isn't that far off in her description of a service that, with a few tweaks and twists, can be likened to a far more famous disrupter — rideshare services Uber and Lyft. Deliv is a crowdsourced delivery service used by retailers like Williams-Sonoma and a growing number of malls owned by such companies as General Growth Properties and Simon Property Group. 

How small retailers (both online and brick-and-mortar) can compete with Amazon and its vast resources, cheap pricing and fast delivery.

How do you compete if you can’t offer same-day delivery? Doug Sternberg offers his expert thoughts in this webinar.

Join us for this fast-paced session covering advanced strategies retailers can use to optimize your email marketing performance.

Listen as we map out simple customer service best practices you can implement today, and keep customers coming back time and again.

Last year, 61 percent of retailers cited customer retention as their greatest obstacle. It's easy to view e-commerce innovations as the enemy when a once-faithful customer base abandons brand loyalty in favor of the cheaper or faster option. But these challenges offer retailers opportunities to take a hard look at existing loyalty programs and business strategies to make updates that better suit the changing behaviors of their target markets. Here are five methods retailers can use to grow customer loyalty in today's digital age:

Kohl's CEO Kevin Mansell has stated that he intends to turn the company into the most engaging retailer in the nation. Even though the nationwide department store chain remains very profitable, Kohl's will face an uphill climb before it can claim the title of "most engaging retailer in the nation." Despite a seemingly impressive 2013 sales number, the retailer's sales were actually down 1.3 percent from the year earlier. Kohl's and other big-box retailers are having to come to terms with rapidly changing technology as well as the resulting changes in the shopping habits of American consumers.

Successful e-commerce companies have found ways to incorporate both automated systems and human processes to help run their organizations. Through their implementation, these systems and processes produce a significant amount of data that companies can tap into, helping to improve performance. In an effort to balance this overflow of data while not losing sight of the people on the other side of those numbers (i.e., your customers), I suggest building what my company calls an e-commerce customer lifecycle platform (ECLP).

By 2017, 50 percent of all U.S. retail sales will be omnichannel. Enabling agile commerce is table stakes for your business. But who will drive these initiatives? Research shows that retailers expect the CFO to spearhead e-commerce. So, how will you demonstrate the return on investment of omnichannel fulfillment to your CFO? Sign up for this informative webinar and learn how to gain your CFO's endorsement on implementing industry-leading omnichannel initiatives that blend the best of online technology with offline fulfillment. You'll learn how to:

• leverage intelligent order routing logic;
• optimize your return policies and procedures; and
• prioritize financial sales attribution.

History and academic research tells us there are four basic types of consumers: drivers, socializers, supporters and analyzers. The Greek philosopher Hippocrates was the first to document these "four humors." Every one of us have some of each type, but one is usually dominant and ends up influencing purchasing decisions. Understanding each type will help you interpret the limited information you receive — or don't receive — from prospects, and tailor the communications with them that ultimately lead to meaningful relationships.