The Critical Role that Customer Service Serves to Drive Brand Success
3 Ways Retailers Can Restore Soft Skills and Boost Profits Ahead of the 2025 Holiday Season
In a new piece published on Retail Customer Experience, PSOW’s Pamela Eyring advises how retailers should focus on controllable factors like empathetic interactions, consistently training staff and remaining agile to make an impact on maximizing their share of consumer spending.
For retailers, the first part of 2025 has proven to be anything but predictable. As consumer demands shift, and markets tighten, and unpredictable factors from tariffs to changes in supply chains complicate the lives of retailers, the search should start now to find new ways to ensure that potential slimmer margins prioritize profits as they navigate the remainder of the year. One factor that is entirely within reach, and something that retailers can focus on with impact is what it takes to compete for customers by offering an unforgetting customer service experience.
Heading into the holidays, the competition for customers will be fierce — but fortunately, retailers can improve the experience of this most critical factor by focusing within, which is the one thing that is in their control.
It won't be price, product quality, or brand reputation that differentiates successful companies from their less customer-focused counterparts. It will be the customer experience that sets them apart.
According to one PwC customer survey, 73% of respondents indicated CX was more important than advertising, price, and product quality when making a purchase decision. Forty-three percent of shoppers would pay more for greater convenience, while 42% would pay more to make purchases in a friendly, welcoming environment.
Conversely, one analysis found that 61% of customers will switch brands after a bad experience, making engaging and connecting with customers from the first interaction more important than ever.
That's why retailer success in 2025 doesn't have to depend solely on expensive marketing campaigns or the latest sales techniques. It's predicated on a back-to-basics approach to customer service that seeks to elevate CX in every interaction.
In other words, retailers can become more competitive long term by improving soft skills, the attributes and interpersonal abilities that enhance customer interactions, foster loyalty and create a more personalized, positive shopping experience.
In the article, Pamela provides 3 steps to outperform the competition to give a genuinely enjoyable customer experience:
Control what's controllable
Teach, train, retrain soft skills
Account for generational differences by remaining agile
To drive CX for better bottom line results, prioritize customer experience through enhanced soft skills, that retailer will be one that truly sets themselves apart.
Read the full article on Retail Customer Experience.