Why Clienteling is Important for the Retail Industry

One of the most important trends in the world of retail is Clienteling, a process that helps companies build relationships with their customers and, consequently, increase their sales. By implementing it in your retail business, you can create a more personal shopping experience for customers.

According to Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC), customers are willing to pay up to 16% more for customized shopping experiences. With Clienteling, retail companies offer a unique experience which is optimized to allow greater customer involvement, promoting empathy between the brand, staff and customers.

“Clienteling is about more than fancy technology, customer service tips, or well-trained salespeople. And while it’s always been an important part of any good retail strategy, it has taken on new meaning in today’s omnichannel world.” – Endear

What is Clienteling?

Clienteling is efficiently using information to create intimate customer experiences. – Endear

Customer acquisition is a process that helps retailers create and manage profitable long-term customer relationships. The goal of Clienteling is to provide a more personalized shopping experience for customers and increase customer loyalty and sales.

With Clienteling, the sales staff will have a complete view of the customer and their information will be accessible for them, no matter where it was generated in the first place: an iPad, computer, or even if it was captured in another store. The information is available to all sales staff at the touch of a button.

There are several steps involved in creating a successful customer acquisition program, including identifying high-value customers, creating customer profiles, and developing customized marketing plans. It’s all about personalizing service and making customers feel at home every time they interact with your brand, no matter what channel they use.

Retailers who implement Clienteling programs can see significant improvements in key metrics like customer retention, average purchase amount, and more sales.

A PWC study discussing the importance of customer experience, and mentions that in Latin America 49% of customers are willing to abandon a brand completely, after having a bad experience with them. Conversely, good experiences pay, and one of their benefits is customer loyalty.

How Does Clienteling Work?

According to Endear, clienteling can be broken down into two main functions:

• Collecting data on customer interactions.
• Leveraging this information to craft intimate, personally-relevant brand experiences for customers.

The Benefits of Clienteling for your Retail Business.

In the ever-changing retail landscape, businesses must find new and innovative ways to keep their customers returning, and Clienteling is one of them.

Clienteling also helps build long-term relationships with customers by providing personalized service. There are many benefits to implementing a customer acquisition program in your retail business:

• Clienteling can help increase sales by providing a personal connection with each customer, creating an environment where customers feel comfortable asking for advice, and making more purchases.
• Clienteling can help improve customer loyalty. When customers feel appreciated and valued, they are more likely to return to your store and recommend it to others.
• Clienteling can turn customers into loyal fans of the brand or indirect advertisers who will speak well of the brand that made them feel so good, gave them such good personalized treatment, and excellent customer service.

Why Clienteling?

Clienteling embodies your brand’s personality, creates powerful, personal customer experiences that creates brand and customer loyalty and helps with hyper personalization of customer experience, based on brand recognition and great customer service, both online and in store.

• 80% of companies’ revenue comes from 20% of customers.
• 79% say being able to engage with knowledgeable store associates  is “important” or “very important,” according to a new survey from Tulip Retail, 
• About 73% said they would be interested in having a store associate text or e-mail them about order status, including items being shipped to the store for pickup.
• 72% who have dealt with a store associate who uses a mobile device to provide things like product info, credit card checkout, and inventory look-up said it resulted in a better shopping experience.

How Can you Implement Clienteling in your Retail Business?

There are several steps you can take to implement successful clienteling in your business, including creating customer profiles, tracking customer purchases, and providing personalized service. When it comes to delivering a great customer experience, there are a few key things you can do to set yourself apart from the competition.

Here are some tips to help you get started:

• Make sure your sales staff are very knowledgeable about the products they sell. If you can recommend products based on what your customers are looking for, they will appreciate the experience and are more likely to return.
• Take the time to learn your customers’ names and call them by name whenever possible. Show that you care about them by making them feel important.
• Welcome your customers when they walk through the door. Make them feel at home, as if they were part of your team. A company that empowers its employees to treat customers better, will always have happy customers.

Clienteling and Customer Data

Clienteling starts with data, but it ends with quality personal interactions. In fact, almost 80% of shoppers say they will only engage with personalized offers. Shoppers who receive a genuine text, call, or personal email are much more likely to take action than those who receive a lackluster automated email.

The best personal interactions are the real ones. It’s a very bad experience for a client to receive an automated and poorly thought-out message from a brand. A well-designed email is fine, but it’s much better when a human being is available to build a legitimate relationship and listen to the customer’s needs.

To create an intimate and unique message, promotion, or experience for each customer, relevant data needs to be easily available to every member of the team. Here’s what real-time data your team should capture.

• Personally Identifiable Information: Personally identifiable information (PII) includes a customer’s name, address, email, and phone numbers. It can also refer to his or her birthday, anniversary, and other important dates as well as whether a customer prefers to shop in-store or on his or her smartphone or mobile device.
• Point of Sale Data: Accurate point-of-sale (POS) data shows you what a customer bought, when they bought it, and if they returned it. It essentially represents that customer’s relationship with your brick-and-mortar store.
• E-commerce data: E-commerce data includes what a customer browsed, favorited, and purchased online. eCommerce data may be easier to collect than POS data, but what’s difficult is reconciling the two. (Endear’s omnichannel tracking feature calibrates customer data across multiple channels and helps your team drive sales on both.)

Clienteling is All About the Personal and Authentic. 

In today’s digital era, customers are more connected than ever, and expect a hyper- personalized shopping experience. This is why Clienteling is so important, as the process of providing a personalized shopping experience for each customer.

There are many benefits of Clienteling for retail businesses. First of all, it helps you build long-term relationships with your customers and keeps them coming back. Second, it will allow you to learn more about the needs and wants of your customers, which may result in more sales and other beneficial results.

Due to the importance of personalization in e-commerce, customer expectations are changing faster than ever. Clienteling is necessary to create powerful experiences for the customer and, therefore, create customer loyalty.

Start Selling Smarter.

Together, Teamwork Commerce and Endear equip your team with a fully omnichannel mobile retail solution with an integrated clienteling platform. Follow up after an appointment, announce new product drops, or let a customer know when that dress they love is finally back in stock. Create branded, personalized stories sent over text or email using the product catalog already linked to your e-commerce site.

https://www.teamworkcommerce.com/clienteling-with-endear/

Take a look at how Teamwork’s functionality, scalability, partners, and integrations set us apart. Get answers to your unique questions, and find out why Teamwork is the right fit for your retail business.

https://www.teamworkcommerce.com/demo-request/