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Retail Business Review | Monday, August 29, 2022
Full-service retailers compete by providing consumer support at every shopping touchpoint.
Fremont, CA: Customer service is essential to all retail since it supports customer loyalty and improves the customer’s overall retail experience. Still, retailers must decide what level of service they will offer to their customers:
• No service, for example, Amazon Go concept stores that do not have associates or check lanes
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• Self-service, for example, most grocery shopping experiences where the product is available for the shopper’s selection is available on-shelf. This goes further when shoppers use the self-checkout to scan the items, process the transaction, and bag the product themselves.
• Full-service
The type of support services, called the service type, extends from self-service operators that offer few basic services to full-service operators with a broad range of greatly personalized services.
Full-service retailers compete by providing consumer support at every shopping touchpoint. This isn’t just limited to the realm of personal interaction but incorporates service types that can make the shopping process easier:
• Accepting several forms of payments, like cash, check, or credit card
• Offering delivery services
• Making recommendations or offering demonstrations, like offering recipes, cooking classes, or product samples
• Allowing exchanges or returns
• Allowing special orders
• Providing customer loyalty programs
By offering excellent customer service, retailers create opportunities to build customer relationships with the potential to enhance loyalty and referrals. Still, it should be noted that services often come at some cost to the retailer, primarily in increased labour. Therefore, retailers must balance the desire to offer several services against customers’ willingness to pay for further support services. Full-service typically requires premium pricing. Thus, full-service retailers must train their personnel well to provide excellent customer service to make their customer service a meaningful differentiator against competitors.
There are numerous ways that food retailers deliver services to consumers. They can have counter service, where goods are out of the reach of buyers and must be obtained from the seller. In food retail, counter service typically takes the form of the deli counter or meat department, where an associate will make recommendations, portion items, and package them for the shopper. This type of retail is normal for small, expensive items, like jewellery, and controlled items, like medicine and liquor.
Another way is special orders, which can be online, in-person, or by phone. Many food retailers provide this service in their bakery departments, where cakes can be specially ordered. The meat and floral departments may offer similar services.
Some retailers offer in-store pick (ship to store) or delivery to the consumer’s home (home delivery). Wal-Mart is experimenting with the same services for in-store pick-up or home delivery of online grocery orders.
Many other retailers are doing the same using InstaCart.
There is also self-service, where goods may be handled and examined before purchase. In food retailing, this is much more normal with sampling or product demonstrations. For instance, warehouse club stores often offer sample items to overcome the large ticket price and quantities of their items.
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