5 September 2018
Facts tell - stories sell
Today, the customer journey is very much happening across several channels and many consumers are in particular using the Internet to check out and get more specific knowledge about the product they are looking for. This also means that today the customers are more well-informed about the products when they visit the shop. So how do you give the customers a unique experience which surpasses the ordinary product information and which makes them return again and again? One of the answers is story telling.
Let me amaze you!
Today, omni-channel is a widespread phenomenon among retailers where the customers can zap between various channels. This has resulted in the fact that the customer journey can start on a completely different channel than the one on which the final purchase is carried out.
Illustration and numbers from '2018 Foresee Experience Index: Retail CX Insights'.
According to the ‘2018 Foresee Experience Index: Retail CX Insights’ – an annual survey conducted among 40,000 consumers from Canada, the US and the UK – 28% of the customer journeys which start on the computer end with a final purchase in a physical shop. The same applies to 27% of the customer journeys which start on the mobile.
In other words, a huge percentage of the customers who visit your shop are already familiar with the products you sell and it is therefore an advantage for you to use story telling to catch the customers' attention and provide them with an extra experience by introducing them to a very unique story centred around the product. That story telling becomes more and more popular in the retail industry was also obvious at the world’s largest retail conference NRF Retail’s BIG Show in New York where this was one of the hot topics.
At the conference, it also became obvious how the use of story telling not only gives the customers a unique experience and makes them ambassadors of the individual brand but also has the side benefit that it provides the shop staff with an increased pride in their work and a larger enthusiasm about what they are selling.
The best way to understand it, is to experience it
Dyson, a worldwide technology company which, among other things, designs vacuum cleaners and hair dryers, is one of the brands that use story telling a lot in the store in New York. The store has been designed with a minimum of products and instead it features an interesting story about Dyson’s technology and the development illustrated by some display models of enlarged examples of product engines. In this way, Dyson tells an inspiring and catchy story with a detailed explanation of the technology in the hair dryers. Stories which can bewitch even a bald man to buy a hair dryer for the price of DKK 3,000 because his wife simply must own the product which is so much more than just a hair dryer.
Using strong stories about the latest technology in the products, Dyson is serving technical sophisticated information in a vivid and captivating way for the customers. In this way, Dyson is training their customers to become experts in the products, creating a wow effect and is giving the customers an experience which outmatches their expectations.
For the female segment in particular, Dyson has created a different form of story telling. In addition to focusing on the technological machinery, Dyson is offering their customers to have their hair washed in the store and subsequently have it blow-dried and styled using the ground-breaking Dyson hair dryer. In this way, already in the store the customers can experience why they no longer can live without a Dyson hair dryer at home.
Wine smart
As a customer in Total Wine & More, USA’s leading wine and alcohol retailer, another kind of story telling can be experienced. For a wine enthusiast the story about the wine, the vineyard and the area is an equally important part of the product as the wine itself. It is therefore incredibly important to Total Wine & More to create a story about each individual wine and in this way train the customers in the history of the wine.
With more than 8,000 different wines, it can be hard for the staff to know all the products equally well. As a result, Total Wine & More has included digital touchpoints in their shops to support the staff’s knowledge about the individual wines. The digital touchpoints contain, for example, videos with the wine farmers telling the story about their farms and wines which the customers in the shop can see and listen to. This provides the customers with an authentic and unique insight into the wine as if they had visited the vineyard themselves.
The digital touchpoints also help the staff feeling extra well prepared since they can also use them to learn more about the individual products in the shop. This is the way, Total Wine & More is training its staff to become experts in certain wines or vineyards and they therefore become consultants for the customers in the shop. A role which creates pride among the staff and increases their commitment and thus provides the customers with an extra good service.
Are you also interested in supplying value-adding story telling? We would like to invite you for a cup of coffee or we can drop by for a non-binding talk about how you can give the customers a unique shop experience.
Contact Casper Bo Jørgensen, Customer Relations Manager, at: +45 23 30 79 56 or write to cbj@hesehus.dk.
More news