Is your business focused on improving its customer experience? Many businesses are these days. Walmart is one of these businesses. But are the Walmart customer experience designs failing improvement efforts?
Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it.
–Peter Drucker
Peter Drucker certainly understood the real meaning of a great customer experience design, didn’t he?
The end state quality of what the customer received was what counted. Including the experience of the customer while he purchased the service.
Often that is what was remembered the most.
Companies lose customers for a variety of reasons, some of which they never discover. Sometimes customers walk away after a single unpleasant experience.
Other times they’re frustrated by a series of small perceived problems. Is a lack of a customer experience strategy costing your company customers?
Do you know the answer? It is not rocket science, is it? It is a key secret to your success, however.
The truth is, it usually takes significantly more time and energy to find new customers than it does to lose them. So you can be sure a strategy to build a positive customer experience can pay off when done well.
All the marketing in the world cannot make up the damage when it is done poorly or ignored.
Customers today engage with businesses in many different ways, leading to numerous touchpoints and tremendous opportunities for positively influencing their customer experience.
If one considers the hundreds of interactions each customer has throughout his/her lifecycle with a company, how do you define a customer experience to focus their limited resources?
When it comes to coupling the Wal-Mart customer experience to their marketing, they don’t yet grasp the importance of the improved design, do they?
But customers are often less tolerant of their experience (if average experience or better) if the company focus is lower prices.
What constitutes a great customer experience? (See our article on the nine truths to improve customer experience and service design.)
The quality of a business’s customer experience is ultimately determined by the way customers feel after their last interaction. If the customer is unhappy, the customer experience is bad.
If the customer doesn’t have a feeling one way or the other, your business’s customer experience is mediocre.
If the customer feels good, your business’s customer experience is satisfactory. But if the customer feels delighted, your business’s customer experience is a substantial competitive advantage. (See our article on the laws of customer experience).
is the only one that matters to success to most companies. Why shouldn’t it be the same for your Walmart store?
But should it be that way though? It shouldn’t and here is why I conclude this.
Walmart’s customer experience … creating good feelings
When a business does something good for someone, that somebody feels good about them. Are you familiar with Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream brand?
They are leaders in this type of discrimination. Other than the focus on lower prices, can you name one thing Walmart does to create good customer experiences?
(SeeWhat Ben and Jerry’s Can Teach You About Social Commerce Business)
Deliver happiness
Feelings and emotions certainly have a significant role in the way customers influenced in the marketing process.
Zappos and its business culture of ‘delivering happiness’ certainly has established this as one of its distinct customer experience designs.
No evidence of Walmart’s customer experience strategy in this area.
(See Zappos’ Marketing Strategy… What is Their Difference Maker?)
Walmart’s customer experience … product presentation
Have you ever been in a Whole Foods grocery store? If you have, you will remember the emphasis on the visual presentation of their products. Draws your eyes to many, even if you are not looking for them.
Helping customers visualize and sometimes taste the products. Traditional product aisles and a product presentation at Walmart.
They work hard at just getting to average, don’t they?
(See How Whole Foods Marketing Uses Social Media to be a Difference Maker)
Walmart’s customer experience … employees don’t care
If you hire people that are not delighted to be social and servicing people, you’ll likely end up with employees that don’t care. Nothing is worse for a customer’s experience.
Most Walmart employees don’t have a positive service attitude, do they?
Walmart’s customer experience … solving customer problems
Being very good at solving customer problems is a great way to create a good experience. Very needed in the technical product lines of computers and electronics, for example.
The standout in this category is Best Buy with its Twelp Force and Geek Squad home services.
If you want to ask technical questions on electronics products, better do it before you get to Walmart is our experience.
Limited solicitation of customer feedback
Many customers are itching to tell you how to improve. If they are not given an opportunity, it degrades the experience.
Likewise, customers always feel good when they see positive improvements.
I have never seen a suggestion box or any activity where Walmart solicited my feedback. What about you?
Walmart’s customer experience … limited employee authority
No empowerment for employees to do the right things? You might as well build a robot to respond to customers.
Nothing worse than have an employee that knows what needs to be done, but is not empowered to do it. Little to no evidence that Walmart empowers employees much.
Little to no personalized customer engagement
Employees who rarely smile and engage socially at one on one engagement are at a very serious disadvantage in being able to create a delightful customer experience.
In the longer term, the business needs to build relationships, particularly with its best customers. Hard to do with no personalized engagement.
Poor to average personal engagement is how we would rate Walmart.
Walmart’s customer experience … poor follow-through
If a customer is told X will be done, they should feel that it will happen. Hopefully faster and better than promised. If something unexpected happens, a good experience demands the customer to be notified and kept informed.
Not much experience with Walmart on this criterion.
Don’t meet expectations
If promises are not kept, expectations by the customer not achieved, negative experiences result. Too negative and your business will lose the customer forever. The absolute last thing you want.
I can’t ask a lot of Walmart without going to extremes. Average at best on this criterion.
The bottom line
So, in summary, here’s the thing: social isn’t just a new way of marketing, it’s a new way of running a business.
Many businesses certainly have figured this out and are using social marketing and improved customer experience to grow their business rapidly.
