Consumers look for safety before shopping

Editor’s note: Catherine Gutierrez is VP of marketing at MFour Mobile Research, Irvine, Calif.

When the virus spread, it took down safety and security with it. The customer experience was stripped bare. In fact, 72% of our consumer panel is still concerned.

But buyers are looking to their favorite brands to help them through a tough time. It’s in your hands. A full 62% believe that brands play a critical role in addressing the challenges of the crisis.¹ They’ve opened the door and are waiting for you to create a great customer experience for them.

Even before the crisis, 59% of consumers said they felt that companies had lost touch with the human part of customer experience. And 75% say that they prefer to interact with a person, not a machine.² Now their needs are amplified because they’re not getting the connections they crave.

In this blog, I will share four ways you can impact customer experience – and sales.

Safety

Maslow didn’t plan to be a marketer.

But he was one. By creating a hierarchy of needs, Maslow also built a blueprint for customer experience. And right after accounting for physiological needs, that means creating safety. At the time of study, 67% of consumers said they’re looking for safety before they choose a retailer.

They need to feel safe. And that’s not just with masks and sanitizer. It’s seeing what you’re doing as a brand.

Show them that you care about their well-being. They want order, predictability and control. Especially now. Train your team to be aware of, and share, what your company is doing to help. The marketers who get this right stand to win a massive amount of share.

Intimacy

Relationships motivate behavior.

Consumers want real people. Be proactive and ask what will make their lives better. Don’t stress them – or yourself – out by trying to guess what they want. Just ask. Send a survey while they’re in your location and get real-time feedback. Once you know what they want, make good on it.

Follow through on what you say you’re going to do. This will help your buyers to feel intimately connected to your brand. It establishes trust. And trust is a trait that transcends hard times.

Prestige

People love to be liked.

Reputation matters and they crave their peers’ respect. Many people have put themselves in the back seat during these times. When you’re working from home, why not wear sweatpants or pajamas? No one’s going to see you. As places reopen, they care again.

Help consumers see how your brand meets their needs for respect and reputation. They’ll associate their positive self-perception with a high affinity for your brand. And you’ll create a loyal customer.

Fulfillment

Maslow calls it self-actualization.

But, whatever name you’d like to use, it means the same thing: personal growth. The army does it well. The old tagline, “Be all that you can be” is a perfect embodiment of fulfillment. Just remember, before this need for growth can be met, your brand must have already helped consumers to reach the earlier steps. That means your customer experience must first create safety, intimacy and prestige.

Customer experience

Now is a good time to find out where you stand. Consumer behavior has many motivating factors.

Your goal is to find out which ones work best for your brand – and your sales numbers. To do that, take stock of where you are today.

Many companies are now overhauling their relationship surveys for new and relevant questions on customer relationships. You’re no doubt considering the same thing. That may mean adding new survey language, altering some of your questions or collecting the data differently.

Here are two ideas for you:

1. Run an exit survey.

Exit surveys are a simple way to see how consumers feel in-the-moment and are sent as a buyer, or a non-buyer, leaves your location. You can ask exactly how they feel as they leave. This can be helpful as 50% of shoppers forget what they did within an hour.³

The data is also representative of your buyers. Why? Because you’re only pinging the people who are naturally buying your product, or a competitor’s brand, as they’re leaving. No concerns here about relevance.

2. Send an app or web survey.

Online purchases are up 50%.⁴

Survey to see what shoppers are doing online, and why. New technology allows you to see consumers’ app behavior and to track where they’ve been online. You can use this approach to capture accurate insights on buying behavior, essentially seeing e-commerce footprints, as well as physical ones. Use that data to impact your omnichannel strategy and beat your competitors before they ever reach the game.

Time to adapt

There’s no question that the customer experience has changed. Now, it’s up to us to adjust. It’s time to be agile and to adapt. And the sooner we get started, the further ahead we’ll find ourselves.

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