Follow this link to watch webinar now: http://www.agilitymetrics.com/webinars/may23/

We hope you enjoy the webinar as much as our live attendees did. If you have any questions about the webinar or about our solutions for the automotive aftermarket, don’t hesitate to get in touch!

It’s an age old question in the automotive aftermarket. What drives more revenue: great advertising or great customer experiences? On May 23rd at 1pm, Agility Metrics will put this question to rest once and for all.

In this exclusive webinar, Agility Metrics will reveal how great customer experiences influence as many as 80% of all purchasing decisions in the automotive aftermarket. The data is clear and unequivocal: brands who invest in managing the customer experience always win out over brands who neglect it.

But you can’t manage what you can’t measure, so Agility Metrics will also highlight best practices for measuring customer experience excellence in parts stores or service centers. Armed with these best practices, aftermarket automotive operators will be empowered to drive higher satisfaction, stronger loyalty, and greater customer lifetime value.

If you work in the automotive aftermarket and you have a stake in the customer experience, then this webinar will be a great learning opportunity for you. To sign up, just click on the link below and follow the easy instructions to confirm your participation.

Tom McMahon and Melissa Porter, key executives at Grocery Outlet, will be speaking about their Customer Experience Management program at next week’s Next Generation Retail Summit in Austin, Texas. The Next Generation Retail Summit brings together senior level decision makers from across American retail, so that they can engage in dialogue with their peers about how to improve their business processes and streamline daily operations.

Tom & Melissa from Grocery Outlet will be leading a workshop and will be presenting a case history on the use of a Customer Experience Management system to detail how they were able to grow their Net Promoter Score by 7% in just one year!  They will discuss  how Grocery Outlet leverages Clik2Tell to guide the social discussion and empower thrilled customers to promote positive experiences to their social networks. In addition, they will touch on best practices surrounding how best to respond, react to, and repair negative experiences quickly when they arise.

Grocery Outlet has been helping customers save money on their grocery bills for almost 70 years. Today, they are recognized as one of the largest extreme-value grocery retailers in America. By investing in Customer Experience Management, they have also proven their leadership as one of the the most customer-centric grocers in the United States.

We think they have done some tremendous things with customer feedback, and other retailers can certainly learn from their example. In the realm of customer satisfaction, Grocery Outlet is a great success story and we wish Tom & Melissa the best of luck in telling it!

On every retailer’s mind is the challenge of delivering exceptional customer experiences to the new omnichannel shopper. Developments in e-commerce, mobile commerce, and social media over the last 5 years have literally redefined the physical space and timeframe in which retail transactions take place and have brought forward a brand new type of shopper. Agility Metrics has spoken with retail leaders and gleaned five key habits of the omnichannel shopper:

1. They are gluttons when it comes to product information

Back in the good ol’ days, when everybody pretty much owned the same Westinghouse fridge, gathering product information prior to a purchase was a pretty straightforward proposition. But now, with almost infinite product variety, omnichannel shoppers have to consume an enormous amount of product info in order to make intelligent purchasing decisions. They visit retailers’ websites for product specs, they follow brands on Facebook hoping to view videos, and they utilize 3rd-party smartphone apps like Amazon’s Price Check during their shopping sessions to consult online ratings and reviews.

2. They’re much more sensitive to bull****

Remember walking into a car dealership and knowing little or nothing about the cars? Maybe your uncle Larry drove a Honda, but that was about it. When it came to vehicle info, you were at the mercy of the salesman (you remember the type).  If he was honest, you got a fair sense of a vehicle’s strengths and weaknesses.  If he was sleazy, you got a lemon and he got a fat commission check. In the omnichannel world, however, shoppers are often far better informed than the very  sales associates trying to persuade them to buy. Shoppers’  appetite for spin and dishonesty is next to nil.

3. They are both socially-influenced and social influencers

Sounds paradoxical? Well, it’s not.  The omnichannel consumer is heavily influenced by the judgments, trends, and opinions of his/her social graph, but the influence arrow points both ways. A recommendation from Person A can yield a great product or shopping experience for Person B, which in turn can beget a series of recommendations aimed at Persons C, D, and E. We see this on a site like Pinterest: shoppers easily switch between playing the role of influencer and “influencee,” alternately pinning trendy items and falling under the spell of their own friends’ pins and boards.

4. They see the store as a stop in their journey, not as a destination

The store is still a star, but it’s not THE star. The website, mobile site, and social media presences are equally important stops on the omnichannel buying journey. Each one of these stops is equally likely to be a key persuasion or conversion point. This is exactly why well-respected retailers are investing to enhance their stores with more and more of the interactive wizardry of the digital touchpoints. Best Buy is currently testing “connected” stores that will be geared toward driving a dedicated multichannel experience. Similar initiatives are underway across the retail industry.

5. They require a whole new breed of customer experience analytics

The main challenge for retailers in serving their customers across multiple channels is simply keeping track of them. In most cases companies are only measuring customer feedback at the point of purchase, whether it be online or in store. But single-channel measurement is dying and retailers are demanding ways to glue together in-store data with e-commerce data, m-commerce data, and social graph data. The omnichannel consumer demands a whole need breed of customer experience analytics, which spans bricks and clicks and incorporates mobile and social.

If you’re a retailer today, chances are you know more about your customers than ever before. You are probably sitting on top of a mountain of customer transaction records, customer satisfaction scores, call center logs, social media chatter, and many other types of customer insight. Now, you’ve started adding real-time customer feedback into the mix, and all of a sudden, you feel you’re drowning in customer intelligence. After all, they don’t call it big data for nothing!

With so many diverse streams of customer insight pouring in, it can be next to impossible to sift through this overwhelming mass of data and get right to the golden nuggets of actionable insight you need to boost sales and grow customer loyalty. In a retail environment, there is such a thing as data overload, and when you succumb to it, you miss out on valuable information that can help you gain a competitive edge for your brand.

That’s why Agility Metrics has spent so much time building a seamless mechanism for integrating customer feedback into your pre-existing data sets. Whether we’re talking POS, CRM, ERP, or Social CRM systems, Agility Metrics can mesh those sources of customer insight together with real-time feedback from all channels. This eliminates untold hours of painstaking analytical work and lets you zero in on the actionable insights you need to keep on delivering remarkable customer experiences.

With other Customer Experience Management vendors, feedback is locked in its own reporting silo, and you’re left in the dark about the true business impact of a positive or negative customer experience. But with Agility Metrics, you can rapidly mesh experiential feedback with rich customer profiles, allowing you to immediately see what’s truly at stake in terms of customer value.

To learn more, check out our recent white paper on integration or write us @ info at agilitymetrics.com.

Agility Metrics invites you to attend the 19th annual CQCD Retail Convention on March 19 & 20 at the Centre Sheraton Hotel in our lovely hometown of Montreal.

The CQCD is an association of more than 5,000 commercial establishments, representing nearly 70% of retail-related economic activity in Quebec. The CQCD is the undeniable leader of the retail sector; its mission is to represent, promote and enhance the image of the sector in Quebec and to develop ways to foster the advancement of its members.

The CQCD Retail Convention brings together over 600 retail business owners, managers, and professionals for two intense days of networking, learning, and prognosticating about the future of retail in Quebec. This year, the Convention will feature three distinct speaker tracks that cover hot-button topics facing all retailers, large and small: how to increase growth; future technologies that need to be on everyone’s radar; and how to get back to basics to boost operational performance. On hand will be speakers from such Canadian retail powerhouses as Harry Rosen, Rona, Le Chateau, and Aldo Group.

Also on hand to speak will be Doug Stephens, President of Retail Prophet Consulting. The renowned retail futurist will be introduced by our very own Richard Pridham and will share his perspective on the major disruptions, paradigm shifts, and game changers on the horizon for retail in the near future.

Agility Metrics is proud to be sponsoring and exhibiting at the 2012 CQCD Retail Convention. In addition. we will be handling the mobile survey that will capture feedback about each speaker and each panel session. We will be present in the exhibit hall showcasing our technology. So, if  you plan on going, please stop by our booth, meet the team, and see our Customer Experience Management platform in action!

Agility Metrics announced today that Grocery Outlet Bargain Market, America’s largest extreme-value grocer, has been using Agility Metrics’ Customer Experience Management solutions to capitalize on customer feedback, boost operational efficiency, and grow customer engagement across multiple channels. Over the past year, this solution has evolved to become a central part of Grocery Outlet’s ongoing efforts to strengthen customer relationships and build brand loyalty at a time when every shopper is looking to save that little bit extra on their grocery bill.

The custom built Customer Experience Management solution allows shoppers at Grocery Outlet to provide real-time customer feedback via web, IVR and mobile phones. A combination of powerful online reporting technology, role-based performance scorecards, and instant customer rescue alerts ensures that key Grocery Outlet stakeholders are constantly up-to-speed on the pulse of the customer experience across their entire network of supermarkets.

In addition, Agility Metrics has opened up exciting new ways for Grocery Outlet to engage with its most passionate customers on Facebook. With Clik2Tell, Agility Metrics’ cutting edge Social CRM application, thousands of thrilled customers have been able to share their great supermarket experiences with friends on Facebook. As a result, more customers are engaging with the brand’s Facebook fan page, while potential customers are learning about Grocery Outlet through the always effective prism of positive word-of-mouth.

“Agility Metris is a creative, responsive partner and we are very pleased with the relationship,” said Tom McMahon, Grocery Outlet’s Vice President, Sales and Merchandising. “For Grocery Outlet, customer experience is a competitive differentiator. The systems we developed with Agility Metrics give us real-time, actionable visibility into detailed customer feedback. We are making a measurable difference in customer experience.”

Click here to learn more about how Agility Metrics has helped Grocery Outlet strengthen connections with customers and work towards delivering more remarkable supermarket experiences.

If you’ve been following this blog lately, you’ll know that we recently announced the fact that Staples Canada is the latest retailer to deploy our Customer Experience Management solutions.

If you’ve recently visited a Staples or Bureau en Gros location and you would like to provide your feedback, please use one of the links below.

Staples Canada survey: www.stapleslistens.ca

Bureau en Gros survey: www.bureauengrosopinion.ca

Staples Canada welcomes your honest and sincere feedback about your Staples or Bureau en Gros experience. Insights gleaned from these surveys will help Staples continue to deliver some of the best retail experiences in Canada.

We’ve written a lot about the importance of measuring the non-buyer experience. But one emerging aspect of the non-buyer experience that we haven’t touched on a lot is the impact of mobile devices.

In a recent report, Pew found that, during the 2011 holiday season, 25% of all American mobile phone users leveraged their mobile devices in-store to make online price comparisons.  Pew dubbed this segment the “mobile price matchers.”

Put differently, 1 in 5 mobile-equipped shoppers whipped out their phones to digitally price check a product while standing inside a physical retail location. Amazingly, this share went up to almost 40% among mobile users aged 18 to 29.

This suggests a shifting paradigm. Once a relatively hermetic thing, the in-store shopping experience now meshes seamlessly with the digital shopping experience, thanks to the magic of Siri and Google Shopper and Amazon’s Price Check app.

But what should make retailers really snap to attention is an under-reported nugget within the Pew study.  Pew found that after the members of this segment had finishing digitally price checking a product, only 35% opted to purchase that product in-store. In 65% of cases, online price checking failed  to yield an in-store conversion event. As customers elected to keep their greenbacks and credit cards in their pockets and leave without making purchases, in many cases the foregone revenue eventually ended up in the tills of e-comm pure plays (insert grinning Bezos picture here).

Will mobile-augmented shopping lead to an increase in non-buyers flooding the floors of retailers? Will shoppers show up only to sample or try out a product, in preparation for an Amazon or Google-aided conversion event that will occur mere seconds after they walk out the door? That’s the fear right now, which is why retailers are rushing to develop omnichannel marketing strategies that will mesh together the bricks and mobile clicks on terms that are more favorable to them than to Amazon.

But when these digitally-enhanced shopping experiences do fully materialize, retailers will need to smash another paradigm: how they measure the quality of the experiences they are delivering in-store. The familiar, post-transaction, receipt-driven approach that everyone uses to solicit customer feedback must be disrupted and replaced by methodologies that are more sensitive to the new persuasion points that dot the omnichannel customer journey (e.g. the theatrical phenomenon known as the unboxing experience, where customers rip open and dissect their treasures, to the delight of millions on YouTube) .

Mobile will no doubt play a huge part. Retailers can lead or lag on this front—it’s up to them.

If you’ve completed a purchase at a Laura or Melanie Lyne location recently, and you would like to complete either the Laura Customer Experience Survey or the Melanie Lyne Customer experience survey,  then please use one of the URLs below:

Laura Customer Experience Survey – www.lauralistens.ca

Melanie Lyne Customer Experience Survey - www.melanielynelistens.ca

Laura Canada is a true Canadian success story. From a single boutique in Montreal, Laura Canada has grown to 173 stores and has become one of the most successful chains of women’s clothing stores in Canada.

Laura Canada welcomes your honest and sincere feedback about your Laura or Melanie Lyne experience. Insights gleaned from these surveys will help them continue to deliver great experiences for their customers.