Retail customer experience: Is your place of business driving your customers mad?

I may just have been out shopping too long in the busy holiday season, but suddenly every sound and sight in the stores was bugging me. The music was too loud in one place.  There was a persistent beep-beep like the backing up of a garbage truck in another; it hurt my ears.

Then, in a coffee shop where I took respite, I had sun blinding me at the one and only open table and no shades to draw. When I moved to a newly vacated seat, turns out it was under the heating/cooling mechanism that alternated between, well, HEAT and COOL, with a jet engine-like blast of air doing to my hair what those turbo hand dryers in public restrooms do to hands these days.

In my last stop of the day, I rejoiced at finding an acre of bargain clothing to choose from, except when I found a sweater I liked, the overhead lighting was so bad I couldn’t tell if the sweater was navy blue or black or…something else.  (Bad lighting seems to be abundant in trendy stores these days.)

Environmental aspects of retail customer experience

Have you paid attention to the environmental aspects of your place of business? The temperature, the music, the noise? Maybe I was only having a bad day, but I’ll bet more customers than me absorb negative environmental factors subliminally, maybe causing them to leave your store without making a purchase, or vowing never to return to your bank.  A thorough mystery shopping evaluation program might just uncover something you, perhaps, have grown used to in your place of business, but is setting a valued customer’s teeth on edge. Many of our retail clients have improved their customer experience with our assistance. Click to read some retail client testimonials.