What Every Business Can learn from Chewy.com about the ROI of Customer Experience, Plus Much More…
This week’s Customer Experience Microlearning
The Greatest Gift We Can Give to Others. Share with your team!
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CX + AI
Today, many grocery store chains offer their customers an app that indicates the aisle and shelf location of products. I love this. I don’t want to track down an employee only to have them tell me, “On the right-hand side of aisle 16.”
The Walmart app: You can use its “Find an item” feature in Store Mode to search for an item, view the aisle number, and see a store map showing its location. The AnyList shopping list app lets you customize lists based on your store’s layout (e.g., rearrange categories like Produce → Dairy → Frozen) to match how you shop. The AisleMate app lets you teach it which aisle an item is located in at your store, so it can remember for future visits. The Instacart app’s “in-store navigation” feature allows you to tap an item in your list, which then displays a map with the item’s location.
By combining AI and human expertise, businesses can create more meaningful, engaging interactions that resonate with customers. Brands must strike a balance between automation and the right amount of human expertise.
The DiJulius Group can help. Let’s set up a call.
Episode 231 of The Customer Service Revolution Podcast: Making Price Irrelevant
What Every Business Can learn from Chewy.com about the ROI of Customer Experience
Too often, when a customer/client decides to stop doing business with a company, things can get ugly. Businesses will point to existing contracts/memberships or lay on guilt trips of how much they have done for their customer over time. All these tactics only confirm to the client that they are making the right decision. This doesn’t happen at Chewy.com. They do the total opposite when they find out a customer will be terminating their services with them. Watch this 27-second clip of a Chewy customer’s heartfelt reaction after reaching out to cancel her pet-food membership when her beloved pet passed away.
@becca_vonbereghy Replying to @simplysteffey I am literally speechless 😭❤️ thank you @chewy I will keep this beautiful painting forever #chewy #customerservice #petloss
Let’s Start with the ROI of CX
With 70 percent of sales coming from automatic order refills, it is also no surprise that Chewy’s customer service experiences have earned the company one of the highest Net Promoter Scores, consistently in the 80s and 25 points higher than its nearest competition. In 2017, Chewy was acquired by PetSmart for $3.35 billion, at the time the largest-ever acquisition of an e-commerce business.
According to a recent report, overall customer satisfaction with online retailers fell over the past year. More than two-thirds of online retailers experienced declines in satisfaction compared to the prior retail study. However, Chewy bucked the trend by maintaining the highest overall customer satisfaction among online retailers with a score of 85. Chewy has held the top spot for the past three years.
An online retailer of pet food and other pet-related products, Chewy has become a brand that pet owners can’t live without. Chewy’s customer service and resulting customer satisfaction score with pet owners are outstanding, providing the company with a competitive advantage that is hard to beat.
Now the HOW
Chewy places a careful focus on creating a signature experience at every touchpoint, starting with customer service training that teaches its representatives to build connections with customers. Reps learn to go above and beyond, especially when their customers are dealing with the emotional loss of a pet. It is a touching and compelling example – particularly for American consumers, who tend to think of themselves as “pet parents” – of how being human is good business and can lead to an extended customer lifetime.
Chewy’s customer experience action statement is “Exceeding Expectations Through Every Interaction.” Channels for customer service include over the phone and via their website. Contact centers are staffed 24/7 with employees who love pets, all but guaranteeing a warm chat experience in which the customer feels cared for and heard. Chewy even built a large internal “wow team” responsible for dreaming up and executing remarkably thoughtful, kind, customizable solutions, similar to the example above. With company policy clearly being to offer the best service ever, it’s not surprising that Chewy has made the list of favorite brands.
*Related – 5 Steps to Creating an Organization Obsessed with Going Above and Beyond
The Day-Maker Dopamine
Going above & beyond for your customer is about pattern recognition. Educating your customer-facing employees on what to look for at each touchpoint. I like to call it the “day-maker dopamine”, which refers to a phenomenon often discussed in psychology and neuroscience. When we engage in acts of kindness or altruism, it can lead to a release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and reward. And it absolutely has a place in the modern workplace.
This effect has been referred to as a “helper’s high” and has been studied in the context of why people feel good when they help others. The idea is that engaging in altruistic behavior activates the reward centers in the brain, leading to the release of dopamine, which in turn creates a feeling of pleasure or satisfaction. As it turns out, it is a key driver of both employee satisfaction and best-in-class customer experience.
How to Wow in the Business World
The ability to go above and beyond – for customers and coworkers alike – allows your employees to put their unique fingerprint on the experience. This fosters creative autonomy, allowing them to come up with their own ideas and exercise their brains in a way that they hadn’t been before, giving them a sense of ownership in the experiences they provide. Beyond a basic sense of responsibility, employees are more connected to the experience they are providing when they feel they have a hand in creating it. For strong company cultures and the strongest impact on employee engagement, leaders need to make employees feel safe in always doing the right thing.
Best of all, when your employees perform an act of kindness, they experience an increase in oxytocin, the chemical that makes us feel warm and fuzzy. We even appreciate it when we hear a story of generosity or witness one. This releases oxytocin. It makes us want to be more generous. That is why storytelling and sharing all the great things your team members do for customers and each other is so important.
Organizations achieve greatness when employees are allowed to do unexpected things, show initiative and creative thinking, and are empowered to step outside the norm. That is when delightful, engaging, and amazing results occur.
Turn great service into your biggest competitive edge. Start elevating your customer experience today.
