Would Retail Experience Count as Customer Service Experience?

Retail is an essential part of any business, in fact, many businesses largely rely on retail for selling of their products. Retail is the selling of goods and services to consumers, where the seller seeks to profit from customer transactions. It involves direct contact with customers or clients either over the phone, on e-commerce sites or in person. As Steve Jobs said, “Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.” Someone with retail experience has the quality to get close to the customer and genuinely help them.

Customer appreciate customer experience more than anything. In fact, according to Gartner, when it comes to making a purchase, 64% of people find customer experience more important than price. Good customer service includes good retail service as well. A retailer is the first face or first person the customer interacts therefore they are trained to be good to the customers in every way. Salesforce says that, 64% of customers want to shop with companies which can meet their needs in real-time and a retailer is the one who meet the customer needs immediately before or after a purchase. Therefore, retail experience can, in fact be counted as a customer service experience as well. As Tony Hsieh said, “Customer service shouldn’t just be a department, it should be the entire company.” Therefore, customer service should be something that the whole company is contributing to including the retailers and in turn they should also be credited with customer service experience.

Retail has become very important for businesses to flourish in recent years after the covid. In fact an Kearny article states that In the US, 81% of Gen Z consumers prefer to shop in stores to discover new products and more than 50% say in-store browsing is a way to disconnect from the digital world. Here’s why retail experience can be counted as customer service experience.

• Retail experience is when someone is a frontline worker in a business who is involved in daily conversation with customers and potential customers. Customer service is knowing your customers’ needs and fulling them in the best way possible and a retailer’s job is exactly that, to assist the customers.
• Retail can be considered as customer service as well because they see customers every day, direct them to the correct areas of the store which they need, or helping answer any questions they need and its absolutely customer service experience.

In simple words, retail experience can be considered as customer service experience. However, there’s a long answer which requires understanding the difference between customer service and retail in order to know why it’s important for retailers to provide good customer service while also selling products. In fact, according to a contact pigeon blog, 71% of customers state that they do not get the customer engagement they expected and this percentage applies not only to retail businesses but also to public sector companies and non-profit organizations. Therefore, it can be said that only good retailers who are able to provide good service to the customers and attend them well should be considered with customer service providers well. It’s only when someone has good retail experience should that be counted as customer service experience as well.