Shopping history never moves in one single direction or all at once. There have always been regional and chronological divergences from mainstream developments.There are also retailing modes that fall by the wayside and then return at a later date in new guises or with new names. They often have every appearance of being newly invented.

The History Of Shopping: A Recurring Cycle

<ul><li>Self-service was the shopping revolution of the 20th century.</li><li>Promoted as a modern, efficient way to shop, self-service entailed both a different type of store layout and new norms of customer and shop-worker behaviour.</li><li>There was no need for counter service if customers were making their own selections.</li><li>All available goods were put out on display, within reach.</li><li>No need to ask someone to fetch them.</li><li>The abolition of counter service meant that their various skills, including their people skills, were made redundant.</li></ul>

The Self-Service Revolution

<ul><li>With self-service firmly established to assist supposedly "time-poor" consumers, the stage was set for internet shopping to promise an even more efficient way of doing things</li><li>You don't have to take yourself anywhere to get to the store, which never closes</li><li>Everything is always on the screen</li><li>There is still a trolley or basket, but not one that you have to push or carry</li><li>The shop assistant is wholly absent from the screen</li></ul>

Internet Shopping

<ul><li>People began to support and use independent local shops.</li><li>Home deliveries were organized by smaller shops, often working together in groups.</li><li>In the media, shop assistants were referred to as “frontline workers”.</li><li>The pandemic had demonstrated what shops were really for, and why we should not let them go.</li><li>Town centres had been dying a much-discussed death for years, as more and more shops were being closed down and stayed unused.</li><li>Some towns were taking action to resist the trend, battling back with collective imagination and sometimes with significant financial backing.</li></ul>

The Impact Of Lockdown And Going To The Town Center

<ul><li>Until the middle of the 20th century, most shops offered home delivery as a matter of course.</li><li>With self-service came the end of most home delivery services.</li><li>The new delivery services offered by smaller, independent stores that started up during lockdown represented a return to local arrangements that were standard before the arrival of Self-Service.</li><li>New technology has actively contributed to the revival of an older form of shopping.</li></ul>

A Return to Home Delivery

From pop-ups to fast fashion to same-day delivery, every retail innovation is reminiscent of one that came before.


Stashed ideas

The fascinating history of shopping and its influence on how we buy stuff today

In the world when anyone can complain about any business failure in a public manner, any business is vulnerable. A reputation crisis is always around the corner. And it is even more challenging in a B2B industry where buying journeys are longer and past failures are harder to erase. B2B customers are good at researching their options, comparing businesses and making informed decisions. Any past reputation crisis may be standing in your way to success for years to come.

The B2B Business Sales Challenge

When it comes to B2B, sales demos are often the only way to close a sale. It is the only way to demonstrate how your product is solving your prospects’ pain points and prove that your platform is worth investing in. <ul><li>Product demos are central to any software sales process.</li><li>Product demos can turn a prospect into a customer, a customer into a believer and a brand advocate.</li><li>Professional product demos can rank for your brand name and set positive expectations about your brand. </li><li>Using your product demo on your landing pages makes you look like a serious and reputable company.</li></ul>

The Importance Of A Sales Demo

Using online tools like Walnut, you can create and embed your demos on various landing pages allowing your site visitors and prospects to use interactive features to try some features and get to know your product better.   Demonstrating your product demo on your website/landing pages makes you look like a serious and reputable company. This is especially helpful to smaller businesses, as you enable product-lead-groth (PLG) with your prospects which in turn, makes you appear to be a bigger brand.

Strengthening Your Online Reputation

Using your demos for reputation management means turning them into the top-of-the-funnel content assets. So instead of treating your demos as private assets, start looking at them as your branded digital media and make them searchable by Google. Get your sales team involved in the process as they will likely offer a great deal of insight into your probable decision makers and buyer personas behind each search query. Collaboration is key for success here.

Treat Your Demos as Content Assets

Innovating your sales demos comes with lots of benefits including a happier sales team and more sales. It may come as a surprise but sales demos can also boost your brand and solidify your reputation as a reliable niche solution.

The Bottomline

Looking for ways to solidify your B2B business online reputation? The solution may be in adjusting your sales demonstrations.

How to Use Sales Demos to Strengthen Your Online Reputation

They do get mixed up a lot. But there is a very important distinction.
<ul>
<li>Customer service is part of the broader customer experience. Customer experience means all of the interactions a customer has with a brand and how they feel about those interactions (the people you interact with, their advertising, the packaging, the physical location, the ambiance, the decor, etc.)</li>
<li>Customer service is the assistance a company provides to help a customer with its products or services. That’s a very specific part of customer experience, often the most important or most memorable part.</li>
</ul>

Customer experience vs customer service

The whole concept of an experience guarantee is based on the idea that your customer is trying to solve a problem, and that’s the insight you need to have to create a wonderful experience and experience guarantee. The way you do this is by listening to your customers. And while that seems simplistic, companies are not as good at listening as they’d like to believe.

The problems customers are trying to solve

To create an experience that allows you to win customers and retain them:<ol><li>Make a guarantee, promise to solve the problem. This could be a customer service provider saying. “I’m going to take care of this for you.”</li><li>Keep the promise: Making a promise in your marketing or advertising is not enough. You have to now act to make sure that promise is kept.</li><li>There will always be a time when you’re unable to keep your promises, or at least in your customer’s mind, you did not keep your promise. You have to find a way to restore trust so that your customer is willing to give you another chance.</li></ol>

Solving the problems customers have

“When you promise to solve a particular problem, you’re also saying, in effect, ‘If your problem falls outside of this, we might not be the best choice for you'”

“When companies try to be all things to all people, they end up not being very good”

Once you identify that problem and you make a particular promise, then you can focus on your customer experience. Whether it’s your marketing, operations, delivery, customer support, you name it, your focus can be on keeping that promise. That’s an important aspect because it gives you that focus. Having an experience guarantee allows you to be a lot more focused and make smarter decisions.

Laser-like focus

Guaranteeing a great experience for your customers isn’t hard, but are you actually delivering on that promise? Jeff Toister, author of The Guaranteed Customer Experience, joins us to talk about the key to earning (and keeping) our customers’ trust and business.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jeff Toister on a guaranteed customer experience

The American Marketing Association defines Marketing as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.Great definition, but marketing has changed. Some say it’s about lead generation, creating demand, building relationships, and engagement.

The definition of marketing has changed

It used to be that a good website was really a brochure on the internet. It was static, great color and maybe even a little animation made it stand out. If it was good, it might prompt a customer to pick up the phone or email an inquiry. But, today a good website is about offering up new content, sometimes daily (or even more often), in the form of articles, white papers, videos and even games. Customers can post comments and interact. It’s all about engagement with the customer. A good website can turn into something more than the customer just reading words and looking at pictures.

Websites best illustrate how marketing has changed

Create an amazing service experience that gets customers to not only come back, but to also share that experience with their friends, colleagues and family members. That may be the best form of marketing there is.But beyond the actual customer experience, the interaction and engagement that happens before the sale needs to be considered as part of the experience. It’s about engagement, interaction and relationship building… before the customer ever decides to spend any money with you.

The customer experience is your best marketing

What is marketing? A quick Google search on the word marketing reveals this from the American Marketing Association (And, they should know!): Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and…

The Customer Experience Is Your Best Marketing

Customer Experience (CX)<ul><li>Considers the customer from the very beginning</li><li>The CX team relies on understanding how the customers think adn feel towards the company</li><li>Every interaction performed whether human or digital, feeds into the understanding and development of a great customer experience</li></ul>Customer Success (CS)<ul><li>The CS team works to understand how the customer engages with the product post-sale in order to identify ways to optimize their engagement</li><li>They work with the product teams in order to heighten the amusement and improve upon the frustration points of the customers</li></ul>

Customer Experience vs. Customer Success

<ol><li>When we get a new customer to set up and optimize on a product we call this onboarding</li><li>Escalations happen when we address the issues that flows over the scope the mainline customer service</li><li>For the products that have a fixed but renewable relationship, the Customer Success team ensures that the customer stays with the company or product, this is renewal</li></ol>These are the lenses that the customer success team must look through in order to have the customer's experience more enthralling.

The Customer's Journey

<ol><li>Location in the customer journey - Customer Experience (CX) begins before the consumer is knowledgeable that they are in the buying journey; while Customer Success (CS) places the spotlight on the post-sale time frame.</li><li>Team goals - When CX contends to build an overall positive relationship and experience with the customer, CS strives to assist the customer to get the most out of a specific product or service.</li></ol>

The Difference between CX and CS

A true customer-centric company should realize that both customer experience and customer success exist to deliver great outcomes for the customer.

Learn the key differences between customer success and customer experience, and discover why both roles are important for delighting customers.

The fascinating history of shopping and its influence on how we buy stuff today

How to Use Sales Demos to Strengthen Your Online Reputation

Jeff Toister on a guaranteed customer experience

The Customer Experience Is Your Best Marketing

Customer Experience vs. Customer Success: Explained - Help Scout

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