Clienteling in Luxury Retail
Posted by Julia Morrissey on Mar 24, 2024
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Clienteling in luxury retail is setting new standards for developing highly personalized relationships with customers and driving loyalty.
Steve Dennis, president of SageBerry Consulting, said it best: “Even ‘very good’ is no longer good enough.”
Customers are tired of purely digital experiences, and they are craving something more personal. Winning, growing, and keeping customers requires you to create deep customer resonance through unique, memorable experiences. Clienteling in luxury retail will allow you to make sure the magic stays alive and create loyal customers.
Luxury clienteling involves building and nurturing long-term relationships with luxury retail customers through personalized interactions and experiences. Luxury clienteling typically entails leveraging customer data to understand individual preferences, purchase history, and lifestyle, allowing luxury brands to anticipate and meet their customers’ needs more effectively.
This approach often involves one-on-one interactions between knowledgeable sales associates or personal stylists and customers, whether in-store, via phone calls, email, an app, or text messages. The goal of luxury clienteling is to enhance the overall customer experience, foster brand loyalty, and drive repeat purchases.
Luxury clienteling and white-glove service go hand-in-hand (pun intended). Since top hats and coattails were all the rage, white-glove luxury service has set the gold standard for experience. While we may have swapped coattails for bomber jackets, customers still desire the white-glove experience in luxury retail.
It’s the deeply personal in-store experiences associated with white-glove service that customers cry out for. Utter devotion and attention to the customer is the driving principle behind luxury retail clienteling. Get it right, and you’ll scrub away any trace of disjointed experiences.
Savvy modern businesses can use omnichannel technology to achieve luxury retail clienteling. You need to squeeze the most out of every customer interaction. With clienteling you can, but only when it’s a component of or integrated with a mobile point of sale (mPOS).
Luxury clienteling allows you to take the initiative and help your customers see the value of their choice to spend with you over your competition.
The right omnichannel platform will allow you do the following:
To be successful at luxury clienteling, store associates need product knowledge, interpersonal skills, and an understanding of how to leverage technology. Arming your store associates with the skills and information to succeed is how you win at luxury clienteling.
It’s important to ensure store associates have in-depth knowledge of your inventory, including materials, craftsmanship, and unique selling points. Train them to articulate product stories and convey the value proposition effectively. This education needs to be ongoing as you will have new collections and trends will change.
Store associates need to understand the importance of building genuine, personalized relationships with customers. Train your store associates in active listening to understand customers’ needs, preferences, and aspirations. It’s also important to teach effective communication techniques, including verbal and non-verbal cues, to convey professionalism, attentiveness, and empathy.
Store associates must know how to use a mobile point of sale (mPOS) device, a powerful tool for luxury clienteling. Store associates can use a mPOS to leverage important client data, including contact details, purchase history, preferences, and special occasions. This allows store associates to address customers by name, acknowledge past purchases, and reference their preferences to personalize the shopping experience.
A mPOS can also be used to check real-time inventory availability to ensure accurate information on product availability, sizes, and colors, and to process transactions efficiently while maintaining a focus on building rapport and providing exceptional service.
Store associates can also reach out to customers across channels for follow-up actions such as sending thank-you notes, notifying them of new arrivals, or reaching out about upcoming promotions.
The number of transactions is no longer the metric to watch for store success. It’s a social world out there, and every experience is shared. Customers talk to each other more than ever and smashing your customer experience every time to genuinely satisfy customers will get them talking.
Every experience you create should drive the behaviors you want to see more of from your customers. Loyalty comes from achingly beautiful satisfaction. Customers will keep coming back seeking genuine enjoyment, and you’ll keep profiting.
Taking action to upset the status quo is risky. But not taking action at all is riskier. Get in touch and begin your journey to better retail with support from the NewStore team.
