When customer loyalty no longer works, one must offer the customers and clients new advantages. This is valid in the fashion industry just like for all other companies in order to develop new connections and new forms of brand loyalty. New concepts of sales psychology are becoming required today because conventional concepts and also the customers’ sales behaviour during the lockdown have changed forever. This particular circumstance is now causing global companies to increasingly recalibrate their customer experience management in order to adapt to this new situation in a targeted manner with regards to the effects on sales and the willingness to buy.
How the Lack of Facial Expressions/Gestures is Influencing Our Behaviour.
New guidelines for the protection of our health and the health of other people are also having effects on daily life.
How will our shopping behaviour be influenced by wearing masks? We all know the idiom: “A friendly smile can open doors!” – namely the importance of facial and expressive gestures. Now, the question poses itself whether the lack of these features upon the part of the salesperson and his customers will create new barriers which could possibly have a negative effect on buying and consumption behaviour. Our facial express plays an important role in this regard. No question. The concealment of our gestures during daily life’s situations and in public and moreover when shopping can lead to misunderstandings or even to the customers completely abandoning specific industries. Indeed, the fashion industry also now appears to have been particularly affected by this. Above all, salespersons find the wearing of masks upon a daily basis and for many hours as well to be enervating and inhibiting. Loud talking appears to be an escape from this “facelessness”, but may lead to louder background noise and the communication behaviour is changing. As the result of all these daily obstacles to overcome, can this lead to employees simply quitting and job losses?
Long queues in front of the department stores appear to be unacceptable. How will the customers’ patience hold up during the cold winter season?
Already nowadays, many consumers are relocating their shopping experience to countries in which there is no obligation to wear a mask, e.g. to the Netherlands.
The New Customer Experience Management? What Must We Focus On?
Do we thus have to develop other abilities in the future or activate other senses in order to be able to recognise whether our products still appeal to the customers?
In order to thus also prevent the risk of misunderstandings.
Moreover, various generations are coming together in their daily shopping experience and being confronted with different purchasing and brand conceptions. Millennials, for example, have other criteria for consumption behaviour and other correlations regarding brand loyalty than the generation of Baby-Boomers. How can one create interfaces here?
How will the customer experience now be calibrated in order to prevent looming bankruptcies?
What options does customer experience management offer in order to prevent bankruptcies and win customers back and create new forms of customer loyalty?