Designing the Promotions Experience for Those ‘Magic Moments’

How Value is Created – And Lost – Along the Modern Promotions Journey

In the realm of customer experience design, value is created around special moments that stand out with positive emotion. Like the smiles that greet you when you enter the lobby at a Disney hotel. It’s part of the overall Disney experience. Or like hearing staff sing happy birthday to a guest at Texas Roadhouse, the popular restaurant chain (word is, people sometimes actually pretend it’s their birthday just to hear it sung).

Is there anything like this in the retail or grocery arena? Yes, and the moment occurs each time a customer goes shopping – online or in-store – and goes through the checkout process. The checkout experience is where many things can go wrong, especially when reconciling multiple promotions. It’s also the place where many things can go right. When they do go right, value is created. Because checkout is the last moment the shopper shares with the brand, a good lasting impression can drive customer acquisition and retention, two paths by which a good promotions experience can add to top-line growth. In retail parlance, the perceived value of the shopper’s experience is critically reflected in long-term loyalty, CLV, and even their day-to-day social promotion (or demotion) of a brand. 

Think of the promotions experience as a garden hose. If there are unplanned kinks and holes in the hose, the brand can “block” or “leak” value along the entire course of the journey.

Over the next couple of months, XCCommerce will provide a holistic view of “magic moments” in the promotions journey where value can be created due to a good experience or lost due to a poor one. Sometimes the loss is a direct loss of revenue, for example, when conflicting promotions cannot be reconciled at the checkout. There is more to lose at the point of purchase than one might think. This is separate from the indirect damage to the brand, which factors into customer loyalty. As many management consultants have observed, a company’s brand is its most economically important asset.

But focusing exclusively at the checkout would miss the big picture of potential gain and loss. There are several critical moments of contact during a promotion where the experience can be pleasant and positive or go sour. We will identify those moments and explain how unifying the experience – which involves coordination with leaders in IT infrastructure, marketing tech, promotions, store systems, and customer experience – can mitigate these risks. Within each of these enterprise functions, there is potential for friction that results in direct and indirect revenue loss.

And then there are the CXOs – namely, the CEO and CFO – whose overall mandate is to raise the top line and bottom. Ultimately, they are the chief sponsors of the promotions experience. To illustrate our point, each article in this series will feature a real case story to show how the store banner created direct and indirect revenue gain through the principles of unified promotions. Stay tuned!