Customer experience is an oft-used term in the ecommerce space, but there isn’t as much information out there on how to improve the customer experience for in-store retailers. Many brick-and-mortar stores don’t even realize there is more they can do to improve a customer’s in-store experience, and much of it goes hand-in-hand with ecommerce strategies, allowing retailers that operate both to improve them simultaneously.

Today, we are going to go over some of the strategies we recommend to improve the customer experience.

These customer experience improvements have been chosen because of their effectiveness relative to the investment required, and they include:

• Provide services for products sold in-store
• Offer a rewards program
• Offer flexible point-of-sale (POS) financing options

Let’s dive into each and describe the best way to accomplish them while maximizing profitability.

Provide Services for In-Store Products

One of the easiest ways to become a customer’s go-to in a particular industry is to provide complimentary services for the products sold in-store. Nordstrom’s does this by offering free adjustments on clothes they sell, and other stores can do similar things by providing care, alteration, or repair services for the products they sell in-store.

This type of customer experience improvement looks different for different industries, and some examples include:

• Weatherproofing for shoes/workwear
• Tech product setup or screen protector application
• Free battery replacements for tools

Customer experience improvements like this make customers feel like they are important and that they will be taken care of long after a purchase is made. Not only does this give them an opportunity to come back into the store later for a service, but it also gives them a reason to choose one specific retailer over another because of the cost they save by receiving that service.

Offer a Rewards Program

Lenders aren’t the only ones that can offer rewards, and many stores already offer rewards or discounts for repeat customers. This gives consumers a way to cash in on being a regular at a retailer, which incentivizes them to make future purchases at that store whenever possible.

These can take the form of discounts, email coupons, free accessories or peripherals, or even a free service like those listed above. These are usually offered through an online registry/profile or email list, which makes it easy to offer them to customers both in-store and online.

Another way to offer rewards to customers is with store credit cards, which provide discounts or rewards through the card for repeat customers. Let’s dive a bit deeper into how retailers can quickly and easily offer things like this to consumers—and why they should.

Offer Flexible POS Financing Options

The most effective way to improve profitability on this list is by offering flexible payment options at the point of sale. Consumers respond extremely positively when given the opportunity to finance their purchases and take control over how and when they pay. In fact, companies that offer some sort of consumer financing see an average 20-30% increase in conversion and a 30-50% increase in average ticket size.

The easiest way to get started offering financing options like these is to partner with a quality fintech firm. These firms provide software platforms with financing applications that can be embedded in POS systems and online checkout screens or sent to consumers’ phones to fill out quickly.

The things that retailers should be looking for in a partner are:

• Omnichannel functionality so users can access financing online and in-store
• A wide variety of financing options
• Flexible credit criteria
• Quick approval process

All of these will help increase the number of consumers that qualify, as well as the number that will have access to the specific financing option (Installment financing, loans, credit cards, etc.) that works best for their situation.

Leverage Customer Experience Improvements With Skeps

Skeps offers a comprehensive, end-to-end consumer financing platform that helps businesses modernize their entire payment process. Working with an entire network of established lenders, we go above and beyond one-click payment, also offering a one-click application process for several different types of consumer financing, including:

• Installment financing payment plans
• Co-branded credit cards
• Consumer loans and leases

If you’re looking to partner with a forward-thinking fintech company that will keep consumers' eyes on the purchase while offering best-in-class financing, Skeps is the perfect fit.