CorporalTigerPerson694
substantive manner, and provide Prior to beginning work on…
substantive manner, and provide Prior to beginning work on this discussion forum, read the article Improving Home Improvement: Home Depot & Lowe’s Lead in Volume But Trail in Customer Satisfaction Links to an external site., the How We Play Ball! Download How We Play Ball!PowerPoint, and the weekly lecture.
In your discussion post, reflect on the following:
Part 1:
What factors influence customer value, satisfaction, and loyalty?
What are some methods for measuring customer satisfaction and engagement?
What is the importance of commitments to building customer relationships?
Part 2:
What current trends are impacting Home Depot, Lowe’s, Menards, and other retailers listed in the article? Are they impacting their industry and sales favorably?
What strategies and actions are currently being done by one of the retailers in the article to capitalize on the current trends?
How do they segment their customers?
What are they doing to influence customer value, satisfaction, and loyalty? Will these strategies and actions be effective and improve customer service, satisfaction, and loyalty in the short and long run?
How are they building customer relationships?
Who are their customer contact employees? Why are they critical to building customer satisfaction, engagement, and loyalty?
recommendations to extend their thinking. Support your position by using information from the week’s readings, examples from current events, and/or other scholarly or credible resources
pretty much just have any other recommendations for these two post or anything else to add or disagree with?
1st post:
Customers are essential to every for-profit company because they drive revenues, as businesses cannot continue to exist without them. Therefore, customer value, satisfaction, and loyalty are vital and are determined by many factors. Customer loyalty and satisfaction can differentiate and build a company’s brand from others in a competitive environment. Another factor of customer satisfaction is that the more satisfied your customers are with service quality, the more they are likely to continue business and how much they may spend on business in the future. Dissatisfied customers are likely to complain personally to their friends in Google reviews, social media, or customer feedback surveys. Offering customer feedback surveys allows companies to collect data from positive or negative customer feedback while gaining insight into improving their business. It is critical that companies measure customer satisfaction to enhance the process of improvement. Methods for measuring customer satisfaction vary across industries. Companies cannot accurately measure product or service satisfaction based on little data or occasional exchanges. Some methods that could be utilized to collect data are customer feedback surveys or social media (Chakraborty, 2022).
Ever since the Coronavirus outbreak, there have been drastic changes in the American workforce’s lifestyle. The abrupt closure of many offices, workplaces, and schools drove in a new era of remote operations for millions of Americans, with homes becoming offices and classrooms, and may signify a significant shift in how a large component of the workforce operates in the future. There has been a substantial increase in home improvement spending, with many households engaging in “swat-improvement” projects, re-purposing bedrooms into offices and recreation rooms into classrooms (Stein, 2020, para. 4). The biggest beneficiaries of these developments have been Home Depot and Lowe’s, pushing their shares up in 2020 by 15.5% and 13.3%, respectively. Ace Hardware, one of the world’s largest hardware retail cooperatives, has been known for customer satisfaction, “The one-on-one engagement a customer has with the retail staff continues to be the largest driver of overall customer satisfaction with home improvement retailers.” (Stein, 2020)
Customer relationships remain at the forefront of retailers’ minds and how they plan their strategies with their customers, whether they are everyday consumers, DIY enthusiasts, or professional contractors. Home Depot’s Vice President of Direct Fulfilment and Delivery, Stephanie Smith, explains how they provide an interconnected retail experience to their customers. “Omnichannel is really how a retailer looks at the supply chain, but interconnected considers how we want consumers to see our environment,” explains Smith. “Home Depot seeks to integrate the store experience and the online experience from a customer perspective.” There is a famous phrase, “the customer is always right, ” because customers hold power. It would be detrimental for a company to ignore customers’ needs or requirements, as even if a brand offers the highest-quality product, it can quickly cease existing if it is unable to build a solid customer base. Therefore, building a strong customer relationship can increase profits and advance businesses.
2nd post:
Some factors that influence customers value, satisfaction, and loyalty are when a business has trusted hospitality and helpful employees. A customer will feel valued, even if sometimes annoyed, when an employee asks them if they need help when walking into a store. If the person does not need help, the feeling that someone as least asked them usually gives them a good peace of mind. Customers also value an easy and stress-free shopping experience. Smaller stores where someone does not have to walk too far or deal with terribly long checkout lines are more desirable. Methods to measure customer satisfaction and engagement would be customer reviews and surveys. Most of us have probably been given a receipt and told that there is a “brief” survey at the bottom and if we could complete it that would be greatly appreciated. Well obviously most of us do not complete these, but the customers that do, show that they are engaged and are willing to give their feedback. Now this business can see that out of 100 receipts given, only a certain percentage were engaged enough to care. The importance of commitments to building customer relationships is that without the customers, the business will have a hard time making profits and staying open. Gaining customers and keeping them is an ongoing challenge that each business must work towards.
Some current trends that are impacting these big box hardware stores are the pandemic and economy which has shifted the markets and creating more homeowners as well as people spending more time at home with increased time to do home improvements. For the most part this impacts sales favorably because when someone owns a home instead of renting, they are more likely to invent in it and spend money at hardware stores like these. A strategy used by Lowes is to invest resources into smaller businesses and build community relations. Ace Hardware focuses on limiting the size of their stores meanwhile supplying the customer with everything they would still need. They do this by reducing the different variants of the same tool and selling just what is necessary. Customer relationships are built by providing a pleasant shopping experience. With each customer having a different goal in mind when they enter the store it is important to help them differently during their experience. Some customers may need more help than others and some may need none.
