When American Express stopped treating customer service as a cost center and turned it into an opportunity to improve a customer’s overall experience of the brand, it resulted in a 400% increase in customer retention. A PWC report revealed that when brands offer a superior customer experience, their customers are seven times more likely to purchase from them than from their competitors. It’s important for brands to measure this because by prioritizing the impact on the customer-instead of profit alone-stores can bring lasting value that benefits sales in the long run. However, in the rush to evolve their e-commerce, many brands forgot to also evolve the way they measure the impact of their remaining physical stores. Brands worldwide urgently shifted their efforts toward capturing consumer engagement in the digital world. Amazon posted its biggest-ever profit, Walmart announced a 97% leap in online sales, and some physical stores saw earnings drop by as much as 256%. In 2020, Covid-19 triggered a massive acceleration of e-commerce. It’s no surprise that brands are missing a trick here. These softer elements are fundamental to establishing long-term consumer loyalty, brand reputation, differentiation, and, ultimately, sales. It’s in the less tangible, yet critical, value of emotional and experiential engagement that only physical retail can offer. The true value of the retail environment today is no longer solely tied to direct financial profit, which is increasingly the domain of e-commerce. But the reality is that the rapid digitization of commerce is completely transforming-rather than eclipsing-the role of the physical store, and we need new ways of measuring its impact.
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