Increase Satisfaction
Increase Satisfaction Through Customer Experience in Your Cannabis Retail Store
A visit to a Cannabis Retail Store (CRS) should be more than just a quick in-and-out transaction for the customer. It should be about the customer experience, cultivating richness in your interactions with your customers through effective customer engagement strategies.
What is Customer Experience?
Customer experience sometimes referred to as CX, embodies the interactions between a customer and a brand, retail store, or company throughout their business relationship.
To summarize a few, here are some parts of the customer experience that CX includes:
Awareness: informing the customer your CRS exists;
Discovery: when your potential customer begins to discover that you have what they desire; • Cultivation: beginning to build rapport with the customer;
Advocacy: helping the customer see the value that a product can add to their life;
Purchases and Service: making the sale and building loyalty with the customer so that they return Cultivating CX in Your Cannabis Retail Store.
Here are a few ways you can put some of the principles of customer experience into your CRS:
Awareness
Here are a few ways you can make the potential customer aware of you:
Social media engagement in line with the marketing and advertising guidelines of The Cannabis Act;
Participating in public forums, where permitted, and offering community outreach events
Registering your CRS with cannabis-specific directories
Targeting marketing to niche audiences, such as seniors, mothers, or young professionals.
Discovery
You have built awareness that you exist, now you have to show the customer that your Cannabis Retail Store has what they need or want. Cannabis education, thus, becomes an integral part of what your CRS has to offer.
Take the time to educate your customer through an intentional Cannabis Education program (some stores even have an Education Manager), or use display media within your store, like that provided by Budvue, to get the messaging out about what’s available.
Cultivation
The cannabis industry as a whole is working to build trust, and it’s up to your CRS to build trust with your potential customer so to help them see the value of what you provide to your life.
Don’t just view a cannabis experience as a transaction, but rather take the time to get to know the customer, what they’re looking for, and build the rapport that will allow them to know they’re in good hands.
Advocacy
Once you’ve built rapport within your customer relationship, this is where you can advocate for them via the products you have available in your CRS.
Since you know know what they are looking for in their cannabis experience, this is the opportunity to turn on their customer experience, by showing them the particular products in-store or on your menu that will appeal to them.
Purchases and Services
Now that you’ve hooked your customer, don’t just let their customer experience end at the point of sale. You’ve now built trust and you’ve been able to demonstrate to them that your Cannabis Retail Store will offer them products that will add value to their lives.
Customer experience also embodies building lifetime value in your customer, that is, increasing the likelihood that they’ll return and be a repeat customer. Look at what you can offer in terms of a customer loyalty program, provide swag where possible, and ensure you’re keeping the cannabis retail purchase personal by personal touches like remembering your customer by name.
Customer Experience is Important
Customer Experience, or CX, will be one of the major things that will set CRS’ apart from one another.
Aim to have the best customer experience through intentionally applying the elements that make up customer experience to ensure you not only have a satisfied customer but one that is also coming back for many future purchases.
Connect with Budvue today to discuss how we can use enhanced in-store signage to add to your customer experience in your Cannabis Retail Store.