Today’s thriving retailers leverage technology at multiple shopper touchpoints to provide the best customer experiences. However, most retailers still rely on traditional methods of customer insight to measure and manage the customer experience. The two most prevalent tools, customer feedback surveys and mystery shops, emerged long before the mobile revolution, and each has drawbacks solvable through the use of emerging mobile architecture.

Customer surveys, long the gold standard for collecting attitudinal (subjective) feedback, are increasingly challenging to maintain and use effectively. Shoppers feel over-surveyed and show less patience with traditional web and phone surveys, and retailers often have limited budgets (or the ability) to provide relevant and effective participation incentives. Mystery shops, which can greatly help retailers with operational (objective) feedback, frequently suffer from reliability issues (i.e., too few data points) and data integrity challenges (such as a mystery shopper who is in fact known to store personnel).

What if there were a more effective way to collect customer insights? At RFG we challenge ourselves perpetually to consider this question, and through the years we have worked alongside numerous retailers to leverage new capabilities to learn more about shopper experiences.

The skyrocketing adoption of mobile applications by consumers, coupled with the above-mentioned challenges with surveys and mystery shops, led us to introduce LiveShopper to the grocery space.

LiveShopper is an app-based platform that makes crowdsourced customer feedback available to grocery retailers. The tool uses a store’s actual shoppers (not mystery shoppers) to provide a reliable stream of feedback – both objective/operational AND subjective/attitudinal in nature. LiveShopper truly offers a next-generation combination of both surveys and mystery shops, geared toward today’s mobile-savvy customers.

Customers using LiveShopper accept a “task” comprised of a few questions about their store visit. Geofencing enables the retailer to activate these tasks for shoppers at the time they visit the store, capturing feedback in the moment of truth. Questions may focus on topics like the service received or the checkout experience, and might include taking a photo of something noteworthy.

Example: Please take a photo of anything in the store that looks especially fresh and tasty.

What grocery retailer focused on the food experience wouldn’t want crowdsourced visual feedback like that?

The engaging, gamified feel of the LiveShopper approach extends to the incentives available to shoppers when the task is complete. These customizable incentives range from fuel reward points to bounce-back coupons, which have a defined expiration date and are housed in the user’s “wallet” on the app.

For retailers with their own shopping app, LiveShopper integration deployed via SDK within the app increases the ease of use and effectiveness of the program among shoppers. Plus, this approach adds the benefit of driving customer downloads and use of the retailer app… a win for everyone!

In the end, the best feedback tools are those that personally connect and resonate with shoppers. We believe LiveShopper’s crowdsourced approach is an ideal next-generation solution for understanding the customer experience.

For more information, visit us at the 2020 NGA Show if you are attending (Booth #1111) or contact us at Retail Feedback Group.

By Doug Madenberg and Brian Numainville

Principals, Retail Feedback Group

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Retail Feedback Group (RFG) offers a broad spectrum of research, consumer insight and consulting services. Its flagship program, Constant Customer Feedback (CCF), is the first automated feedback platform specifically designed and introduced for supermarket retailers, and is currently implemented in hundreds of locations across the United States. As a 360-degree listening partner, RFG services include employee experience assessments, customer satisfaction programs and consumer perception studies.