How Product Price Changes Customer Service

Retail can be split into many different sectors but there is quite a big difference between luxury goods and fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), the difference between the two has more to do with human nature and money than anything else.

For example, you need to do your weekly grocery run but you can treat yourself to an expensive watch if you choose to. Price is the key difference. This has an impact on customer expectations, quality levels and over all service.

“Product price impacts on the customer expectations while contacting a company”

The differences between Luxury goods and FMCG customer support can be summarised as below:

Customer Support

The Expensive Watch

Luxury Goods buyers invest a large amount of capital on the product purchased. Therefore, their decision is slower and less impulsive. This investment requires gathering additional information which impacts on longer interactions with customer representatives.

With these types of buyers it is all about options. “Can I have this in red?” “When can this be delivered?” “What is the best product for me?” The last question there is an important one; these buyers are not only looking for information about the product they are looking for advice.

This requires a more in depth style of customer service. The contact centre representatives need first class product knowledge. They need to know the subtle differences between each product in a specific price range for example. This informative, and lets not forget friendly, customer service leads to up selling opportunities and also repeat customers.

The Grocery Run

FMCG calls tend to be more about post sale queries. The sale itself is mostly done in store and the after effects of this sale leads to customer queries, complaints, feedback, requests, employment opportunities and more. The volume of calls is more and requires first call resolution when possible.

This section of retail has favoured customer support via email in recent years but I would argue that it is still no where near matching the volume of phone calls it generates. Both of them are required in my opinion. If you go to the “contact us” page of any retail site you will find an email facility and phone number, so again it depends on the nature of the customer.

One important area in FMCG customer support is Product Recall. This involves fast acting response and good communication between contact centre and retailer. An occurrence of this nature could mean that hundreds of stores need to be contacted in an evening and having a third party for this improves the process exponentially.

In conclusion your customer service provider needs to merge with your customers expectations. From a luxury goods point of view it needs to be precise, detailed and patient to match your customers need for information. From a FMCG standpoint customer support has to be fast, clear-cut and Omni-channel.