During the busy and often hectic holiday season, customer service, customer experience, and customer engagement fall under a sharper lens. A bad customer experience becomes magnified under the glare of omnipresent social media.
According to a new survey from LoyaltyOne, several factors come to the fore that relate to a memorable customer experience during the holiday season.
Seeing Santa in the store with children enhances the holiday shopping experience for nearly seven out of 10 (66%) U.S. shoppers, according to the nationwide survey. What’s more, the survey results indicate that Santa’s in-store future is safe in the hands of young millennials.
Consider that 71% of consumers (aged 18-24) said encountering Santa in the store enriches the holiday shopping experience. That exceeds the 66% score for the general population (18-65 and over) and rivals the 65-and-over age group (72%) for the highest score among all demographics surveyed. In all, 1,267 American consumers completed the LoyaltyOne survey.
Here are some other interesting insights gleaned from the survey:
76% of all consumers said that hearing carols and other holiday music in the store enhances their Yuletide shopping trip
Just over seven out of 10 consumers (72%) disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement: I am more understanding if a salesperson is rude during the busy holiday sales season.
In fact, 81% of consumers agreed or strongly agreed with the statement: I am more offended if a sales person is rude at a time when he or she should value my business.
“Pricing is important, but it’s not everything,” said LoyaltyOne Vice President Dennis Armbruster. “This research underscores how critical it is for retailers to make the overall holiday shopping experience memorable and delightful. These results are illuminating, I think, for retailers who are unsure about the significance that consumers still attach to traditional elements of
the holiday shopping experience, such as Santa and seasonal music.”
Here are some more survey highlights:
At 78%, young millennials (18-24) scored higher than any other age group for appreciating in-store carols and seasonal music
40% of young millennials and 31% of older millennials (25-34) said they had a poor shopping experience last year that ruined their holiday mood, versus 20% of the general population
Just 53% of young millennials said they disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement: I am more understanding if a salesperson is rude during the holidays, compared to 72% of the general population
At 65%, older millennials were less patient with sales person rudeness than young millennials, but more patient than the general population
42% of older millennials and 37% of young millennials said an encounter with a condescending sales person would prevent them from returning to a store for holiday shopping, versus 32% for the general population.
Among the general population, 50% said an encounter with a sales person who took a “that’s not my department” attitude would prevent me from returning to a store, followed by 32% citing a condescending sales person, followed by 18% who said they would not return to a store after an encounter with a sales person who knew nothing about the item they were seeking
Nearly one in three consumers (29%) said that each holiday shopping season there is at least one store that loses their business due to a rude salesperson or poor service.