What’s customer success and why should I care?
‘Customer success’ is all about maximising the value customers gain from a business’ offering. It involves proactively helping customers resolve their problems and pain-points, and the ideal scenario is to prevent their problems from happening in the first place.
Customer success can be the difference between a once-off purchase and a loyal fan. Terrible service can be the single thing that shatters relationships between a business and customers. Even if Company A’s product is the best but they dismiss my problems when I call for help, you can bet that I’ll only go to Company B from then onwards.
This is why prioritising customer success is crucial, and it’s almost always a win-win situation. When businesses make customers happier, they’re also making their bottom line happier.
How Sephora does it well
Taking a closer look at how Sephora interacts with its customers, there’s no doubt that it’s one of the best at customer success in the beauty-retail industry. Let’s take a plunge into the three ways it smashes it.
1. Make-up demonstrations and lessons that educate and inform.
This is arguably one of the most effective ways the company adds value to customers. By demonstrating and teaching them how to use products they’re interested in buying, Sephora adds value by:
Giving customers the skills and techniques to use each product, which allows them to gain the most out of them. This benefit is particularly real for makeup.
Customers get to see the product in action. This lets them know whether they’ll be satisfied with it before financially committing themselves to it.
Of course, you can find a bajillion makeup tutorials on Youtube, where there are twenty different beauty gurus with a video showing you the “10 best ways to apply shadow” (or something along those lines). But there’s something magical about having a Sephora makeup expert sit beside you and point out the colours that best compliment your skin tone.
2. They provide free samples of cosmetics upon request by the customer.
It gives consumers relief that the risk of financial loss (which is rather high since cosmetics are rarely a one-size-fits-all) of purchasing an incompatible product is eliminated. Picking the right foundation shade or serum that doesn’t break you out can be an anxious task, especially since most products at Sephora come with a hefty price tag.
This is the reason why I sometimes prefer to shop at Sephora over drugstores, which don’t offer free testers. Even though I’m guaranteed to spend ridiculously more on a foundation at Sephora than the latter, drugstores don’t give me the peace of mind that I’ll love a product and won’t regret the purchase.
3. The foundation-matching tool on Sephora’s website.
Whilst this tool isn’t the most significant factor that elevates Sephora’s customer success, it deserves a notable mention.
This convenient and simple tool takes the guesswork out of buying the correct shade of foundation. It saves the effort of travelling to a store to test shades, and wearing a face 5 shades lighter than your neck (embarrassing). This further heightens the customers’ confidence that they’ll be satisfied with the foundation purchase they make.
For someone who gets confused with the naming systems of foundations, I can endorse how incredible this small but mighty tool is.
Final Thoughts
A major takeaway is that Sephora goes above and beyond to make sure customers are 100% confident in the products they purchase, even before their money leaves their pocket. Sephora is one of the leading retailers in the highly competitive beauty industry. We definitely know that a portion of its success is attributed to how it serves and supports customers.
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