How to master the art of Luxury Retail Customer Service
Luxury retailers have always been ahead of the game in exceptional customer service, offering one-to-one service, attentive staff, and VIP treatment. How can retailers learn from the masters and deliver luxury retail customer service to attract and retain high-value customers?
Luxury brands serve a demographic that will settle for nothing but the best. And no wonder – if a customer is spending thousands of dollars, even tens of thousands, on designer watches, handbags and bespoke suits, they deserve to be treated accordingly.
For many customers, the retail experience is as important as the luxury products themselves. That’s why high-end brands invest in perfecting their customer service to avoid common customer complaints in luxury retail.
By learning from the best and elevating their customer service to a luxury level, retailers can attract and retain high-value customers who value exceptional experiences and are willing to pay a premium for them.
Read on for our guide to creating luxury customer service in retail.
Deliver hyper-convenience
Luxury is traditionally perceived to be synonymous with exclusive access, while convenience has become synonymous with mass appeal and quick transactions. But the two are no longer mutually exclusive.
Although still highly personal, luxury has increasingly come to mean convenience. It means quick access to services and luxury goods while removing all the bits the customer doesn’t want to deal with.
For retailers to provide luxury customer service, ask the question: How can you save customers time during the shopping experience?
For example, some luxury fashion brands respond to shoppers’ demands for convenience by offering immediate expert advice via live online chat, instant messaging, and virtual appointments with “client advisors”.
Look at your delivery and fulfilment processes. For example, one luxury brand offers delivery, click & collect, and click & reserve, allowing online customers to reserve selected products free of charge at participating stores without commitment to purchase. This is ideal for high-value purchases where customers want to see, touch, test or try them on.
Another luxury brand offers a ceremonial delivery for select Sydney postcodes, where a concierge hand-delivers orders during a three-hour time slot of the customer’s choice – a complimentary same-day service for orders over $1,500. Such experiences reinforce the feeling of being part of something truly extraordinary.
As for any brand, delivery needs to be effortless. When a luxury purchase is delayed or doesn’t show up, it causes frustration, bad reviews and damage to long-term loyalty.
That’s where address validation is not just valuable – it’s critical. Whether in-store or online, address validation helps ensure you capture a complete and valid address, which improves delivery accuracy.
For ecommerce, Loqate goes a step further and prefills the address field as the customer is typing, reducing keystrokes by up to 78%, and alleviating friction, improving their luxury shopping experience.
With valid and accurate customer data in your eCommerce checkout, EPOS or CRM system, retail associates can deliver exceptional service every time the customer visits.
Bring luxury customer service to e-commerce
Luxury brands have always relied on the in-store experience to give them the edge. Highly trained retail associates greet customers by name, anticipate their every need, remember past purchases, and provide tailored recommendations, in a strategy known as “clienteling”.
It might seem difficult to replicate this VIP treatment to online channels. But today’s customers value the luxury of convenience that online delivers. According to Google, 90% of luxury shoppers use online platforms at some point during their luxury retail customer journey.
In a 2023 survey by consultancy firm Wunderkind (pdf), 89% of consumers said that tailored, consistent digital engagement is “somewhat” or “very” influential in their purchasing decisions.
But a luxury online experience is only as good as the data that fuels it. That’s where it is paramount to gather the correct data from clients, starting with their email and address details. You need to ensure the data you capture in your CRM system is valid and correct.
At the same time, the onboarding process needs to be seamless. Customers should be able to rapidly enter their details accurately at onboarding without any friction.
That’s where Loqate can help.
Loqate’s address and email validation tools ensure you are capturing accurate customer details quickly, without adding extra form fields and hassle to the process. The address validation tool uses a single line type-ahead address lookup so that customers can find their address in just three keystrokes. It returns accurate results even when details are missing or misspelt, and validates the address, phone number or email, ensuring only clean and accurate data is collected.
The quick and seamless process improves the customer experience from the outset, which drives loyalty to your brand.
Summary
In luxury retail, exclusivity and personalised experiences have long defined the customer journey. But the lines between luxury customer service and customer service are blurred. Retailers of all types can embrace the power of personalisation, convenience and VIP customer experiences to make customers feel truly valued and turn a first-time shopper into a life-long client.
Learn more ways to improve customer retention in our guide.