When we speak about knowing your customers, what comes to mind may be FIA due to heightened concerns of illicit flows. 

However, walking into a departmental store recently for a new brand expansion into Namibia, is a buzzword, reinforcing what we already know knowing your customer is a north star of hospitality, luxury brands and retailers alike.

Women across various strata of society have been shooting up foot traffic into the brick and mortar in a true hype of a new beauty product range – thanks to brand promotion and high-touch marketing to create new consumer touch points in the local market. 

 I was sold and popped by during an errand in the mall, two weeks later, purely to explore and learn about the brand. 

I arrived at an unmanned booth and roamed around a bit whilst on the lookout for a consultant. 

As one could imagine, a new brand on the market with so many product ranges may be overwhelming for a potential new customer who has never used the product. 

When you are out there to purely learn about the product and inform your future purchase decision, you surely can do with guidance.   

However, before I could even set a foot behind the retail merchandising unit to start exploring the products for myself whilst help arrives, to my amazement, a consultant from one of the long-serving competitor’s brands in the market quickly appeared from the floor and prompted me if I was now moving from their brand. 

Needless to say, this consultant deeply cared and offered to go hunt for the new competitor’s consultant.  

She demonstrated having the needs of a customer at the core – even if it meant getting a product from a competitor; it created a positive experience for me. 

As one would guess, there was absolutely no point in looking further at the new brand.

 I have inherently swayed away back home and continued the interaction at this brand’s kiosk within a few matters away.  

What was even more impressive was the consistency of the brand the consultant was able to carry through these strong relationships built with customers at a much smaller retail store to a large one, where she was now stationed. 

What lessons can be learned from this not-so-high-end brand yet unmatchable customer service outsmarting competitors? 

The unmatched customer service is inherently part of the brand DNA and speaks to predictability even in the wake of a new arrival.  The brand has prioritised customer service at every touch point – from arrival to exit point. This brand has a high-touch approach to customers and has no doubt excelled in training its customer interface to the highest standards. 

So much so that when a customer walks in, a consultant already knows the product the customer uses and would go as far as picking the products for the customer from the shelf. 

Often, there will be a token of appreciation, a small give away or a tester to take home and try out new products.

In such a cutthroat industry, as the adage teaches us, you take your strongest foot soldiers to fight the toughest battles.   

The brand consultant stayed within the radius of the booth and had an eagle’s view of what was happening around the competitor’s stall.   She was proactive and was aware of the potential risk of existing customers churning to a new brand and leveraged the strong relationship the brand has built with customers.

To this end, this could potentially explain why most competitors’ brand positioning is always adjacent to this brand and why other global cosmetics brands have come and gone; however, this brand has withstood the test of time for many decades.  

To this end, this brand undoubtedly made it a point to know their customers and makes substantial investments in this business endeavour, which can be assimilated to other customer-oriented industries.

*The opinions expressed in the article at that of the author alone and are in no way linked to any affiliates.