You know I get that there are a lot of customers out there who are really trying to squeeze the business for every single penny that they've paid for their product or service, but it's easy to tell what these customers really want some times! You just have to put themselves into their shoes. For example in my self storage company, if I offer my customers a hand with moving, do you have any idea how much they appreciate that gesture even though they may or may not take it up?

The most common solution to stopping fake reviews that most businesses have applied today is to only accept verified users on their site. This means that legit customers who have actually patronised a certain store or stayed at a certain hotel would be able to leave their feedback online. This means that nothing anonymous gets accepted to promote a transparent reviewing system.

I guess there is so much more to the term 'customer-centricity' that we might have overlooked because of how direct the surface meaning of it is. If we were to drill further into the topic, we would see that there ought to be certain factors that might hold a different meaning. It is basically not just about providing whatever services are being needed with a blind eye, but it is also about making sure customers know what they are getting into which are a company's terms and conditions.

I don't see why this couldn't work! You just have to make sure that they know it's a competition! Like the most number of good referrals from customers for the month or something…? It's equivalent to the employee of the month sign board isn't it? Where we are recognized for the good work that we do. I mean of course it would be nice that your employees do this already without the need for incentives, but if it helps to motivate them every once in a while, I don't see what harm it could do! It could be a nice way to liven up the office environment!

Since the competition between brick-and-mortars and online stores is quite high, there needs to be a smart approach to handle the given situation. Location-based marketing is one strategic way to get the customers in. When they are at a particular location, they would receive a notification or a form of advertising to rope them into that particular brick-and-mortar store. The concept is pretty much similar to that of an online ad, but the only difference is that the customer is already on-site, thus the chances of them visiting that particular brick-and-mortar store would be relatively high. They will then have a high tendency of visiting the storage racks of that particular store in question and opportunities of a sale are present.

I think who is actually at a disadvantage remains to be seen at the end of the day. I handle a number of self storage units at my facility that belong to online businesses. They too need a location for storage of their products at the end of the day. But those that are successful really do not require an actual brick and mortar presence because they are capable of finding solutions to engage their customers well and provide excellence after sales care. The customer experience is what matters the most and convenience may be the key to some markets!

As a consumer, I believe there is still indeed a future for physical stores. I personally would prefer going to a physical store when buying apparels or even when buying my daily fresh groceries like fruits and poultry. Thus, those business owners whp are re-considering their choice of maintaining their brick-and-mortars with ample storage space should keep on doing what they are good at.

Amazon already has several storage warehouses at this present moment to store piles of inventories of customers' orders. They are managed by their own employees who are used to their systems. If they were to go into a brick-and-mortar setup, things would definitely change especially in the job scopes of employees. They would have to deal with customers face-to-face and this fact could mean recruiting a completely different group of personnel to cater to this group of consumers. The orders would also need to be divided into 2 different sections to separate those online orders from the physical ones.

I think that a company needs to do what it needs to do to make sure that it stays in touch with all of its customers, and the truth is that people sometimes need a physical outlet so that they can get some of their issues resolved. Things somehow can get lost in translation when you speak over the internet over a chat bot while people deal with the actual items in the backend and at the storage warehouses. If this helps to improve customer satisfaction and the company reliability, I'd say it's a great solution!