“The future belongs to those who find new ways to create a remarkable, harmonized customer experience at every touchpoint.” This quote is from retail influencer and Forbes Contributor Steve Dennis.

Steve launched an update to his book “Remarkable Retail – How to Win and Keep Customers in the Age of Disruption” last week.

The timing of the book is key. In Steve’s words, “The shift has hit the fan.” The pandemic has rapidly accelerated change in retail. He continues:

“It’s no longer enough merely to offer convenience, decent prices, or an OK shopping experience. Even very good is no longer good enough. To win and keep customers today, retailers must be nothing short of remarkable.”

The book provides eight essential strategies to bounce back and thrive. To be remarkable, you must be digitally enabled, human-centered, harmonized, mobile, personal, connected, memorable, and radical.

I love the last two. They speak to differentiation and word of mouth.

Jay Baer underlines this in the Foreword to the upcoming Pink Goldfish 2.0, “To turn your current customers into volunteer marketers on your behalf, you need more than competency: you need something different, and distinct, and memorable. If you want more stories told about you, you need to be worthy of a story.”

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Stan Phelps walks the walk. He stands out in the sea of sameness by modeling his own Differentiated Experience (DX) message: Differentiation isn’t just about what you say, it’s about what you do and, more importantly, how and why you do it. Stan leverages his unique collection of 5,000+ case studies on customer, employee, and brand experience to engage audiences with informative learning-based experiences. He believes purposeful DX wins the hearts of employees and customers, and differentiation ultimately boosts loyalty, retention, referrals, and results.

Find Stan’s in-person and virtual keynotes, workshops, and Goldfish tank programs at StanPhelps.com.