In retail, where competition is fierce and consumer choices abound, one factor stands out as a game-changer: exceptional customer service. In fact, 87% of people say they’re likely to avoid a company after just one bad experience.
It’s important to strive to provide the best customer service and wow folks each time they interact with your business. The best part is that, unlike most parts of the customer journey, you have full control over the quality of service you provide. Great service is built on a foundation of specific, learnable skills—meaning any business can provide an excellent customer service experience.
Ahead, get inspiration from real-life customer service examples and learn how to implement tried-and-true customer service best practices to set your team up for success.
What is good customer service in retail?
Retail customer service is the support and assistance provided to customers in a retail store, online, or over the phone. It involves customer interactions between sales staff or customer service representatives and shoppers. This interaction can happen before, during, or after a purchase.
The retail customer service process can include addressing customer inquiries, resolving issues, providing product information, and ensuring a positive shopping experience. It applies to both online and offline channels, including call center support, emails, live chats, social media, website, and in-person interactions in brick-and-mortar stores.
With a commerce platform like Shopify, customer service happens on various touchpoints:
- In-store: Using Shopify POS (point of sale) to handle in-person exchanges, order lookup, or local pickup
- Online chat: Using tools like Shopify Inbox for live chat and customer service automation
- Order tracking: Sending customers to order status pages and sending automatic email/SMS notifications
- Self-service: Letting customers manage their own self-serve returns/exchanges without having to contact you
- Customer Accounts: Giving customers a central place to see their orders, preferences, and saved payment methods (like Shop Pay)
The most important part is unifying these touchpoints, or connecting all these tools so they share information. This way, a customer gets the same, correct information whether they are talking to you on chat, visiting your store, or checking their account online.
Why great customer service is crucial for your business
Customer experience is critical to the success of any retail business because it creates:
- Higher sales: A five-star experience makes a shopper more than two times more likely to buy more from you compared to a one- or two-star experience, according to a 2024 study from Qualtrics.
- Word-of-mouth referrals: Compared to a poor experience, a five-star interaction makes customers three times more likely to tell others about you. This is a powerful marketing engine for any store, driving new customers your way without having to acquire them using your own resources.
- Customer loyalty: In 2024, consumers ranked customer service/support (47%) ahead of low price (43%) as a driver of purchases, second only to product quality—proving that investing in service beats racing to the bottom on price.
Read: Customer Experience vs. Customer Service Explained
The five essential customer service skills for retail teams
Empathy: Understanding the customer’s perspective
Empathy is actually a measurable growth driver. A 2025 Ipsos study shows that empathy strengthens the customer relationship and expands your share of their shopping budget—meaning people are willing to spend significantly more with brands they feel close to.
When customers perceive empathy during a service interaction, even with a chatbot, they are more likely to accept the outcome. Peer-reviewed research confirms that empathy is what influences their satisfaction and their intent to recommend you.
Pro tip: Train your team on empathy cues like using the customer's name, mirroring their language, and acknowledging their feelings.
Patience: Staying calm under pressure
Waiting is still the biggest breaking point for the customer experience. A 2024 global study found that only 55% of consumers were satisfied with their wait time, making it the lowest-rated part of service.
Store queues actively scare away shoppers. A 2024 survey reports that 80% of shoppers will avoid a business with long lines, and many will just go to a competitor instead.
Your POS system greatly impacts how quickly you can get customers through checkout. Fewer taps and compatible POS hardware reduce manual work, therefore speeding up the process.
Tomlinson’s, for example, took advantage of Shopify POS features such as automatic discounting and loyalty app integrations. These features allowed the pet supplies retailer to almost halve the taps required to process a transaction, resulting in a 56% reduction of in-store checkout time.
Product knowledge: Being the expert
Helpful, knowledgeable staff directly lift satisfaction scores. The 2025 ACSI Retail and Consumer Shipping Study tied gains in customer satisfaction to the courtesy and helpfulness of staff, especially during checkout.
Product expertise reduces pressure on the customer. Research summarized by Baylor University indicates that when a salesperson possesses in-depth product knowledge, customers experience less sales pressure, which in turn facilitates a smoother purchasing process.
Problem-solving: Finding creative solutions
First-contact resolution (FCR) is the clearest measure of quality problem-solving. SQM Group benchmarks indicate that a "good" FCR is 70%–79%, while a world-class FCR is 80% or higher.
Plus, every 1% increase in FCR lifts your interactional NPS (Net Promoter Score). When FCR is achieved, 95% of customers will continue doing business with you.
Clear communication: Avoiding misunderstandings
Write and talk in a way that is easy to understand. When your store policies, return instructions, or FAQ pages are confusing, customers get stuck. When they're stuck, they have to contact your support team.
A small hassle creates more work for your team and frustrates the customer. Using plain language reduces the number of mistakes and helps lower the number of help desk calls you receive.
Examples of good customer service examples in action
Whether your business’s retail team interacts with retail customers at a brick-and-mortar store or an online store, they should be able to provide excellent customer service. Below are 12 examples of excellent customer service in retail.
1. Add a personal touch
Your advantage as a local retail business is that you can offer personalized experiences that ecommerce giants can’t. Offering white-glove customer service is an opportunity to add a human touch to your business.
For example, if a customer is looking for a pair of black skinny jeans, walk with your customer to the table where they are displayed instead of just saying, “They’re over there on that table.” Then, you can hold up the various options and talk through the different product features to help them compare the jeans and make a decision.
Pro tip: Shopify creates unified customer profiles to log every interaction that someone has with your brand. See products they’ve bought online, conversations they’ve had with previous customer service agents, and loyalty points they’ve earned through Shopify POS.
Use this information to personalize the retail customer experience. If someone has already purchased a 13-inch laptop, for example, you could cross-sell a compatible charging cable or protective case.
2. Be transparent and educate customers
You don’t want to seem too pushy with your customer service, but if you’re transparent and spend time educating shoppers before they buy, they’re likely to leave happy. Starting a conversation can also help you adapt your recommendations to their needs.
Use the “FAB” formula to help you and your sales staff easily recall the details of each product you sell:
- Features are the characteristics or components of a product.
- Advantages refer to what the features can do.
- Benefits are what the customer can get from the product and its features—it’s the most important part.
First, make sure you’re knowledgeable about the products you sell. If you’re not designing and manufacturing them, ask the brands you stock for product knowledge guides explaining the features, advantages, and benefits of the merchandise. Getting familiar with your products and bestsellers will ensure that you always have items to recommend.
Then, when a new shopper comes into your store, you can pay close attention to their body language. If it looks like they want to engage with you, it’s a great time to ask what they’re looking for and then educate them about the products that match their needs.
Be transparent about how and where the products are made, as well as the benefits of each item. Showing the merchandise that can be used together is a great way to cross-sell or upsell.
Finally, pitch benefits that are unique to each shopper. For example, if you’re selling a raincoat, the features could include the material and how water-repellent yet breathable it is. The advantages could be durability and easy care instructions compared to other raincoats. And lastly, the benefit could be staying dry on the rainiest of days.
3. Respond quickly to all customer feedback
Responding to positive and negative feedback in a timely manner shows that you’re listening to customer concerns and value their opinion, regardless of whether it’s good or bad.
Say you sell activewear and recently added a new brand to your retail floor. Customers buy it up with excitement so they can be the first in your area to rock the new gear. But when they go to their next yoga class, the inseams of the leggings unravel. In a few more wears, they’ll show off much more than they’d like during their next downward dog.
You start to get calls, emails, and online reviews about this issue. The best thing you can do is respond immediately. Even though you’ll lose money accepting all the returns, it’s the right thing to do. You can also respond to public online reviews by saying something like, “Thank you for the feedback. We value your support, and we are addressing this issue with the vendor right now. Check your email for return and refund instructions.”
This shows that you’re responsive and willing to correct issues quickly.
In a case like this, you can also go back to the supplier and tell them about the issue. Hopefully, they’ll let you return the stock and refund your money.
4. Use creative and unexpected return policies
If a customer makes an order online and then decides they don’t like it or it doesn’t fit, recommend that they give it to a friend or family member and offer to send them a new product for the same value. This way, you’ll make them happy, and you’ll get your products in the hands of another potential customer. Or the customer may decide to use the item anyway.
You may decide only to use the returnless refund strategy for VIP or first-time customers to promote loyalty. You can also pick a random monthly shopper to test this strategy and avoid spending too much money.
Whatever you decide, put it into action by creating an email template that gets sent to certain customers who contact you for a return. Or if a customer is making a return in-store, you can explain it then.
Your email could read something like this:
Hi [First Name],
We’re sorry to hear that you don’t love your recent purchase. We’d be glad to issue a refund, and if you’d prefer, you can also give the products to a friend or family member, or keep them to try again at a later date.
If you choose this option, we’ll still send you new products (of your choice) of the same value. Or you can request a full refund and still keep your order.
Let us know how you’d like to proceed.
Cheers,
The customer care team at [Your Store Name]
5. Find a workaround when items are out of stock
Unfortunately, keeping an item in stock isn’t always something you can control. Suppliers might have a materials shortage that affects their output, or an incoming shipment might get stuck in transit during a storm.
What really matters is how you react to the situation when customers learn that their chosen product is unavailable.
If the worst happens and a customer runs into an out-of-stock product, best practice is to check for stock at other local stores or fulfillment centers.
Shopify POS’s buy in-store, ship to customer feature lets you complete these transactions in-store, ship orders to shoppers from your warehouse, and give your store credit for making the sale. “Shipping allows for a much higher conversion than if we tell them to go back home and order it online,” says Travis Boyce, vice president of business development at Allbirds.
Other solutions to salvage the retail customer experience include:
- If the product is from a brand you carry, contact them to see if they have extra stock for immediate delivery so you can fulfill your customer’s order.
- If you manufacture and wholesale your products, see if one of your retailers has stock of the particular item.
- Recommend an alternative but similar item.
For these options to work, inventory must be updated and synchronized with your total available stock.
Shopify unifies inventory data to offer real-time visibility into stock levels across all locations from your POS system. You can confidently say to the customer, “We don’t have this product in stock at this store, but we have another location that’s 10 minutes away and has five items in stock. I can reserve one for you now if you have time to head over there.”
6. Build a connection with local shoppers
Connecting with shoppers during all stages of their buying journey is a great way to build relationships.
You’re more likely to remember a cashier who strikes up a conversation with you versus store staff who don’t say a word. Finding something you have in common with shoppers is a great way to build a connection and offer a memorable experience, even if it’s something small.
Be observant when chatting with or ringing up customer orders at the checkout counter. Look for commonalities so you can find a way to connect with people, then start a conversation based on those commonalities.
For example, if you notice at the checkout counter that the customer is carrying a tennis racket and you also play tennis, ask them where they play and talk about your favorite local courts. In this scenario, the customer is ready to pay, but you can still try to chat with them. It shouldn’t only happen when you’re trying to make a sale.
7. Remember and reward repeat customers
Keeping the 80/20 rule in mind can help you grow your business: 80% of your business generally comes from 20% of customers. That’s why encouraging customer loyalty is key. You can do this by letting frequent customers know you’re grateful for their support.
Use POS software that lets you keep track of repeat customers, build customer profiles, and synchronize data to offer personalized shopping experiences. You’ll have quick access to notes, past orders, and the total amount a customer has spent with your business.
Then, put your customer data to good use by adding loyalty apps like Smile to your point-of-sale system. This lets you reward customers for shopping with you, both in-store and online.
You can even go the extra mile by personally thanking them at the checkout counter or sending a personal note with their next online order. This element of surprise and delight can encourage retention.
8. Proactively address online store shipping issues
Naturally, customers sometimes need help with shipping and delivery. Whether it’s a missed delivery, delay, lost package, or damaged goods, a handful of issues could occur.
In most cases, these incidents are not your fault, but you’re still responsible for providing good customer service. That’s why it’s crucial to carefully track customer orders and guarantee that the package arrives on time and intact.
If something goes wrong, be proactive by getting in touch with the customer immediately to fix the situation. Don’t wait for them to contact you.
If you also have an online store, create a system that helps you closely track the status of online orders and shipments. If you see any red flags, get ahead of the situation by taking the initiative to contact your customer instead of waiting for them to reach out to you because they never received their order.
PRO TIP: Add the tracking reference number to every customer order in Shopify to enable real-time delivery tracking through the Shop App. It removes the pressure from your customer service team since they’re not bombarded with “Where is my order?” questions. Shoppers are automatically notified whenever there’s an update to their order.
9. Offer “try before you buy” for online shoppers
If you can manage the logistics, letting customers try on items before they buy is a great way to build relationships with them. It can also reduce product returns since customers already have experience with the product before they buy.
Companies like Stitch Fix and Birchbox are pioneers in creating try-before-you-buy programs, but you can also test this strategy on a smaller scale.
For example, a cosmetics retailer could offer miniature versions of its bestselling moisturizer. A home fragrance retailer might bundle multiple mini oils into a discovery pack to help customers find their favorite scent.
10. Perfect your in-store greeting
Excellent customer service starts the minute potential customers walk into your store. Creating a unique in-store greeting will help you make a solid first impression.
You could say hello, ask for the customer’s name, introduce yourself, and offer to place their bags behind the counter so they’re more comfortable as they peruse. Try to make every customer feel special with a friendly greeting that isn’t immediately associated with making a sale.
Here are three options to get you started:
Option #1
You: Hi, welcome to [store name]. My name is [your name]. We have a lounge on the left side of the store, so feel free to take a break from shopping and have a glass of water. I’m here if you need anything.
Option #2
You: Hi, welcome. My name is [your name]. And what’s your name?
Customer: Hi, my name is Jane.
You: Hi, Jane. Nice to meet you. Would you like me to store your bags behind the counter while you look around?
Option #3
You: Hi, my name is [name]. What brings you in today?
11. Send a handwritten thank you note
Handwritten thank you notes are a kind gesture and a surefire way to stand out from other retailers (particularly larger ones). It may feel like an antiquated way to interact with customers, but it’s a memorable experience.
Thank you notes are most commonly used to thank customers for an order, but there are more reasons why businesses should send handwritten notes, including:
- Improving response rates
- Building a stronger connection with customers
- Making customers feel special by saying happy birthday
- Recognizing a milestone like a wedding or graduation
Use a printing company like Moo or Vistaprint to create branded thank you cards, or rely on direct mail services like PostPilot to automate postcards with a handwritten message. Chances are, people will keep your note. It’ll boost loyalty and turn customers into brand advocates.
12. Streamline customer service across all channels
To successfully build lasting relationships with your customers, it’s crucial to deliver a steady in-person and digital customer service experience via email, phone, live chat, social media, website, and store.
Here are three immediate ways to streamline your customer service communications:
- Send direct messages via social media. If a customer leaves a comment on one of your Instagram posts asking for more information about your products, respond directly in the comments section or send them a DM to answer their questions. You can also provide your business email address and let them know they can email you.
- Add live chat or a chatbot to your website. Live chat is a great way to engage with site visitors while browsing. It’s also helpful for customers who want to buy online and pick up in-store (BOPIS). You’ll be available to answer questions quickly while they’re shopping online, which can improve customer service and conversion rates. Shopify merchants already have access to this technology through Shopify Inbox.
- Create a customer service email address. Email is a quick and easy way for customers to contact you with questions. It also lets you respond when you have time, although it’s best to respond within 24 hours. You can use a general company email address, like hello@yourcomany.com, or create a dedicated customer service email address and list it on your website and social media channels.
Make it known if it usually takes 24 hours to respond to customer emails. This way, when a customer tries to contact you via email, they have a rough idea of how long they can expect to wait before they hear back from you.
How to train and empower your team for excellent service
Hire for attitude, train for skill
Your retail staff will be interacting with customers daily. They act as spokespeople and representatives for your brand, so ensure you’re diligent throughout the hiring process. Just one bad hire can impact the entire team.
Here are some important customer service skills to look for when recruiting customer-facing staff:
- Strong communication skills
- Patience and emotional regulation
- Active listening
- Problem-solving skills
- Responsiveness
- Positive attitude
Train customer service reps so they are knowledgeable about your products, services, company goals, and policies. They should be able to effectively communicate that knowledge to customers in a helpful, clear way to improve customer satisfaction.
While online customer service reps may specialize in specific queries, such as sales or refunds, employees at brick-and-mortar stores should be all-around knowledgeable and empowered—well-versed in such as returning online sales in-store, conducting price adjustments, and answering questions about special promos.
Read: How To Implement Effective Customer Service Training
Standardize key touchpoints
Loyal customers will likely interact with your business across multiple touchpoints. Ensure that the tone, voice, and style of communication are aligned across channels to create a unified brand image—no matter where they interact or who they talk to.
Set and maintain customer service standards by:
- Highlighting great examples of customer service from retail staff
- Reminding staff of your core values, such as patience or empathy
- Standardizing key touchpoints, such as your store greeting or chatbot response
- Encouraging store managers to lead by example
- Using mystery shoppers to see how staff interact with customers when unsupervised
Use customer feedback and metrics for coaching
One great benefit of working with customers at a brick-and-mortar store is the face-to-face interaction. Yet without notes to refer back to or the paper trail most online interactions leave, in-store customer service reps must be empathetic and active listeners. The better you can understand a customer, the easier it is to assist them.
Make a point of following up with prior customers who have made recent purchases, or those who have abandoned their carts. Use surveys, social media monitoring, and customer reviews to gauge customer satisfaction levels online.
Pay attention to customer service metrics like:
- Net Promoter Score (NPS): How likely people are to recommend you on a scale of 1 to 10
- Customer satisfaction score (CSAT): The percentage of people who are satisfied with their shopping experience
- Customer lifetime value (CLV): The average amount of money that each customer spends with your brand during their lifetime
This can help you identify pain points, areas of improvement, and customer preferences.
Apply these customer service examples at your retail store
Consumer behavior is constantly changing. This includes marketing preferences, buying habits, and how people interact with businesses.
Your retail customer service strategy may evolve too, but customers’ demand for good customer service and support is constant. That’s why it’s crucial to always develop the best strategies to deliver outstanding customer service and adapt to meet your customers where they are.
To recap, this includes:
- Making sure you and your staff are knowledgeable about the products you sell
- Being available for customer questions and responding promptly (even to negative feedback)
- Doing what you can to go above and beyond and make customers feel special
- Winning at customer service by using an easy-to-understand POS system
Retail customer service FAQ
How do you define excellent customer service?
Good retail customer service makes the shopper feel heard and understood. It’s also personalized based on data you’ve already collected on them, and resolves any issues they might be experiencing. Brands like Zappos, the Ritz-Carlton, and Allbirds are excellent examples of providing high-quality customer service.
What are the duties of customer service in retail?
- Greet customers when they enter the store
- Resolve customer complaints
- Process returns and exchanges
- Respond to customer reviews
- Answer customer questions
- Share product knowledge
What are examples of customer service?
- Add a personal touch
- Be transparent and educate customers
- Respond quickly to all customer feedback
- Use creative and unexpected return policies
- Find a workaround when items are out of stock
- Build a connection with local shoppers
- Remember and reward repeat customers
- Proactively address online store shipping issues
- Offer “try before you buy” for online shoppers
- Perfect your in-store greeting
- Send a handwritten thank you note
- Streamline customer service across all channels
How to measure retail customer experience?
- Net Promoter Score (NPS)
- Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)
- Customer lifetime value (CLV)
- Repeat customer rate
- Customer churn rate
- Number of customer support tickets
- Service recovery rate
