Retail technology can be a powerful tool in promoting sustainability within the retail industry. By leveraging technology, retailers can optimize their operations, reduce waste, and minimize their environmental footprint.
The Importance of Sustainability in Retail
Sustainability in retail offers numerous benefits, including:
Enhanced brand reputation: Consumers are more likely to support brands that prioritize environmental responsibility.
Increased customer loyalty: Sustainable practices can foster long-term relationships with environmentally conscious customers.
Cost savings: Implementing eco-friendly measures can lead to reduced operational costs, such as energy consumption and waste management.
Regulatory compliance: Adhering to environmental regulations ensures legal compliance and avoids potential penalties.
Positive social impact: Sustainable initiatives can contribute to a healthier planet and improve local communities.
Here are some key ways retail technology can contribute to sustainability:
Inventory Management and Demand Forecasting
Reduced waste: Accurate inventory management can help prevent overstocking and understocking, reducing the need for unnecessary production and transportation.
Optimized ordering: Demand forecasting tools can help retailers anticipate customer needs more precisely, leading to more efficient ordering practices and reduced waste.
Supply Chain Optimization
Increased visibility: Retail technology solutions can provide real-time visibility into the supply chain, allowing retailers to identify inefficiencies and potential disruptions.
Reduced transportation: By optimizing routes and minimizing transportation distances, retailers can reduce their carbon emissions.
Ethical sourcing: Retail technology solutions can help track the origin of products, ensuring compliance with ethical sourcing standards and supporting sustainable practices.
Energy Management
Data-driven insights: Retail technology can collect data on energy consumption, allowing retailers to identify areas for improvement and implement energy-saving measures.
Automated controls: Smart building technology can optimize energy usage by automatically adjusting heating, cooling, and lighting systems based on occupancy and other factors.
Waste Reduction
Tracking and analysis: Retail technology can track waste generation and identify areas where waste can be reduced or recycled.
Sustainable packaging: Retailers can use software to optimize packaging materials and design, minimizing waste and promoting sustainability.
Customer Engagement and Education
Personalized communication: Retailers can use software to send targeted messages to customers about sustainable products, promotions, and initiatives.
Educational content: Retail technology can be used to create and distribute educational content about sustainability, empowering customers to make informed choices.
Carbon Footprint Measurement and Reporting
Data collection: Retail technology solutions can collect data on various aspects of a retailer’s operations, including energy consumption, transportation, and waste generation.
Carbon footprint calculation: This data can be used to calculate the retailer’s carbon footprint and identify areas for improvement.
Reporting: Retailers can use software to generate sustainability reports, demonstrating their commitment to environmental responsibility.
By leveraging the capabilities of retail technology solutions, retailers can make significant strides towards a more sustainable future. By optimizing operations, reducing waste, and promoting sustainable practices, retailers can not only benefit their businesses but also contribute to a healthier planet.
ETP Group’s Commitment to Sustainability
ETP Group digital receipts and AI-powered fraud detection systems are just a glimpse of how technology can be harnessed to reduce waste and create a more sustainable future. By embracing these solutions, retailers can not only contribute to environmental protection but also improve their operational efficiency and customer experience.
Contact ETP Group today to learn more about our unified commerce and how it can benefit your business.
Raise your hand if you’d like to improve your retail store’s sales.
Whether you’re looking to build on the positive momentum or trying to fix a dip in sales, you’re in the right place.
We’ve curated a list of tried-and-true things they’ve done that had a measurable impact on their sales.
Let’s dive in!
Focus on the customer service
Prioritize your customers
Turn your store into a destination
Refresh your in-store displays
Reduce wait times
Generate more online awareness
Increase in-store foot traffic
Set up a customer loyalty program
Level up your staff training
Focus on upsells and cross-sells
1. Focus on the customer experience
Your employees are your store’s front line. They’re the ones interacting with customers, creating positive connections and actually selling your products, so it makes sense to invest in them. To get your staff to effectively drive in-store sales, it’s important to:
Hire passionate people: When a sales associate is passionate for the products they sell, it seeps into how they interact with customers and makes them more likely to create positive interactions.
Focus on the customer’s needs: While sales are certainly important, actively listening to customers is even more so. By listening to what the customer says, sales associates can identify their pain points and better find a way to solve them through the products they sell.
Emphasize the importance of personalized interactions: There’s no cookie-cutter way to work in sales. Actively listening to a customer’s wants and needs helps a sales associate find the product that’s right for them.
A retail store is a great touchpoint where you can engage with your customers directly and help them solve their problems. Offering great in-store customer service that simply can’t be replicated online is the key to more lifelong retail customers (and sales).
Make your customers your top priority. Which brings us to the next point…
2. Prioritize your customers
Being customer-centric is something that every retailer should aspire to be. It really comes down to understanding what your customers want and making their needs your top priority. That doesn’t just end at having the products they want in stock. It starts by making customers feel good.
If your sales associates treat the people that walk into your store like people, you’re heading in the right direction. Nobody likes being sold to, so enough with the pressure sales tactics. Just have a conversation with the customer, find out what they need and propose a few solutions that match their price point. If they like your service (and the product), they’ll come back.
If you don’t carry the product that your customer truly needs, don’t be afraid to recommend it to them anyway and tell them where they can buy it. They’ll appreciate the help and your sales associate will establish trust with the customer. When that customer comes back to your store, they’re far more likely to trust your sales associates as a result. Think long-term relationship-building, not short-term sales!
The most successful retailers are obsessed with their customers and making them happy. Are you?
3. Turn your store into a destination
Customers crave unique, creative and memorable in-store experiences. Not only does that include approachable, knowledgeable staff (that’s a given), it also means rethinking the way your store operates. People are so accustomed to the typical store setup: there are products, salespeople and a cash register—boring. Some companies have pioneered a new store format called experiential retail.
In a nutshell, what that means is that the store’s goal is more than just to sell products; it’s to create an immersive experience that focuses on customer engagement. And they achieve that with interactive product demos and fun activities that are related to the products they sell.
For example, a visionary mattress store has provided nap pods that people can rent for a 30-minute nap. They come fully-equipped with an original mattress, sheets, and pillows, along with a bathroom to freshen up after your nap. If people enjoy their nap, their perception of the brand’s products is positive and the probability that they will make a purchase and become brand evangelists is higher.
There’s science to back this up, too. When a person touches and interacts with a product, they’re more likely to develop an affinity for that product.
In an article published by Harvard Business Review, Lawrence Williams, a marketing professor at Leeds School of Business, says “Physically holding products can create a sense of psychological ownership, driving must-have purchase decisions. This idea may underlie the push to move inventory from display cases into customers’ hands, a trend seen in many electronics outlets such as the Apple Store.” Pretty cool, huh?
Experiential retail is blowing up and there are tons of ways you can apply the concept in your store. We teamed up with Cate Trotter, Founder of Insider Trends, to cover this topic in-depth—read her piece below!
4. Refresh your in-store merchandising
Assembling persuasive in-store merchandising is part art, part data.
You use data to pinpoint which products are typically bought together, and you use your creativity to make those products look irresistible.
Good in-store merchandising will have no clutter. The only things that your eyes are drawn to are their products. Displays that are too busy will just overwhelm your customers and make your store look cluttered and unkempt. The store planogram has to be well organized. Every product has its place. It’s easy for customers to find what they’re looking for faster, which contributes to a better overall shopping experience.
Related products are grouped together. Notice that pants and shirts from matching color palettes are next to one another. (Hint: if you want to see which of your products are typically bought together using ETP Omni-channel Analytics, just check out your Products Frequently Bought Together report.
Must-have, low-cost accessories are nearby. Odds are, if you’re buying stylish gym gear, you need a bag to carry it in, right? The store will therefore place their tote bags next to their gym gear for exactly that reason.
5. Reduce wait times
Long wait times to pay are a big turn-off for customers and can cripple your sales. Research shows that most customers will typically abandon a checkout line and leave a store after waiting just six to eight minutes before heading for the door. The best way to stop losing sales due to long checkout lineups? Eliminate them altogether.
Brick-and-mortar retailers need to “banish the wait in line, once and for all” to avoid losing sales. But how do you do that?
It starts with scheduling enough sales associates to serve customers quickly even during peak hours. In ETP Analytics, you can easily see when your peak business hours are in the Sales by Hour of Day report. Use that information to make sure you schedule enough workers to assure you’re promptly serving each customer.
Next, why not eliminate cash registers altogether?
Unlike traditional cash registers and in-premise point of sale (POS) systems, cloud-based POS systems and mobile POS systems enable sales associates to serve customers and ring up sales from anywhere in the store. Retail MPOS helps customers get in and out of your store as fast as possible, which is what most of them want anyway.
Ring up sales from anywhere – with ETP’s mPOS software – ETP Mobile Store, you can eliminate customer wait times and reduce lost sales, all while offering amazing service.
6. Generate more online awareness
‘Clicks and bricks’ isn’t just a catchy line; it’s literally how consumers shop now.
Last year, more than 80% of retail purchases were made by first using online search. Increasingly, people are researching what to buy and where to buy it online before ever setting foot in-store. When they get to the store, those multichannel shoppers spend an average of three times more than single-channel shoppers.
Of course, retailers should have an online presence, but that doesn’t just mean having a transactional website. Things like a Google My Business (GMB) profile, Facebook and Instagram are amazing tools to get discovered by more potential customers in your area.
With a little bit of work, you can make it easier for people to find your store online, research what products you offer and get directions. Your goal is to make it as easy as possible for customers to see that you have what they need.
Setting up a GMB profile and optimizing your Facebook and Instagram accounts for local online searches isn’t as hard as you may think.
7. Increase in-store foot traffic
What good is online awareness if nobody is actually visiting your brick-and-mortar store or buying online? It’s not worth very much.
Part of that is getting a transactional eCommerce store up and running; the other part is showing customers that your brick-and-mortar store has what customers are looking for.
There are several ways to incentivize customers who discover your store online to visit and make a purchase.
Organize in-store events. The benefit? If a customer is interested, they have to visit your store. Things like weekly clubs, workshops and hands-on events are a great way to build a community and generate more visits.
Run exclusive in-store offers. Nobody likes passing up a great deal. Try offering a free giveaway for in-store purchases, or featuring certain items available exclusively in-store.
Show inventory levels online. People are more likely to visit your store if they know you have what they’re looking for. With ETP Omni-channel Inventory Management solutions, you can show your brick-and-mortar inventory levels online in real-time at the click of a button.
Offer free in-store pickup. This option benefits both you and your customers. For them, they can avoid paying for shipping, while you save on shipping costs.
8. Set up a loyalty program
A loyalty program incentivizes customers to purchase more to unlock personalized rewards. It’s a super accessible way to increase customer lifetime value while rewarding your customer’s loyalty to your business. When customers can use their loyalty program points to discount future purchases, you can bet they’re going to take advantage.
9. Don’t treat product returns like a loss
Returns happen, and when they do, customers should get the same great service as when they bought the item. Put yourself in their shoes. The product didn’t work out; they’re disappointed, too.
Treat each return like a sale and serve them willingly and with a smile. It makes the customer feel like they’re valued for more than just their hard-earned money, which creates an emotional sense of loyalty.
If they appreciate your service, they’re more likely to make another purchase at your store. Make the process quick and painless, and most important of all: treat your customers with positive intent.
Of course, there are serial-returners out there who will try to take advantage, but a loyal customer base that consistently shops at your store because of great service more than makes up for that minority.
10. Focus on upsells and cross-sells
Upsells and cross-sales can add up; have you considered making them a part of your sales strategy? When done wrong, it can make your sales associates (and your store’s reputation) look dodgy and self-serving. But when done right, it’s just flat-out great customer service.
With upselling, you should train sales associates to use the rule of three. Take the item that the customer was initially interested in (for example, a pair of running shoes) and show the customer three different models at three different price points (entry-level, mid-level and high-end). This is the best way to upsell since it shows the customer that you understand their needs. You want to show them everything that’s available so that they can make the most informed decision possible. You’re not pressuring them; you’re informing them.
With cross-selling, you should apply a similar approach: don’t try and sell a customer something they don’t actually need. Going back to the shoe example, an illustration of an authentic cross-sell would be educating the shoe shopper on the various types of running socks: from expensive compression socks and moisture-wicking ones to the generic cotton socks. Educate them on the differences between the three and let them choose what’s best for them.
With cross-selling, another important factor is “does this purchase make sense?” For shoes, socks are pretty much a given, but sometimes it can be tricky. The best way to find out if a customer needs anything else is to simply ask, “Could I help you with anything else today?” After all, a sales associate’s job is to facilitate the customer’s needs and offer solutions. Suggestive selling is the most authentic way to do that without coming across as an overly-pushy, selfish salesperson.
Summing up, hopefully you can use the above tips and tricks to increase retail sales. Ultimately, it comes down to prioritizing your customers and understanding that you’re in the business of serving them.
From your staff to the systems you use to run your store, everything and everyone’s job should be to create more “wow” moments and earn their trust; the sales will naturally follow.
Want to create an efficient in-store experience that your customers will love? Talk to one of our retail experts today to see how ETP V5 can help!
Retailers will be able to deliver the ultimate customer experience across all retail touch points every time, when they are able to have a single view of their customers, irrespective of the channels. For this, retailers will have to stop focusing on the channels and instead start concentrating on how to deliver the right omni-channel experience to every individual customer. They will need to stop treating online stores and physical stores as two separate entities. If the marketing communication and messaging are not consistent or personalized across all channels, the shopping experience will also be fragmented and suboptimal.
Delivering a superior, personalized omni-channel experience pivots upon merging the information retail owners get from online/mobile with the in-store customer behavior. As a preemptive measure, retailers must take cognizance of the fact that omni-channel shoppers switch between channels at will and choose whatever is most convenient and effective at that instant. It is at this juncture that retailers need to get their act right by making that experience feel cohesive while making sure that the messaging is consistent and personalized at every touch point. This demands a unification of customer interactions across all retail channels, which banks upon having a single unified view of the customer.
To be able to gain that single view of the customer, retail businesses must be capable of assimilating all the data available at their disposal, which includes shoppers’ online behavior and browsing history, in-store and online purchases, preferred products and modes of payment, to name a few. Since this data has to be derived from multiple sources, it is essential that retail businesses be equipped with fully integrated retail management systems. Also, they need to tap into the power of advanced analytics to make sense of the enormous amount of information coming through the systems and unify it so they can deliver the personalized brand experiences that today’s customers expect.
With the help of the unified data, retail companies can offer personalized shopping experiences with content that is targeted and tailored for the individual customer and is not channel based. Armed with this knowledge about the customer along with intelligent CRM integrated point of sale (POS) systems that display shopper profiles, in-store sales associates can recommend products, suggest relevant cross-sells, and even save the sale if an item is out of stock at that time. Similarly, online stores can offer recommendations to shoppers while they are researching or purchasing to aid them in their decision making and drive them to make the purchase and sometimes achieve up-sells. Hence, engaging in a consistent, personalized way across all channels will help retail businesses achieve omni-channel success.
New age shoppers are connected, digitally savvy, always-on and at will, switch between channels while shopping. They expect retail brands to understand them better. After all, they are well aware that retailers these days are capable of capturing data – from customer details to how, when, what and where they make their purchases, and also what they are researching online. In other words, customers know that retailers can use the data to formulate an idea of their interests and motivators for purchase. As a result, customers’ expectations have gone beyond mere transactions. However, retailers today are falling short when it comes to satisfying consumer expectations for personalized, relevant shopping experiences.
While 69% of companies said they offer a superior online experience, 51% customers left a company that failed them online. Further, 81% companies said that they have or are close to having a holistic view of their customers, only 37% of consumers agreed to the fact that their preferred retail brand actually understands them. These statistics clearly highlight the gap between customer expectations and retail businesses’ understanding and execution.
How can retailers start to offer a seamless customer experience across channels and rise above the customer expectations?
In order to successfully implement seamless and personalized omni-channel shopping experiences, retailers require a single 360 degree view of their customer. Simply put, retailers need to have comprehensive information about their customers – their details, buying behavior, preferred channels, and so on. Not only this, the data should be handy with retail organizations to proactively plan and implement relevant offers and communications. This is possible only when the brand becomes truly customer-centric and leverages the information gathered to understand their omni-channel customer better.
By investing in the right omni-channel retail technology, retail businesses and brands have abundant opportunities to know their customers and engage with them, no matter which channel the customers prefer.
Christmas and New Year are just around the corner and shopping during this time of the year is at its peak. Amongst the festive shopping chaos, retailers and shoppers need to get their act right so that they do not miss out on anything – the maximum margins for retailers, and the right products for shoppers.
While shoppers – they are the ones who are connected – have the power of choice, the option of using multiple channels and alternatives through intense competition amongst brands. At this juncture, shoppers only know one thing, to get what they want, and they would not hesitate to switch between channels or for that matter even between brands, to do that. It is at this juncture that retail businesses can seize the opportunity to make their mark on the customers and step ahead of their competition.
Here’s how:
Connecting all the way – Gone are the days when the transaction marked the end of the sale and engagements were limited to product queries and purchases. Today, when customer expectations have reached new heights, better customer interaction is one of the necessities for retail owners to take cognizance of. They need to constantly engage with their customers, right from the product research stage till the next purchase, and it does not end there. Some benefits of connected retailing would be nurturing brand-customer relationships, enhancing customer loyalty, knowing the customers purchase history better and tailoring offerings to the customer’s tastes.
Choice is bliss – It should be the top prerogative of the retail businesses to add to the festive cheers by offering customers ample choices – be it products, prices, channels, promotions, and so on. Having said that, retailers should not overwhelm their customers with choices such that they are unable to make a decision. Rather, they should help their customers in choosing the right product that would be the best fit for the customers’ needs. Having the required quantity of merchandise and inventory, appropriate pricing of products, relevant and attractive promotions, and cross-channel operations are some of the necessary measures retailers need to take for providing a better and choicest shopping experience.
Creating the ho, ho, ho omni-channel experience – Retail businesses need to go omni-channel as it is the new norm and there are no two ways about it. If a customer would like to research for a product online, purchase the product in the store and expects it to be delivered at home, the retailer needs to manage the whole process seamlessly and satisfy the customer’s expectation. This would delight the customer since they are being offered a unified and seamless experience throughout their shopping journey regardless of the channel they choose to interact with. Investing in the right omni-channel retail solutions will allow retailers to spread the festive joy through superior customer experience and ring in more sales.
To make the Christmas shopping season truly merry, retail businesses need to be connected with their customers all the time, help them with the right choice, and provide them with a seamless omni-channel customer experience. This will help the retailers and their customers have a happy and prosperous New Year.
As the retail market becomes bigger for the global consumer, a premium is placed on creating extraordinary brand experiences. That is what keeps the customer relationships intact in an increasingly competitive arena. Following are a few examples of how brands have managed to carve out a superior brand image and relationship quotient with the customers.
Anticipatory service at the Apple store begins for customers even before they arrive in the flesh. With the Apple store app, a customer can schedule an appointment with the store staff – who will be able to prepare for their arrival at the Apple store and be available to personally guide them. The results are benefits for customer and company alike. For the company, the benefit is level scheduling of demand, a Lean process principle. For customers, the app eliminates wait times and promises undivided attention, something hard to find elsewhere in retail. Then it gets even more personal.
While IKEA’s print offering is its most enduring piece of content marketing, it only scratches the surface of the brand’s exemplary content marketing efforts, which are many and varied and all revolve around one common mission: to improve people’s everyday lives. “We really look at how people live their lives at home,” says Christine Scoma Whitehawk, Communications Manager for IKEA U.S. “So, we really start with the customer, and try to see what’s important to them… And then how can IKEA help them so that we are truly partners in making their life better at home every day.”
Starbucks is masterful at wrapping its product in a deeply-textured in-store experience. The choice of furniture and fixtures, the names of its drinks, the messages on the cups, the graphics, it’s all been studiously crafted. It creates a unique ecosystem of customer interactions, attention to smallest details with quality products, all weaved together. It ensures value fulfilment across multiple channels. “The mobile-order-and-pay, a totally unique technology, is the single most important innovation that Starbucks will introduce this year.” says Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz.