Tag: Retail technology

Tips to transform your in-store customer experience

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Customer experience is the ‘be all and end all’ for retail businesses today. Every retailer is vying to gain the biggest share of the customers’ attention and wallet in order to succeed; and delivering a superior customer experience is the best way retailers can achieve their goals. Therefore, they need to compete in this intense ‘customer experience’ battle ground. Moreover, for brick and mortar retail companies, the competition gets even stiffer as they have to tackle additional contention from e-commerce retail players. With all this competition and other internal & external constraints, offering a fantastic shopping experience for in-store customers is a challenge for your retail business. However, below are a few simple tips that can help you transform your in-store customer experience.

  1. Offering unique and personalized experience

Knowing and understanding customers not only by the demographic characteristics and buying history, but also following their individual shopping journey. This will enable you to go beyond the usual conventions of customer experience and drive you to innovate ways by which you can make the customer experience unique and personalized. Something as basic as knowing that a customer has visited the store on her birthday and presenting her tailored offers can leave a positive impact. Similar kind of unique and personalized experiences need to be created and delivered. This will set you apart in the perception of the customer.

  1. Channelizing store employees

An important element that stores have over e-commerce is the personal touch factor. Store employees can be the brand ambassadors for your business and can thus influence the customers purchase decisions as well as enhance their experience. Therefore you need to mobilize and channelize your store employees and harness their potential to deliver a superior shopping experience. Investing in training your store employees is essential to the success of your brand.

  1. Providing value added services

More is less in the new retail mantra. The modern day customers are demanding and how. They seek more channels for shopping, more choices of products and expect more value for the money they spend. Though this seems to be a challenging situation, you can convert it into an opportunity by incentivizing your customers with value added services for purchasing from the store. This is like an extra layer of customer service that will go a long way in compelling customers to come back to the store. Simple service options like offering to home deliver apparel after alteration or offering to take old stuff and providing cash coupons for purchasing at the store, are some techniques than can be implemented.

  1. Tendering convenience and reducing time

There seem to be a few specific attributes for in-store layouts that have been tried, tested, and proven successful. Some of these attributes include speed, convenience, cleanliness, and product selection. In today’s fast-paced world, where customers expect immediate assistance and instant gratification, making it easy and quick for customers to find their products or information, or providing them with different payment options for convenience and reducing their wait time at check-out queues, can significantly  enhance your in-store customer experience. Using innovative retail technologies can allow you to add these capabilities to your retail stores.

  1. Rewarding regular customers

You must appreciate the loyalty your customers have towards your offline retail business and reward them. Customer relationship management and loyalty programs with attractive reward schemes are proven methods to enhance the brand-customer relationships. The more you reward, the more your customers will come back to buy from you, resulting into a profit churning cycle for your business while offering a superior experience to your customers. Further, these loyal customers would be your brand advocates who in-turn would use their word of mouth to bring new customers.

Are you bracing up for the future of retail and the Amazon onslaught? Omni-channel is the way to do it.

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As the New Year 2018 is predicted to bring fortunes for retail businesses across the globe, retailers, both online and offline, continue to seek ways to slow Amazon’s dominant run in the retail landscape. And this seems to be the ‘need of the hour’ as Amazon, having already captured the online retail market has set its sights on offline retail in the last 2 years. Since 2015, the online giant has opened a half dozen bookstores as well as spent a whopping $13.7 billion on acquiring the Whole Foods chain in 2017. Amazon will continue this blitz in the coming years and look to burgeon its market share, thereby threatening other retailers’ success.

And whilst Amazon seeks to disrupt the retail space with its omni-channel prowess, many brands that were traditionally seen as pure-play brick-and-mortar retailers or pure-play online retailers have begun to expand their omni-channel presence and this trend will continue. However, in their endeavor to make it big, they will have to brace up for what lies ahead and the Amazon onslaught.

As customer service and customer experience is the battle ground for retailers’ survival, the basic fundamental is to focus on consumer expectations and to supersede those in ways better than the competition. The modern day consumer’s expectations live in both the online and offline worlds simultaneously.

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Below are four tactical ways retailers can address consumers’ expectations without further ado, offering the omni-channel experience that consumers will crave for more:

Integrating local in-store inventory with eCommerce

Imagine a scenario where a shopper headed to a birthday party realizes she needs to get a gift. With about an hour left for the party purchasing on Amazon is not an option. In this case, she could look to buy the gift from local store’s website and then pick it up on her way. This is an ideal case and that is the kind of service that brick-and-mortar retailers must look to offer while competing with Amazon and safeguarding their customer loyalty. The process uses both online and offline channels, and thus makes it a seamless omni-channel shopping experience.

Receiving returns in-store for online purchases

Another important advantage that brick-and-mortar retailers have over Amazon is that customers looking to return a product purchased online could just do it at the local store instead of mailing it back or waiting for someone to come and pick it up. Only having a truly omni-channel business can make this possible. Retailers can thus use the power of their own stores and online sites to impress their customers and beat the Amazon heat.

Ensuring information availability in-store

Having well-informed sales associates at the store will help retailers ring up more sales is obvious and there is a lot of scope for this. One of the ways of ensuring the sales associates are informed and ready is by equipping them with tablet devices carrying information related to the product such as availability price, offers, popularity, and information of the customer, such as purchase history, preferences and more. The devices can also have competitor related information regarding products, prices and promotions. With all this information they’ll be able to respond to any question a consumer throws at them. Moreover, extending this concept using an in-store kiosk or an interactive device where the customers can themselves browse and gather information will also help the cause greatly. These techniques will help retailers retain customer loyalty and compete with Amazon.

Using the stores beyond display and selling

At Apple Stores, customers can learn how to take better photos with their devices, learn the basics about operating their Macbooks and discover their use for art and design projects. The Home Depot hosts workshops for people keen to learn new carpentry skills. Some brands don’t even sell anything in their retail spaces. These are excellent examples of extending the real estate of the brick-and-mortar store as an opportunity to use this space for creating experience beyond just displaying products or selling. Additionally, retailers can use their online sites to inform customers about such happenings at the store. And this is one of the major advantage that brick-and-mortar retailers going omni-channel have over online players like Amazon.

These techniques may seem beyond the immediate capability of retailers. But the urgency to acquire these operational capabilities is real and unforgiving. If retailers want to be ready for the future and compete with Amazon but they continue doing business the way they have been, then it spells nothing but doom. Without the right omni-channel retail software solution, right from the Point-of-sale (POS) to the supply chain, retailers may end up being thrown out of business.

Augmented Reality – the new normal in retail

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There has been a complete turnaround in the way retailers go about carrying their businesses in recent years. From quick online payments to fast product deliveries, retailers have incorporated various disruptive strategies to provide a hassle free shopping experience. But there are various other technological advancements that facilitate retailers in streamlining their business processes. One such advancement that has proved to be quite successful for retailers is Augmented Reality (AR).

AR as the name suggests augments or enhances our surroundings by enabling us to interact with the products we wish to purchase. Now, one may wonder why we need an enhanced environment for interacting with the products. Well, the idea is pretty simple, customers often search for the desired products online before making a purchase. However, it is difficult for them to understand the features of the product completely, resulting in a lost sales opportunity for the retailers. To not miss out on an online sale, it is imperative for the retailers to find newer avenues that lure the customers to make the purchase. In an era where handheld devices are commonplace, it easier for them to develop an application or an e-commerce website that can access the front/web camera of the customers’ devices and allow them to look at themselves interacting with the product through AR, thus, making it more easier for them to make the buying decision and thus, the purchase.

It is not limited to mobile applications and e-commerce websites; retailers having brick-and-mortar stores too can adopt this technology. For instance, apparel retailers can embed AR technology with their store mirrors converting them into smart mirrors. This helps people to experience the products without actually trying them. It is a great technological advancement that can also be used as a marketing tool as it impels customers to experience this at the stores. It helps in increasing the store footfall which in turn increases the chances of people making a purchase, resulting in an improved bottom line for the retailers.

AR also enhances the efficiency of the store in which it is used. It saves the customers’ time as they are not required to try out every product physically, resulting in less number of people queueing outside the trial room. Moreover, in a short span, a wide variety of products can be tried which allows the in-store staff to better understand the requirements of other customers, thus eliminating the possibility of a customer being neglected.

AR along with various other technological advancements has changed the scenario of retailing worldwide. It has been embraced by some of the biggest retailers across the globe and is all set to penetrate further into the retail space. Retailers should keep themselves abreast with such technological advancements since these shall become indispensable for them to maintain a prominent stature in the dynamic retail space.

Also Read: 7 Trends Shaping Asia’s Future Retail Landscape

Redefining the Future of Retail Personalization using Artificial Intelligence

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Personalization in retail is definitely not a new concept. Retailers have explored it in many ways over the years to improve shopping experience for the customers. While other retailers simply managed greeting returning customers by their name, Amazon has been one of the pioneers of personalization in retail with its ability to show different and relevant home pages for different customers based on their past clickstream paths and buying history. However, such rudimentary approaches are now considered the starting point for modern day retail marketers.

Customers are savvier than they were a few years ago. Personalization is not a need for them anymore, it is an expected norm. And retail brands must rise to the occasion to exceed this expectation. This may seem an extremely challenging task but with the proliferation of data analytics and implementation of machine learning and artificial intelligence, retail personalization can be majorly resurged.

To begin with, a very basic and brief preview into how AI works; AI uses comprehensive algorithms and logics to find trends in available data be it internal or third party and then helps analyze those trends to derive patterns that can be associated to shopping behaviors and customer personas. Utilizing machine learning that operates on probability and statistics, adjustments can be made in data sets to achieve the best outcome when it comes to creating the right marketing message for each individual customer.

Application of AI driven process in retail marketing and promotion campaigns will not only help retailers acquire new customers, but also boost repeat business. Increased accuracy in personalized communication to the customers along with tailored recommendations and offers will compel shoppers to strengthen their loyalty as they will begin to associate the retail brand with personalized, relevant experiences.

For retail personalization, the future seems to be pretty exciting. Leveraging the potential of Artificial Intelligence, there are limitless possibilities to notch up personalization to levels beyond the imagination of the customer. Infusing AI in marketing will be the differentiating factor for retail marketers that look to stand out from the horde of advertising and marketing communication targeting shoppers.

Endless Aisles – Harnessing In-Store and Online Shopping

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Endless aisle is allowing customers to make use of technologies such as specially designed in-store kiosks or other intuitive systems to order items that are currently out-of-stock in that particular brick-and-mortar store. It is a concept that extends beyond the inventory that in tangible form is available in the store at a given point in time. Thus, endless aisle allows retailers to forge a strong link between customer demand and inventory. Retail companies that have been quick to embrace cross-channel strategies have already begun adopting the endless aisle technology to boost their sales further.

But what makes endless aisle click? Here are some of the noteworthy benefits:

Retailers can downsize unnecessary floor area of their brick-and-mortar store. This trimming of floor space will therefore result in higher sales per square foot. Implementing endless aisle also helps retail owners counteract in-store revenue bleeding as a result of showrooming. Retail companies can thus capitalize on reduced cost of rentals and optimize the available floor space. Further, retailers can reduce the effort of displaying large products physically at the store with the implementation of endless aisle. Products that have low inventory turnover can thus be removed from the shelves of the store. Endless aisle can help boost conversion rate due to the enhanced shopping feature at the physical store and help improve customer loyalty.

With the advent of endless aisle, the need to depend on warehouses to stock-up merchandise is diminished to a large extent as retailers can enter into tie-ups with manufacturers to ship the ordered products directly to the consumers from the manufacturer’s end.

In-store consumers can enjoy the comfort of e-shopping without compromising on the traditional ‘touch and feel’ factor. Also, real-time visibility of available products at the physical and virtual store empowers the customers to shop on their own terms.

With the help of data processing and analytics, retailers can display only those products that have a high turnover in-store while offering the not-so-popular merchandise through kiosks, tablets or computers so that customers can try and buy at the same time.

As the consumers of today are in the driver’s seat, demanding the best service and setting up high expectations, retailers must opt for investing in the right tools and technology to successfully implement endless aisle in their business thus ensuring that they do not end-up facing the reality of lost sales situations.

Why Invest in Omni-channel?

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Meeting the complex expectations of the omni-channel shopper demands substantial investment in emerging and effective technologies. Let us look at the factors that are driving omni-channel growth before discussing the return on investment.

The number of smartphone subscriptions globally was 1.6 billion in 2013. According to a report produced by a leading mobile technology enterprise, this figure is expected to increase to 5.6 billion in 2019. 90% of the world’s population will then be able to access mobile Internet connections. This growth in Internet penetration and the immense increase in popularity of smartphones will only magnify omni-channel customer behavior exponentially. These trends point towards omni-channel being the only sustainable way of doing retail business in the future as ‘one-click shopping’ becomes a reality.

Innovation in technology is also driving the retailers’ interest in omni-channel retailing, supporting new capabilities in personalized consumer engagement. Advances in store digitization technologies, predictive logistics, virtual assistance, and customer recognition systems are game-changers. These new technologies have the potential to disrupt existing business models in the same way as e-Commerce disrupted traditional brick-and-mortar sales few years ago.

In future, diverse business models will be driven by the modern day consumer’s preferences. The point in case will be e-commerce giants who are trying to add physical presence to get closer to the customers. Meanwhile, brick-and-mortar retailers are adding online stores and also reinventing the customer experience and the role of their stores (for example, by using stores as fulfillment centers for online orders).

Social media is becoming an increasingly powerful sales and marketing channel. Online companies sit on a goldmine of rich consumer data and they can easily use this to customize offers and target consumers more effectively.

Thus today, technology enables consumers to be present anywhere and everywhere and to meet these consumers in their comfort zone, retailers need to be present wherever they are. For this, they need to invest in modern retail technologies that allow a seamless omni-channel customer experience.

Also Read: Four Emerging Trends In This Revolutionary Era Of Shopping

What retailers need to understand about the Omni-channel Customer Experience

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ETP Blog What Retailers Need To Understand About The Omni-Channel Customer Experience

Retail has undergone a major transformation in the digital age, and today customers demand better, quicker and seamless experiences. Therefore, brands need to provide omni-channel experiences that allow customers to engage from wherever they are – brick-and-mortar stores, mobile apps, online, kiosks, catalog and more.

However, simply operating multiple retail channels does not constitute an omni-channel strategy, unless done right. Today, customers may start in one channel and switch to another as they progress to a definite buying decision. Omni-channel implies making these complex ‘hand-offs’ between channels must be effortless for the customer.

Omni-channel is not just a mere buzzword. It is essentially a cluster of strategies that need to deliver results. So what do retailers need to know to create a superior omni-channel customer experience?

360° Omni-Channel Customer View

Collecting customer information such as shopping preferences, demographics, buying history, preferred modes of payment and so on is absolutely vital for creating a single unified view of the customer no matter which they use to research and purchase. When acquired, consolidated and leveraged fittingly, this analysis can provide a roadmap for retailers to define and deploy more personalised and effective communication and promotions, eliminating much of the guesswork.

Offer Consistent And Continuous Experiences

Today, consumers have instant access to an extensive range of buying options, they will not think twice while letting go of a brand in search of a superior experience. Even if one of the channels is lagging, the retailer will likely see a drop in customer loyalty. Hence, the value of a complete, continuous and consistency is priceless.

Leveraging Emerging Technologies

The right technology investment is vital to enabling an outstanding omni-channel customer experience. Retailers should equip their business operations with the right mix of emerging and effective technologies to fulfil consumers’ high expectations in this fast and frugal omni-channel age. Brands that can stay on the cutting edge of technology such as mobility, geo-targetting, smart devices for payments, augmented reality and many more are likely to emerge victorious.

While every retailer will bring a distinct omni-channel customer experience strategy to the table, brands will have to strive to provide a seamless, noteworthy customer experience across channels to meet consumer expectations.

Also Read: How To Manage Omni-Channel Orders Effectively

Personalizing The Retail Customer Experience

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Retail success can be visualized as a two stage process. It is not just about getting a customer to enter the retail store or to access the e-commerce website to shop, but also closing the sale. And both these stages are potential challenges and battles that retailers need to win, thanks to the ever-growing and fierce competition.

Recent trends suggest that shoppers are constantly looking for offers and discounts, and are likely to make a purchase from retailers who sell merchandise at discounted prices or offer free shipping and so on. But that’s not it. Customers are also seeking more information regarding products and services that interest them. All this can be viewed by retailers as probable opportunities to offer something extra to their customers by making it more relevant and personalized.

Busy shoppers value quick reminders about the products that they had left in their shopping carts during their previous interactions or even about those that they may have been researching for or had shown interest in previously. Personalized offerings such as tailor-made discounts, promotions or other benefits, during auspicious occasions such as birthdays and anniversaries or social occasions such as festivals really go a long way in influencing the customers’ decisions while making their next purchase. Additionally, personalized messaging and recommendations provide customers with the information that will enable them to determine products that are the right fit for their needs. Information about frequently purchased products, merchandise that can be coupled either together or with special offers and discounts also persuades customers to make a purchase. Location based or proximity marketing such as in-store discounts or free shipping can appeal to shoppers, driving them to buy. A superior after sales service could go a long way in boosting shopper affiliation towards the retail brand further as being interactive and engaging with customers helps keep their interest sustained in the brand.

Personalization, if done appropriately and by being conscious of not overstepping limits, retailers can make the customers feel special and important. In a more customer-centric retail environment, where the focus is on the customer more than ever before, providing a personalized service that is valuable and memorable can unquestionably be the differentiating factor for customers to choose the retail brand they would want to be most associated with. As retailers streamline their omni-channel retail business operations and focus on enhancing the customer experience, customer profiling can enable retailers to understand their customers better to be able to offer them a personalized shopping experience.

Also Read: Omni-Channel Success: Bridging Gap Between Customer Expectations And Omni-Channel Retail Execution