Brand loyalty in the retail sector is on life support. In a fragmented omnichannel environment, comparison shopping, household budgetary pressures and online price transparency are driving declines in customer loyalty – and leading to tighter margins in the retail sector.
As traditional retailers struggle to find a competitive edge in such a market, brick-and-mortar stores need to review their processes to deliver greater value and exceptional experience. In an in-store environment, this is leading to brands adopting contactless payment to create hassle-free checkout experiences, along with elevating their stores to offer more ‘experiential retailing.’
Consumers are more digitally savvy than ever and place a high value on immediacy and quality of service. As a result, a retailers’ workforce needs to be equipped with the means to fulfill different orders with greater efficiency as store associates are now required to do more logistics related tasks, along with offering higher levels of in-store customer service.
While there have been significant advances in delivering on the customer experience online, the pressure is on for retail stores themselves to meet growing customer expectations. This is not an easy process given that traditionally retail stores have been unstructured environments. Salespeople have had to balance competing demands, handling operational tasks while interacting with customers and immediately responding to their requests. These competing demands can result in inaccurate orders, inefficient bundling, and other errors that drive up labour costs, while employee satisfaction can also suffer if staff feel like they are being pulled in too many different directions at once.
Meeting online customer service standards offline
Repeat business remains a critical barometer of success, but like many aspects of the modern retail equation, achieving this means overcoming challenges. Customer loyalty programs matter less, while a high-quality, consistent experience matters more. Loyalty is a cross-channel concept, as customers who shop across all a retailer’s channels are more engaged, creating a more beneficial buyer-seller relationship.
The modern shopper has access to real-time information and comparison expertise at every step of the journey online. Online retailers compete for customers through offering competitive product pricing and a seamless shopping experience. Customers now want an in-store and offline experience that meets the same standards of excellence they have already typically experienced online. This may mean in-store retail staff having to return an online purchase without hassle for a customer in-store, or sourcing stock in another store and organising delivery to the customer’s home; in-store shoppers expect service excellence at every stage of the buying journey.
The challenge with trying to match the effortless online customer experience in-store is that many retailers still perceive the customer journey to be linear, which is no longer the case.
Customers move between online and in-store, browse for goods across social platforms, may direct message for price comparison and email for detailed communication. Shoppers often do not buy where they browse, they may return elsewhere than where they bought and if they change their mind there is an expectation that a store associate will help resolve their issue without any hassle.
As consumers are shopping on all channels, retailers must focus on delivering an excellent total shopper experience, ensuring that they service their customer how, when and where they are, be that in-store, curbside, or the comfort of their home.
Built to match the realities of the shop floor
Retail workers are at the frontline of customer service today and require enterprise level information at their fingertips. After all, every shopper interaction is an opportunity to build a positive impression and support a sale, or conversely create a negative perception and lose business. In such an environment, retail workers need to be supported by the right tools to resolve customer issues, address queries and offer a seamless retail experience.
New retail-specific mobile technologies can drive efficiency and productivity in store operations and improve the customer experience. Compact, but durable handheld mobile computers, like the Honeywell CT30 XP or EDA5S mobile computers, make salespeople appear more approachable and work in tandem with other devices, enabling users to not only communicate and confirm work easily, but also view pictures of products and inventory locations, type on a keyboard, or scan barcodes.
How retail stores can transform to meet the needs of an omnichannel world
The competitive demands of today’s retail environment require in-store processes be optimised and expanded to meet customer needs. Just as Distribution Centres traded paper-based, word-of-mouth and other manual workflows for voice technology decades ago, forces are aligning for retail stores to make the same shift. Retail stores can now support ship-from-store and click-and-collect services – key customer experience differentiators that can also help limit shipping costs as online order volumes grow.
Proven voice picking technologies allow retailers to empower store associates to fulfill these key logistic roles transforming a traditional a brick-and-mortar store into a modern, flexible fulfilment centre that can meet the demands of omnichannel customers. These technologies present a ‘hands-free, eyes up’ mode of working that can support the demands of a range of in-store workflows, such as order fulfillment, gap scanning, shelf replenishment, inventory management, and more.
What should also not be overlooked by retailers in such an environment is that customers visiting for in-store pickup provide valuable boosts in foot traffic and opportunities for additional sales.
Greater operational visibility is required
Today, retailers need to empower and connect their workers through unified connected communications along with having greater visibility over their operations and workflows. Through these insights, management can analyse how long certain tasks take, leading to better understanding of retail workflows and workforce performance.
Operational visibility data can fuel labour models to build staffing requirements, determining how much labour is necessary to provide high levels of customer service during peak times and to fulfil online orders from the store. Ultimately, this fuels data-driven decisions to avoid overstaffing while ensuring on-time, accurate order fulfillment and an optimal customer service and checkout experience.
Empower staff to meet the needs of the omnichannel customer
Retail stores have transformed from sites that purely existed to make a purchase into something far more complex. Stores now must fulfill several roles along the customer purchasing journey – from being a customer service site, to acting as a returns-facility, to picking and shipping online orders and offering click-and-collect buying options.
To meet the needs of customers in an omnichannel world, where customers expect the same hassle-free shopping experience that they get online in an instore setting, retailers need to ensure that their staff are properly equipped with the right technologies, systems and knowledge.
Written by: Vikas Wadhwa, APAC Retail Leader, APACI at Honeywell
To learn more about how your retail store can meet the challenges of operating in an omnichannel environment, please visit: https://sps.honeywell.com/au/en/industries/retail