Rethinking Retail for the Customer
By Kevin O’Brien | May 20, 2019
Retail has changed a lot over the last decade. So too have consumers. Retailers need a better way to improve their stores to keep customers engaged and shopping.
Retail locations across America appear to be closing at an unprecedented rate, yet some stores are thriving – Apple, T.J. Maxx, Target, Walmart and Lululemon. These stores are offering customers value and an experience. So while these stores thrive and some die, we see that there is a shift as the retail industry evolves.
Doug Straton, chief digital commerce officer at Hershey Co., said in a CNBC article:
“Companies need to think about getting the most lifetime value out of their customers as opposed to the most near-term value, and depending on the model this may mean a new way of looking at business investments and margins.”
There are many ways a retailer can look to gain the most lifetime value, but core to this is the customer experience.
Keeping the Customer Happy
If you’ve been around the world of retail store operations for any length of time you’re painfully aware of how keeping the customer happy is complicated. Consider these statistics:
- $37.7 billion lost in potential sales due to long checkout lines
- $1 trillion lost because they don’t have what the customers want to buy in stores
- 74% in-store customers leave without buying when they don’t get timely assistance
There is a lot to be lost. Central to avoiding loses from these types of customer disappointments is retail store operations.
It’s time to replace outdated legacy programs with a single solution that’s more effective and affordable to improve the customer experience.
8 ways to efficiently improve performance and the bottom line
- Speed up speed of service
- Streamline incident management
- Take the mystery out of “mystery shopping”
- Real-time measurement of merchandising roll-out
- Cross sell / up sell clarity
- Prioritize the data that matters
- Broadly improve performance management
- Know if offline procedures are being followed
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