NRF: Retail Tech Buzz - Customer Experience and Green Solutions

In-store technology is an increasingly broad category these days. Given the economy, it's hard to see more esoteric in-store technologies being aggressively implemented.

Pardon the rant, but there are still many retailers that don't even have basic customer insights in-store. So while some will lead the foray into new areas like scent, or better, areas of in-store media like YCD (www.ycdmultimedia), some are too far behind to get ahead.

Making the retail experience more personal starts with utilizing customer data to increase the store's ability to be relevant. That's done through data and multi-media more than scents.

Phil Rubin, CEO, rDialogue

Bring it on! Anything that will improve the customer shopping experience will be welcomed. The retail landscape suffers from, for the most part, sameness and boredom. Customers are uninspired in the vast majority of stores. Just take the time to watch how customers move and look in most stores...you've never seen such a bored group in your life.

So, whether its scent, kiosks, digital signage or just good ol' fashioned superb staff performance, if it does anything to make your customer smile, stay longer, buy something and want to come back it's a winner!

Kevin Graff, President, Graff Retail

This reminded me of the following:

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

Applying this to the article:

Give a retailer a technical solution for improving customer experience and feed him for a day. Teach a retailer how to design customer experiences and change the industry for a lifetime.

'VaheKatros'

Customer experience technology is the wave of the retail future. Period. That said, one of the biggest concerns that I'm hearing coming out of CES and NRF is too many technologies with too little focus. Retailers don't just want to see innovation for innovation's sake; they want to know the insights that drove the innovation and what it means to their specific goals and in-store environments. Going forward, technology firms will be challenged to reign in the "gee whiz" a bit and direct the sometimes thousands of engineers that are creating killer apps in their sleep.

Carol Spieckerman, President, newmarketbuilders

Again, the silver bullet has been reinvented. This could make a difference and might be a help for retailers too inept or too lazy to actually train their staff. I haven't been in many retail outlets in the last five years where my senses were offended. Usually, I am offended by small things like displays not being priced, OOSs and mispriced product. This is sometimes compounded by staff who are too busy to correct problems.

Forgive my cynicism but I really think that if a manager had a heart to heart with his staff, explained how difficult the economy is and what it will take to be successful, that would do more good than any in-store aroma therapy. Keep the store clean, organized and priced, then love those who enter and you'll be OK.

Ed Dennis, president, Dennis Enterprises

In the 30s, my father worked in a movie theater concession stand and used a fan to blow the scent of fresh popcorn into the audience just before intermissions. So much for "finally [bringing] scents to the selling process."

Do we really need additional layers of retail complexity for store employees to misunderstand, mismanage, and ignore?

M. Jericho Banks PhD, President, CEO, Forensic Marketing LLC

This year at NRF, the "Customer Experience" has become the new buzzword, mainly because they incorporated a Customer Experience pavilion at the show, which showcases technology, sponsored by technology companies, and speaks about technology as the savior for the plight of the retailers. BUNK!

The customer experience that turns them on or off about stores is a myriad of factors too numerous to list here. We are back to the 'silver bullet' way of thinking on this subject. I've worked with retailers who pulled out technology from there stores because the dwell time in front of monitors and in-store video games was longer than with the merchandise.

In my view, technology should be hidden and only used to increase the efficiency of the operation. The total ambiance of the store, the lighting, the sounds and smells, the merchandise (quality, quantity, features and benefits, packaging), the store policies, and most importantly the store staff have a much greater affect on whether or not a sale is made.

I suggest that next year, NRF replace there Tech-focus with a Human Resource focus--with seminars and training sessions on acquiring, training, motivating, and retaining great sales staff. Maybe tech only shows up in the discussion of using it as a sales staff aid. Of course that will be a difficult pill to swallow when you consider where the funding of the featured pavilion comes from.

By the way, I expect that after all this talk about high-tech customer experience stores, you will see a negligible increase in the number of stores which test these devices, and even fewer who install them in all their stores.

Jerry Gelsomino, Principal, FutureBest

Wanna make the customer experience better? Keep your cashier lines short and your prices accurate. Don't sell defective junk and let folks order as much as possible online. For a gold star, have a well-trained live person answer the phone on the second ring.

Let your incompetent competitors invest in special scents and mirrors with gadgets. If their merchandise is lousy, if their lines are long, if their staff has 100% annual turnover, send them a thank-you note.

Mark Lilien, Consultant, Retail Technology Group