Retail Customer Experience: Technology Should Create Better Customer Interaction
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from Retail Customer Experience, a daily news portal devoted to helping retailers differentiate the shopping experience.
A panel at the Retail Customer Experience Executive Summit in Minneapolis exploring how technology can help empower sales associates agreed that technology should never replace human interaction. In fact, it should increase one-on-one interaction.
“The thing about technology is that it’s cool, so it’s neat to have things in your stores, but we’re a firm believer that customers are not getting in their cars to go to stores just to interface with technology or walk over to a touchscreen,” John Christie, AT&T Mobility’s executive director of retail sales operations, said. “They want to interact with people. Our technology allows our employees to get out from behind the counter and interact with customers.”
That technology includes tablets, kiosks and digital screens to not only simplify the queuing process, but to also assure customers that they’ll quickly receive help. Customers either check in with iPad-carrying employees or on kiosks as they enter AT&T stores. Digital screens display customer names, allowing them to easily view who’s next in line. On the back-end, Mr. Christie said, the system also provides employees with each client’s needs and order history.
“We’re faced with high volumes of customers coming in, and this allows employees to see who is in line, why they’re there and what offers they are eligible for,” Mr. Christie said. “They can have a very focused, direct conversation, and customers like that.”
Like AT&T, Tim Williams, retail project manager at Cabela’s, said one of the outdoor retailer’s goals is to communicate to its customers that it understands their needs.
“We’re looking to see how we can use mobility to connect with our customers,” he said. “Mobility transforms the way that our (employees) can interact with customers. Just being able to put that power in the associates’ hands gives them a total connection to the customer.”
NEC’s Graeme Spicer added, “A frustration comes when (you’re) bringing technology into a retail space for the sake of having a cool technology. It may not be the sexiest of applications, but we know that digital signage is changing shopping behaviors. We also know that it helps free up time for sales associates to do some higher-value-added stuff.”
For example, a Cabela’s employee may use the time he’d normally spend on giving price info — now displayed by a digital screen — on chatting to that customer about what he specifically wants in a pair of boots.
“That associate can dedicate that time to really help understand the customer,” Mr. Spicer said.
Discussion Questions
Discussion Questions: How should mobile and digital technologies empower sales associates? What will likely be the main hurdles in realizing the vision of a mobile-empowered employee?
I was at this panel and the one thing that kept coming to me was how, through all this technology these brands were in essence making their employees into one-person call centers. In fact, one audience member challenged, saying she had been in such a store and felt the employee was just texting someone because they never looked up at her.
Let’s face it, most retailers don’t train the soft skills now, do you really think they will when you give them a tablet to look down into?
The Millennial generation is one of the most creative and personable. Why take all of that out with a tablet or smartphone? There’s a generation gap in retail and technology that is but a part of why premium brands are suffering.
Freeing up time to wait on more customers does not make a better experience, it’s just a juiced up way to say, “Next!”
The main obstacle to more technology empowerment of sales associates is, surprisingly, the lack of metrics. By that I mean that retail executives lack the insight to measure the positive outcomes that come from a better (information-enabled) shopping experience. The outcomes that must be measured are sales uplift from technology intervention. This one is manageable. But there are more metrics that are more challenging. How much more frequently is the customer shopping? How much customer flight has been prevented? How much is the customer talking about the positive experience to his/her friends and family?
In the face of these illusive answers the retail executive has nothing to combat arguments to cut expenses and to limit cap expenditures. The retail exec must therefore make a blind faith decision in order to open up his store to the mobile universe that promises to overwhelm commerce at all levels.
Technology that brings the internet into the fitting room is a perfect example of ‘technology for the sake of technology.’ The fitting room customer is a committed customer, i.e., if the item(s) they bring into the fitting room meet their purchase criteria, they will buy. They are not browsing!
Fitting room technology should promote sales associate and customer interaction. It should allow the customer to initiate interaction with the sales associate, and give the associates 100% visibility of the fitting room process to control the flow of customers and give them what they want when they want it.
Leaving a half naked customer to fend for themselves navigating through a web experience in a fitting room, while waiting customers pile up impatiently outside is not a good use of technology, nor is it good experience for any customer.
Not surprisingly, Apple is a good example of how to use technology to enhance the customer experience. In their stores, Apple associates become a store unto themselves: they can provide information, interact with the customer to better understand their needs and offer the best solution, and then check them out, either through a hand-held or any of the demo equipment.
The hurdle is how to use technology to bring the elements of broader information, problem solution, and ease of purchase to other categories. As Bob points out, too often technology is deployed for the “gee whiz” factor without first understanding the specific needs to be addressed. The retailer that starts with the customers’ needs and works backward from there to the technology (as Apple has done) can benefit greatly, but that must be part of the operating culture of the company to begin with. Otherwise, it’s just another waste of capital.
Mobility can empower sales associates by providing more information about products, stock counts and pricing, all of which should make the consumer shopping experience faster and better. The main hurdle is retailers empowering employees to use this information to solve customer problems, and having enough well-trained sales associates on the floor to make a difference.
Coming from a technologist…technology does not create better *anything* unless it is purposeful, tightly integrated with the organization’s workflow and easy to use. A large percentage of all technologies you come across fails on at least one count. Don’t implement technology because it is “cool”. Cool is ephemeral. Cool is a distraction. Cool is costly. Don’t implement technology because it looked good in the boardroom. Try it in the field. Watch users use it. Lastly, how is this technology integrated and maintained? At what cost and by whom? Technology is an enabler, never an end in itself. If the vendor tells you their product is “cool”, don’t walk, run.
I would use the word “could” not “should”. There is a big difference between the promise of new technologies and the realization of these.
For instance, I’m seeing lots of retailers apply their bad practice in direct communications in the digital space and then even amplify it by sending even more irrelevant stuff because it’s cheaper. Online media is another example of promise without better accountability and ROI.
From a service perspective I’ve also seen examples of people-based service being reduced / replaced by online solutions.
One of the big hurdles retailers face is in data distillation…or actually in generating the right insights from the data that employees can easily navigate. To provide better service than today, they need all the people and sales skills to be at least maintained. Then they need to be equipped with valuable knowledge of the individual customer they are speaking to so they can serve them in the right way; not just a list of products browsed or purchased.
This data-insight challenge is not new. However it has not been tackled effectively by many companies in yesterday’s world let alone in the new realities of today’s digital world.
The need for personalization is great in the digital world. Many companies are ill-equipped to deliver on this promise today and the new data and channels could prove overwhelming. What’s more, the focus on these data-insight challenges and new technologies could even compromise the basics of good customer service to actually erode customer experience.
We’ll see….!
The retailer/consumer relationship is much more complicated than the technology. Technology is a facilitator but until retailers make customer service a serious metric, other metrics like sales per employee hour, rings per minute, cases per hour, etc. will continue to dominate. Probably the biggest turnoff for me personally is the big red sticker on anything I buy more complicated than a toothpick. These stickers say “If you have any problems with this product do not contact your retailer, call 800-999-9999.” In my mind, they are an immediate indicator of how much the store where I spent my money cares whether I am satisfied with the purchase.
So assuming I am not alone there are five areas where the retailer I choose can use technology to provide better service: Change the corporate culture so that stores know customer service is a critical measure of their success. Make sure the product I am shopping for is available, if I can’t walk out the door with it then why did I need to drive to the store instead of just making my purchase online? I hate it when I am done with my meal and have to wait for the check, make sure my store experience is not like having to wait for my dinner check. Provide a robust sales support structure – instead of calling a manufacturer rep I should be able to call a retailer rep with my interests in mind. Finally, if things just go completely wrong provide a robust returns process that makes it easy for me to get out of a bad purchase.
So how can technology address these needs? First, support a “Customer Service Metric” (CSM) that is derived from standard operating metrics. It is very difficult to develop a customer service metric because customer surveys have low participation (over weighted by complaints) and unsolicited praise can be so easily faked. Technology should finally be able to answer the “Selling Area In-Stock” question to detect backroom inventory that has not been put on display. Technology should make my salesperson an expert. Some creative use of operating numbers like “time between transactions” or “ratio of self checkout to cashier sales”, or some other derived measure can be used to estimate how many people are waiting in checkout lines. Number of repeat customers compared to other stores can be a measure of customer satisfaction. Better yet, a measure of “lost customers” (repeat customers that have stopped shopping) would be helpful. A “Retailer Help Desk” supported by sufficient in-bound lines and intelligent service personnel to help with post-sales problems would move loyalty from brands to banners. Automate the returns process to quickly resolve a failed purchase.
Apple can make this work, but I’m skittish on how well this will work with retailers who don’t train or adequately pay their sales help. Already, many associates are texting, off in a corner somewhere, ignoring customers and work. One grocery retailer I know doesn’t allow use of any electronics on the sales floor, for just this reason. I’ve been among the crowd of people following sales associates all over the floor while they wait on someone ahead of me, hoping I can be “next.” But to make that work, you don’t need a computer. You just need one of those little “take-a-number” devices commonly found in delis. “Next!”
In-store technology must drive the compelling reasons to shop that particular store. Apple has already been cited in the comments on this article because they address questions and needs the shopper has: in-stock conditions, email receipts, POS, etc. The technology must not become a distraction, and that can be addressed through comprehensive training. (Easier said than done).
One more aspect is the fact that shopper utilization of technology has increased 36% in only the past year. If the connected shopper stops in a store, the employees need to be able to have more information about their own store than the shopper already has in their hands. There needs to be more integration of the shoppers’ technology with the store level tools. More adaptation of buy online and pick-up in-store without hassle nor delay needs to become more mainstream.
Technology itself does not empower retail associates. Retail associates have to be empowered in so many other ways regardless of technologies. Few, if not very few, retailers empower their associates at all. Without that, no matter what device you provide, it won’t matter a bit.
Based on that, the largest hurdle will be the vision itself for what is expected as a result of ’empowering’ technology and the means to measure its results. Going beyond that is a means to train, mentor and coach its use towards that vision as an ongoing effort.
This is an interesting discussion. But nowhere do I see where there will be better trained sales associates. We must realize that there is more to being a “sales associate” than getting hired, having a name tag and given a piece of digital technology to carry around. When will we at least begin to understand this?
Technology that is both cashier-enabling and shopper empowering is the sweet spot. Much of retail is still about people selling to people and when the right solution is brought to life in the store great results follow. The Apple Store experience is less about mobile POS technology and more about the customer interaction and customer service that is made possible by untethering the sales associates. In other retail formats, such as C-stores and QSR, it is about smart suggestive selling powered by technology. Regardless of retail format, the call to action is personalization at the moment of truth made possible with the right technology.