Blog
The Impact of Mobile Technology on Retail Store Operations
Every retailer envisions the ideal shopping experience to end with customer satisfaction. The picture painted is of a smiling customer entering the store, browsing and selecting products, making the payment, and checking out delighted with the purchase. However, this experience is often plagued with crowded stores, stockouts, inadequate or absent store associates, and perpetually long checkout lines.
A lot of customers change or completely abandon their purchase decision owing to these factors. Today’s customers are known to be “always online” and have access to various non-physical stores. If retailers are inept in capturing and retaining the customers throughout the purchase journey, it directly results in lost sales. Hence, the need of the hour is an immersive and innovative customer experience. Digital retailing can achieve this change wherein the gaps between customer & store associates, and the store associates & headquarters are minimized. Let’s see how mobile technologies help achieve this dual-ended objective.
Long waiting times, unavailable sales associates and not being able to find what they came looking for are often the reasons that deter customers from completing their purchases at outlets. However, with the store associates app, associates can rectify the lack of in-store efficiency by providing a smooth shopping experience to customers. With a mobile app for associates’ use help them to browse or scan the product to add to customers basket with a single click and complete checkout right away without making them wait in long lines. This way, sales associates can be available round-the-clock to answer queries and provide immediate product delivery and suggestions without deserting the customer.
Visualizing a mobile point-of-sale in every sales associate becomes a reality with mobile apps that have in-built technology for free-flow communication between store associates and customers, allowing multiple baskets to be handled by a single store associate to best serve in the store.
Today, 86% of buyers are prepared to pay a premium for better customer experiences. Therefore, shoppers differentiate between retailers solely based on their ability to provide immersive experiences.
Typically, mobile apps help bridge the gap between the online and offline landscape. When adopting one to the operation, retailers can add an analytics component that tracks and evaluates the customer shopping behavior with parameters such as past transactions, search history, preferences, etc. Stores can go one step further by fostering relationships with customers by providing discount notifications, asking for feedback, or even remembering them on their special occasions. Hence, connecting with customers through technology-backed methods is a full-proof way to enhance loyalty.
Today, it is not enough that a company achieves customer satisfaction but also aims for employee satisfaction. Communicating seamlessly with employees and creating a culture of inclusion provides employees with an insight into business objectives and helps align their personal goals. Any company that provides employees with the company’s developments & announcements, displays employee success stories, etc., is bound to achieve better employee engagement. From a retailer’s perspective, taking this communication online and providing digital access to real-time performance data, individual duties, shifts & training, etc., would work wonders. This transformation helps build a connected workforce and workspace.
How can retailers provide customers with the right product at the right time? Is it by building larger stores to accommodate additional product ranges or by better inventory management? With shoppers now accustomed to online shopping, it is pertinent to bring the digital to in-store experiences. Customers spend hours at outlets trying to locate products. While sometimes they are successful, at other times, the tiring search leaves them empty-handed due to stock issues.
For better customer impact, back of store operations is crucial as well as the storefront performance. If the inventory is received at the right time and processed automatically with the help of handheld devices, it meets the store and customer without losing any time. Mobile associates app help employees in the field track the entire process in a single place and take action for multiple tasks- inventory receiving, label printing, cycle counting, etc.
Furthermore, stores can also incorporate an option that allows customers to place orders for unavailable products and get them delivered directly from the warehouse. With real-time availability checks, notifications, and various delivery options, this saves a great deal of time in order fulfillment and delivery activities as well as any potential loss of customers.
Hence, by simply refashioning the shopping experience, retailers can influence a customer’s purchase decision. In-store mobile technologies are set to transform traditional retail shopping. With Shopi, retailers can have digital capabilities to transform customer and sales experience. By achieving dual objectives of employee motivation and customer satisfaction, Shopi’s innovative technology will ensure a twofold benefit of business efficiency and profitability. To learn more about how Shopi optimizes your entire operation, contact us!
