Tech Guest Viewpoint: Closing the ‘Intimacy Gap’
Most of us don’t know our customers.
Picture the shopper who walks into a store. They’re blank canvases with no visible history, and that means there’s no easy way for sales associates to shape what happens in the next 10, 20 or 30 minutes, before they walk back out the door.
Internet retailers know better. They know what we’ve bought, what to suggest, and what to avoid, how much we spend, how often we return items, and if we’re buying more, or less, than we used to. The inability of brick-and-mortar stores to compile such deep insights into customer preferences creates a looming “intimacy gap,” and it is money out the door for retailers.
This is changing quickly, as economic pressure places a greater emphases on the need for retailers to create a buying experience that is as directed, engaging and profitable in the physical store as it is in the webstore. The problem for retailers is only getting worse; digital technologies influenced half of in-store retail sales early this year. By year-end, Deloitte Digital projects digital will help drive 64% of in-store sales.
Rock-Bottom Prices? Not So Important.
Retail visionaries and customers say they want the same things: personalization, immediacy, and action.
Customers are adamant about their expectations for the shopping experience, and surveys consistently show that how they feel when they leave is an extremely accurate predictor of future spend: two-thirds of customers surveyed by American Express last year said they’d pay an average of 14% more for brands that they believe deliver excellent service.
To provide this exceptional service, retailers are bringing the convenience of online shopping into the physical store by mobilizing and digitizing the store associate. Her job today is a mash-up – part floor sales, part customer service, part shipping manager. Her insights now include a single view of inventory availability, a single view of the customer across all selling channels, and the transactional capability to bring those things together in purpose built-manner for store associates. [pb]
Swapping Binders for a Single Swipe
Top retailers are actively creating this strategic selling platform – building on back-end investments to transform the in-store selling experience.
The first wave of deployments are proving to be quite powerful. Highly mobile sales associates are glad to swap armloads of binders and order sheets for a single iPad or tablet that serves up a digital profile of everything they need to know about the customer they’re serving, as well as available inventory across the enterprise. Associates can easily match buying histories to what each customer is likely to buy next, and how to get it to them quickly even if the physical inventory isn’t on the shelf. When it’s time for payment, a single swipe integrates all purchases, across channels.
As e-commerce has transformed shopping, sales has become a challenging professional mash-up of personal shopper, fulfillment expert and customer service agent.
More Time for Selling
Store associates want to spend more time with customers, and retail leaders know this. In a June report from RSR Research, 41% said that employees aren’t spending enough time on selling and customer service and 46% said staff is spending too much time on paperwork.
For customers, it’s as simple as being known in the right ways. Customers readily say they’ll share personal data when they believe the exchange is of value. Sell me a suit, and match it with shoes and a belt the next time I’m in? Sure, I’ll give you my email for more targeted promotions. And, with a good experience, more of my total spend the next time I’m ready to buy.