Shopping has become a whole new experience, spoiling a lot of us, thanks to digital. Back in the day many of us used to spend our Saturdays at the mall. We would go store to store, stand on long cashier lines, and get frustrated when a store didn’t have our size. While that still happens, a lot of retailers are leveraging digital tools and adopting an omnichannel strategy. This ultimately gives consumers the option to shop online, in-store, all while connecting and personalizing the customer experience.
Hybrid Retail
Hybrid retailing is the future, giving brands the opportunity to combine eCommerce with physical retail to offer their customers the best possible experience. According to research from Forrester, 31% of brands say they plan on establishing or expanding their physical footprint in the next year, while more than half (55%) of brands say winning foot traffic will be a top challenge. Meanwhile, Uberall suggesting consumers are less likely to distinguish between online and offline, and 74% expect those interactions to be seamless.
A lot of retailers started to fast-track their omni journeys when the global pandemic hit. When stores started to close in May 2020, Men’s apparel company, UNTUCKit introduced live chat to continue business. Brent Paulsen, Managing Director, Head of Retail at UNTUCKit spoke about their first stab at omnichannel at a recent GDS Group Retail Summit. “We always believed that the customer is the decision maker relative to what they want, when they want it.” By launching live chat, consumers were able to chat with store associates across their 80+ stores who were able to answer questions, improve the customer experience, and overall help the company sell more clothes. “What this really did for us is personalize a very transactional experience. Now we have a human person providing expertise providing humour and style to a customer sitting on their couch or on their phones somewhere,” Brent shares.
Previously, when the consumer purchased something online, it shipped from the warehouse. “We began to utilize our stores as distribution centers. It sounds pretty simple but it’s quite complex,” Brent says. The customer now has visibility into the warehouse and retail locations. What did this do? Help increase UNTUCKit’s inventory turnover so old stock that may have been sitting in a store was now leaving the shelves, into customer hands. In fact, 33% of brands are prioritizing omnichannel order fulfillment over the next year, and 43% of brands plan to focus on showing available inventory in nearby stores, according to Shopify.
The Multi-tasking Store Associate
While this approach all sounds great, Brent shared this journey can be complex. They relied more on their associates. Employees greeting guests in stores were now also interacting with online customers, answering queries, picking, packing, and shipping merchandise – all while giving an excellent customer experience. “It really demanded a lot more skills from our people and required first and foremost a cultural shift of how we thought about utilization of a store associate in store,” Brent says. Store associates needed to be multi-taskers and needed the right training and tools in order to be flexible.
Brent shares that they also wanted the point of sale and the processes to be simple for consumers and staff. So, they rely on mobile devices to make for a quick and easy chat and checkout. “Today, associates can do everything with iphone or ipad. From interacting with customer, live chat, with ecom commerce, to receiving freight, to picking and packing freight – all these things are now available in their mobile device and information they need to assist the customer is also there.”
User Adoption
As you embrace your omnichannel strategy – what obstacles will you need to overcome? According to Forrester, “50% of brands say that unifying online and in-store operations and data will be their biggest challenge over the next year.” However, aligning people, process, and technology – well that’s another story. Boston Consulting Group suggests that 70% of digital projects fall short, with many organizations citing ‘lack of user adoption’ as the real struggle. From what Brent shared at the GDS Group Retail Summit key lessons from their journey include:
- Provide the right tools.
- Enhance and rethink your training for store associates.
- Think how you want to interact with your consumers and provide a seamless experience.
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