Speed, agility and efficiency are expected of today’s retail businesses. To achieve this, retailers should invest into technology to improve more sales and customer satisfaction.Technology don’t simply reduce your overhead and improve your sales planning,they have also become essential tools that can provide you with a competitive edge to thrive and grow in the market.
Research states, over half of retailers (53%)have focused on using technology to improve the retail experience in 2018.Shoppers are also ready to embrace more technology in retail. A survey found that 76% of consumers had a better in-store experience when retail employees used technology. Furthermore, 67% of consumers stated that, when retailers use technology, they were able to save time.Given that both retailers and consumers are in agreement that using technology can improve the retail experience, the weight is on retailers to provide the necessary tools to facilitate this shift in thinking.
It’s natural that emphasis will be placed on in-store technology to improve customer experience and other perks in using technology are:
Inventory flow can be controlled using technologies – It allows you to know what the customer wants to have and order, and can be easily customized. Once online, every aspect of your stores’ performance is at your fingertips.In minutes you can create new categories with hundreds of subcategories of style, size or color.
Using technology , you can access data on your inventory feasibly to answer customer questions with just a few keystrokes.With easy access it will have a good impact on the customer and thus winning the customer’s trust and improved satisfaction.
Technology can also eliminate over-ordering and under-buying by referring to each store’s sales history to calculate the optimum stock levels for each item. You can tell how many types of categories—which you can modify, for example, according to the season—and can also look at past sale patterns to determine when you need to re-order.
Based on the sales history you can also analyse:
- How much you should invest in inventory from month to month.
- How much inventory you need to order to keep up with expected sales without going overboard and tying up excess capital.
- How merchandise to keep flowing into the store throughout the season.
- Which items are ‘hot’ and which are not, and their respective manufacturers.
- What are your best-selling stores and who are your best individual sales staff.
Increases employee productivity – Employees can spend more time with customers instead of answering the same queries over and over again.This type of self-service may be better suited to some customers as they may feel less pressure to buy when interacting and takes care of routine queries and tasks to free up your employees to concentrate on tasks that have a direct effect on increasing sales.
Increases interaction time – Shoppers are used to spending huge amounts of time on their phones.The longer the interaction time, the higher the likelihood that consumers will be invested in your retail store using these technologies which is informative and fun in your store which will encourage familiarity and trust, and may also result in additional sales.
Technologies like augmented reality(AR) and virtual reality(VR) can easily help customize and improve customer satisfaction with certain applications.
Check out mySofa (Sofa customizing app)other furniture and furnishing applications.For more details visit www.omniviewlabs.com.