”Hello, sorry to bother, I’m also looking for [INSERT PRODUCT NAME HERE] dar pe [INSERT FEATURE NOT AVAILABLE ON THE SHELF HERE], can you help me?”
Any extra second the customer spends waiting for your staff to come up with a positive / negative reply can lead to losing a sale.
“Let’s go in here – maybe we’ll find what we’re looking for… Wait! It says „inventory”… pity, I can see the product from here… ”. A crucial process for your store has just led to missing a sale – what a pity!
One of the main challenges of a retail store is inventory: both its on-site check by staff and its efficient management. In an environment where customers expect instant service and correct information, any delay or error caused by checking inventory or any service interruption caused by updating it will lead to customers quickly finding an alternative to your business.
One of the traditional principles in retail is “the customer is always right”. Today’s customers are still right but they also expect to be right immediately. From desired products, to variations in size / flavors / color / limited editions – the retail industry needs the perfect partner to offer fast answers, combining the latest technology, whilst keeping it both simple and easy to use for your staff.
Discreet – quick – mobile: the 21st century inventory
You need to take inventory for your store. All products must be counted, indexed and listed correctly: price, shelf life, size and all relevant information must be entered into the database.
Traditionally, this meant closing down the store for a few good hours or even a few days: during this time you missed tens or even hundreds of sales and saw your customers looking through the window, trying to get your attention while your staff helplessly shrugs and points to the “INVENTORY” sign with a sigh.
In modern times, this has zero impact on the store’s day-to-day operations. By implementing a mobile retail solution, your team can take inventory in a discreet way, registering all the products on the shelf with the help of mobile terminals synchronized with a central database.
By carefully navigating customers and giving them a chance to browse shelves and products at ease, all it takes for a product to be marked during inventory is for the mobile scanner to scan its barcode. It’s then instantly sent to the management system and yet another step has been taken towards an updated inventory, which you can rely on at any time.
All this happens with zero interruptions for the staff or the customers.
More online but much offline
Online commerce feels like a rocket with a perpetual upward trajectory, but traditional trade in physical locations stands out by at least one interesting variable: the average value of a shopping cart. Although more and more customers prefer shopping with a click or two, those shopping in physical stores end up spending more.
At the same time, 76% of shoppers want to get in and out of a store as quickly as possible.
How can you benefit from these statistics? Through a retail environment where everything is fair and quickly accessible – prices, sizes, stocks, special offers that match what you promoted, etc.
Avoid wasting time giving customers conflicting information from the shelf to the register or with team members who have to “check with a colleague”. With the help of mobile terminals and wearable devices, employees can immediately answer any question, confirm a price or availability of a product and can immediately provide details about when a product will be back in stock.
Backed by a system they can trust, team members can focus more on interacting with customers and less on avoiding issues caused by faulty data. Politeness, availability and speed replace excuses and shortage reasons that are of no interest to customers who didn’t find what they were looking for and are already thinking about alternatives from the competition.
From wish to reality
Limited shelf space means that some products wait patiently in the warehouse until they are needed. But if a product doesn’t show on the shelf, does it really exist? For the customer, a product that’s not on the shelf is almost non-existent or, at best, a wish that can become a reality.
This is where retail mobility solutions come into play: with a single question and a quick answer, the absent product becomes an immediately available reality. Colleagues on the floor / aisle / department thus gain an incredibly useful superpower: they can sell something invisible by simply invoking the desired product.
Best sellers unavailable? How is that possible?!
As retailers, it’s difficult to choose a favorite product – we would like to believe that everything is “selling like hot cakes”. (Un)fortunately, customers bring us down to earth and quickly point out which products are their favorites.
The true challenge happens when the best-selling products are no longer in stock and this becomes uncomfortable when a customer chooses exactly that product that no longer is available.
Fortunately, we can now use retail mobility technology to create preset thresholds for certain products. When stocks approach these thresholds, an order to the supplier is placed automatically, giving staff the chance to say: “Fortunately, we just received a new lot, I’ll immediately bring the product from the warehouse!”
Is the client always right? Your team is too!
Retail is all about speed, accuracy and availability (not just of products). To ensure impeccable service and a repeatable good experience for every customer, retail mobility solutions are a solid foundation with the right answers to all the questions, allowing in-store teams to focus on polite and relevant interactions and deliver a sincere “Looking forward to seeing you again!”.
