Opportunities Rise for Customer-Facing Touch Points

By  Paula Rosenblum, Managing Partner, Retail Systems Research
Every year, RSR conducts a benchmark study on retailers' management of the in-store experience and their use of technology to support the experience of customers, employees and managers. Here's an excerpt from this year's report, Walking the Razor's Edge: Managing the Store Experience in an Economic Singularity.

For the vast majority of retailers, the in-store point of sale (POS) system remains the primary point of contact with the consumer: the 'moment of truth.' The checkout is also the point where data about shoppers' preferences is captured. It was therefore not surprising to find a modern POS platform rated as the top in-store technology enabler - just as it has always been.

However, even though a modern POS system continues in that role, RSR sees a palpable de-emphasis of the checkout as the one-and-only point of interaction between the consumer and a retailer's outward-facing technologies. In the store, customer-facing touch points have risen sharply in importance to retailers, with 35% of our respondents saying they are very valuable, compared to just 24% last year.

Overall, retailers are coming to realize that the store has to be as informative and as relevant as an online browse. On the internet, consumers are never more than a Google search away from finding what they are looking for. But stores have something that alternate selling channels cannot provide, and that's the instant gratification of buying the product and experiencing the service on the spot. Yet consumers now have access outside the store to information about the lifestyle solution they seek; why not provide that same level of insight in the store? Winning retailers (those whose comparable sales increases generally increase faster than inflation) see the opportunity, and are focusing to a far greater extent than laggards (those whose year-over-year comparable store sales lag inflation) in providing consumers with information on the selling floor to enhance the shopping experience

Retailers are less aggressive about providing technologies to support their store managers. Even as they seek to provide more specific/localized direction to store managers and improve performance reporting to them, lack of mobile technologies tie those managers to a computer in the back office and limit the benefits realized from technologies delivered to customers, employees, and managers alike.

Because of the fundamental power shift to the consumer in the past decade, retailers have had to rethink their most valuable assets: their people and their stores. When a customer potentially knows more about products and prices than the store employee does, the retailer needs to excel at the value-adding services which draw the consumer to the store. In-store technologies that inform the consumer in a way that builds basket size are smart investments that also build loyalty. And, retailers need to analyze not only what sells, but what doesn't. Their best chance of capturing that information is by engaging in a digital dialogue with the consumer as she browses the store.

The 'glue' that makes it all stick together is having a store manager on the selling floor to orchestrate the interaction between consumers and the retailer. It's a real-time job, not driven by daily or weekly cycles, but driven by events as they happen. Technologies that enable the store manager and employees to sense conditions and respond to them are important - they represent a winning hand.