CAPGEMINI SE The COVID-19 pandemic and a reeling global economy remains a challenging environment for the retail industry even as it slowly begins to re-open after several months of closure due to safety mandates.
As retailers open doors to shoppers the quest to engage and drive meaningful connections is more challenging than ever given face mask and sanitizing requirements, safety procedures and the 'stressed' emotions impacting everyone from the store leader to the shopper.
Yet, retailers need to say focused on creating an evolved customer experience, establishing trained field service teams and securing a long-term approach for business success and customer satisfaction.
To get needed insight on how to do that Retail Customer Experience reached out to
Minns oversees architecture, development, infrastructure, and helps customers envision solutions for engaging, experience-driven commerce websites for clients. He brings over 20 years of executive experience at Top 500 e-commerce retail companies and has led hundreds of successful commerce launches on numerous different technology platforms.
Q.
A. Retailers should be taking steps to engage and reconnect with customers who are making their way back into stores. Do's include:
• Bring your entire product catalog online and provide real-time store inventory. If you can, add the location of products and the easiest way to acquire the product, either in-store, curbside, or via delivery. Consumers are showing preference to planning out an entire visit and knowing exactly what they want and where to get it once they're in-store. Customer satisfaction drops when they cannot find items in-store that they planned to buy by browsing the site.
• Engage your customers with empathy and transparent communication on the status of your locations, restrictions, and any concessions you have made to policies (e.g. returns, shipping etc.).
• Reimagine how to engage your customers across all personas; that goes for addressing older/at-risk customers, customers who need financing, or customers who are overly concerned.
• Keep a close eye on both customer experience and employee experience KPIs. Your customer-facing employees are valuable assets that are also feeling the effects of returning to normal.
• Enable your consumers with stronger content in digital channels. This includes everything from updating operating hours, to updating store images, to updated messaging on your site that is localized to the specific location.
• Think through the process to make it less stressful for your customers to visit a location. One-to-one appointments, providing the ability to schedule a visit, or a scheduled time to go to the front of the line are popular features consumers are requesting.
• Re-evaluate your digital experience across all your touchpoints. The rapid increase of utilizing digital channels now means that new types of users have started to leverage those channels. Target and measure those new consumers, but don't react too quickly as these new consumers are adapting.
• Review your business and technical roadmaps. Some capabilities and functions that were deemed mission critical at the end of 2019 are now seen as obsolete or less important. Engage a new set of eyes to review these roadmaps and apply a business and financial lens to the prioritization.
Likewise, there are a handful of things retailers should avoid. The don'ts include:
• Don't push too many discounts or marketing efforts in the first few months of re-opening. A few retailers have been quick to pull triggers on huge incentives/discounts and caused issues with crowds, demand, and downstream supply chain issues.
• Don't forget to address any functionality that was quickly rolled out during the crisis and make sure it becomes a core part of the store operations and experience. Some retailers quickly rolled out curbside pickup with a broken experience and have not addressed the entire experience even after a few months.
• Don't forget about the health and safety of your employees.
Q. Have customer expectations changed as dramatically as the retail operation given the today's shopping environment?
A. Yes somewhat, depending on the area of the country you are in and the severity of the crisis in that location. But for the most part, consumers are in support of the reduced in-store capacity and the new safety precautions for customers and employees.
Consumers across all fronts desire a more contactless shopping experience. They are avoiding door handles (some retailers solve this by leaving their door open), crave contactless payment (consumers now cringe when inserting or sliding their card), they don't want to sign receipts, and ask the employee to refrain from handling bag handles.
Q. How can a retailer keep its workforce motivated to handle all the pandemic tasks (cleaning, queuing customers, etc.) as well as the full load of work an associate already had in play before all these new tasks?
A.It's important to stay engaged with your employees and encourage a cooperative and strong collaboration. Some retailers are finding that changes as simple as flexible schedules or adding extra breaks are helping with employee morale.
Retailers also need to be cognizant of challenges that employees may be facing outside of work or getting to work. Public transportation is now a challenge, and people are often relying on car share programs. The physical safety of the employees should be first and foremost, and reiterated to both employees and customers.
Q. Obviously digital and e-commerce channels are now a vital customer channel – but has it also become another communication channel that's needed to keep engaged with customers in terms of assurance of safety and health measures in the pandemic environment?
A. Yes, and for those retailers that have multiple locations spread across the country or globe, that communication must be personalized and localized to the store. Introducing the store manager or employees in the store through the digital channels goes a long way to build confidence. Allowing the local store to own the content and messaging also helps and keeps it relevant.
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