At what point in the shopping journey do you identify your customers? If it is not until they reach the checkout, you might be in the majority, but that is too late to influence their purchase decisions.
Creating a more personalized shopping experience is one of the highest priorities retailers are facing, and the first step towards that personalization is customer identification. However, an inability to identify customers early means that most in-store shoppers are essentially anonymous until they check out. According to recent industry surveys, less than 1/3 of retailers can identify their customers pre-checkout. That is simply too late, especially when we think about how customer expectations have been tremendously raised due to their digital shopping experiences. Online, a much higher percentage of retailers are able to identify their customer well before they being the checkout process.
This presents a tremendous opportunity for brick and mortar retailers to improve the customer experience – turning anonymous shoppers into loyal customers. The logical question is: How can I identify customers before they get to the checkout? As with most challenges in today’s environment, there are both technology and business process solutions to address this gap.
From a technology perspective, the most effective solution lies with your customers themselves – the fact that nearly all of them will be walking into your stores with mobile devices. Many retailers are taking advantage of this by using in-store WiFi as a way to capture customer sign-on information, while others are using their mobile app log-ins, or identifying customers by their MAC addresses on those devices. From a process perspective, forward-thinking retailers are providing their associates with mobile devices and placing them on the sales floor in order to increase their engagement with customers and to capture information early in the shopping visit to provide suggestive sell recommendations or other purchase incentives.
Without early identification of the customer, retailers miss critical engagement opportunities, such as clienteling and guided selling, which can increase sales and deliver an enhanced customer experience. Even more concerning is that 20% of retailers still have no ability to identify their customers in the store, even at checkout, which eliminates any opportunities for improving the post-purchase experience or customer loyalty.
Are you identifying your customers early and personalizing their shopping experience? What ways have you found most effective for capturing customer information?
As always, we are interested in your opinions on this topic. Please share your comments below.
コメント