Global Content Lead - Tech & Consulting
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Good customer service can be termed the backbone of any thriving retail business. This is the reason why your retail store staff prioritizes frictionless communication to tend to customer needs in a timely fashion.
We know from research that 83% of customers expect to engage with someone immediately when contacting a company. As opposed to this, 70% of customers will not buy from a company involving them in long waiting hours. This goes to show that your company’s performance hinges heavily on the quality of service you offer. It helps you stand out from the competition; boosts loyalty and repeated buying, and incentivizes customers to be your brand ambassadors.
Thus, retailers must now invest in technologies such as Shopper Value that can help them build an ultimate retail experience, which can help translate store traffic into better conversion rates, increased cross-selling, and upselling opportunities, and, improved brand loyalty. Let’s dive into the tried and tested people-counting technology for retail stores, that is helping more and more retailers optimize their service quality and staff productivity in their stores.
People counting: a catalyst to quality and timely in-store service
People counting or footfall counting. might seem pretty basic as it provides insights on the number of people visiting your store but does more than just counting people! It has the power to use numbers to provide you with the right insights, crucial to ensure that the right service is being provided in your stores. What is important to know is that both aspects of service: quality and timely availability are what win the hearts of the customers.
Retailers need to bank on regular staff training, optimal staffing decisions, and convenient buying journeys in order to make sure that a visitor who enters the store leaves as a happy customer. Footfall analytics, thus, is crucial to driving this change.
How can you use footfall analytics to optimize service quality
Service quality can make or break a customer’s intent to buy. If a customer is spending money with your brand, they expect to receive a certain quality of service to make their buying experience worthwhile.
71% of customers make buying decisions based on the quality of customer service
When it comes to buying a product/service, many customers rely on customer service to make their final spending decision. For retail stores precisely, the behavior of the sales staff is vital in making or breaking the deal. If you have a lively, helpful staff, it will be a signal to the buyers that you are easy to do business with. Good quality of service will put your product/service in the limelight as it competes in the market. Footfall metrics such as transactions per staff hour are indicative of staff productivity and can help you investigate if your service quality is up to the mark.
If your staff is unable to convert prospective customers, it is a strong indicator that measures such as regular staff training needs to be put in place to improve service quality. Your staff must be polite and should have ample knowledge about the product/service being sold to make it easier for the customer to finalize their purchase.
66% of customers expect companies to understand their unique needs and expectations
When a company helps its customer get the most out of its products and services by offering them great service, it is creating experiences that its customers will be more than willing to come back for. Through dwell analytics, you can gauge the interest of the customers in different assortments in your stores. If you find out that more and more customers are spending more time in the make-up section in your store, you can make sure to leverage that data and make better offers for the popular categories in your store.
Moreover, dwell analytics can also help your business adjust placements and assortments according to the interest shown by customers. You can enhance the placement of the products most in-demand and make sure that you always have inventory for the most popular assortment.
54% of customers say it feels like sales, service, and marketing do not share information
Marketing campaigns in retail stores are all about attracting as much attention to the business as possible. The goal is to bring in footfall so that there is a higher chance of making sales. However, your footfall trends must be studied to ensure that the visitors entering the store are also converting. The transactions and traffic ratio needs to be maintained if not enhanced in order to make the most of the campaign. This can be ensured if your staff is well-aligned with the marketing objectives. Surely, your marketing campaign cannot be successful with overworked staff who cannot handle the service demand.
The numbers will tell you when to train better, hire more, or, reschedule shifts to make sure that all your business functions are aligned on the ultimate profit goal. If this is not the case, you will be losing out on potential sales.
How can you use footfall analytics to optimize service intensity
Imagine yourself walking into a store. You had to visit during the peak hours because that is the only time you are free in the day. As the store is crowded, you have to wait a while before you can get the attention of a salesman. The salesman tells you that he will have to go find your size in the pair of pants you have chosen. This takes an extra 10 minutes of waiting. Moreover, you realize you will have to spend more time when you join the billing counter queue. Safe to say, you will not be happy with the customer service.
58% of consumers will stop buying from a business after experiencing bad customer service
Service level signifies the number of servers available in the store with respect to store traffic. Without footfall analytics, retailers cannot expect to predict the influx of customers. People counting allows you to know your store’s peak hours so that you can make sure that enough staff is available on the ground to service potential customers at any given time. The optimal the service level, the better the chances that your prospective customers will not only convert but will remember you as a brand that offers a smooth buying journey for its customers.
Adjusting staff according to the traffic expected in stores goes a long way as on one hand, it wins you customer loyalty and on the other hand, it helps you reduce unnecessary business costs. You can schedule shifts and reassign extra staff hours to alternative tasks so that your store is not understaffed or overstaffed.
It is never too late! 78% of buyers will forgive a company for its mistake after receiving excellent service
Many businesses only focus on the first impression, but the last impression is what customers always remember. If you have not been concentrating on improving the service level and staff productivity in your stores, you must start now. Good service and great post-sales support experiences are precisely what weigh heavily on forging loyalty-inducing connections with customers.
In a nutshell, good customer service is important for all businesses looking to increase revenues and AI-driven traffic insights can help a lot in boosting store productivity. Businesses need to use data insights to optimize staff schedules as it will assist in reducing labor costs and maximizing conversions. Empowering your staff with real-time in-store analytics will not only ensure an optimal shopper experience but will also holistically enhance your business processes.
