With this dashboard being visible internally, supervisors can also keep a close eye on their associates and ensure that each employee is in the right spot and is receiving the proper training and information to be successful.
Over the past few years, we have seen many different businesses and industries change at the hands technology. Companies have rapidly adopted the use of these technologies into their everyday infrastructure in order to keep up with the competition. One industry that has seen massive amounts of digital disruption is retail.
With large sites like Amazon, and other companies, putting their focus into their online store, or the development of branded mobile apps, the retail industry has shifted, and the brick and mortar stores are feeling the pressure. However, the physical retail locations still have something valuable to offer that the online stores and Amazon cannot, and that’s direct customer service personnel to interact with.
More and more brands are upping the ante when it comes to direct and personalized customer service, and it shows with the investments they’re making in their people.
Onboarding and Continued Training
Dealing with an associate in a store that isn’t prepared for a situation or has the ability to answer your question can be a quick way to lose a customer’s business. In order to assure that doesn’t happen, brands are investing the money into software platforms that can help bring new employees up to speed fast, which allows them to begin selling productively in a shorter amount of time.
Training is an ongoing process. Industries change, customer needs change, new products are launched, and it’s up to the associate to recognize and adapt to those changes as they occur. Staying up to speed with the industry itself, but also continuing to develop their overall skill set ensures that sales associates will be sufficiently equipped to provide the customer with a positive experience and hopefully, get them to return in the future.
Guided Selling Support
When heading into the store, you may have an idea of exactly what you’re looking for, but many times you go in with a style in mind and not the exact product. Online stores use artificial intelligence to check your recent searches and the items you’ve interacted with to serve you other similar options, but that can be difficult for an in-store associate.
Companies are looking to bridge that gap and ensure that their sales associates have all of that information at their fingertips. When entering the store, an associate can use the information from your history, buying preferences and style to help connect you with certain products within the store, and even hook you up with a promotion or sale! Rather than relying on each associates’ individual knowledge of “style,” the technology helps to match you with exactly what you are looking for.
Task Management and Progress
Throughout the day to day activity of an in-store sales associate, different tasks can get lost, quotas can be missed, time can be mismanaged, and the overall experience can suffer because of it. With the use of custom internal dashboards, retailers are able to see exactly what tasks are expected of them, where they stand with their quotas, and allow them to monitor their time to ensure that each shift is performed to the best of their ability.
In order to achieve overall success, in-store retailers need to empower their associates with the information and tools to make the shopping experience indispensable. In order for companies to stay ahead of the competition and constantly able to adapt to the changing retail industry, it’s imperative that they invest in their employees and empower them with the technology to help them overachieve.
Download Bigtincan's eBook: Transform Your Customer's Shopping Experience to learn more about adapting to the ever-changing retail environment to delight customers through Sales Enablement.
