How do I manage Retail operations to delight customers?

There’s just no getting around the fact that in today’s retail environment, keeping past customers, and attracting new ones, increasingly revolves around an operation’s
buying ability to engage, and enchant shoppers across an ever expanding spectrum of contact points.

The playing field of retail operations is changing rapidly in response to the many revolutionary technological advances that have impacted every aspect of commerce over the last decade. Successfully staying abreast of these advances, and creatively integrating them into an overall retail marketing strategy, has become vital to capturing customer attention and maintaining commercial viability.

Be There Waiting
Managing a retail operation in a way that maximizes a customer’s user experience is increasingly the key to pleasing and keeping shoppers. Especially in an environment where your competition is often a simple computer keystroke away. Two of the biggest factors influencing shopper decisions and loyalty are ease of use and variety of choice.

Creating a dynamic and successful marketing strategy today hinges on understanding how existing and emerging technologies are shaping customer behavior, and incorporating this knowledge into an integrated retail plan that engages shoppers where they really are.

• Point of Sale – one of the latest trends in retail is giving the customer the ability to pay for products with a smartphone app. – known as mobile wallets. This brings added convenience to the shopping experience – and customers love easy.
• Enhanced Loyalty Component – mobile wallet technology expands loyalty programs beyond a membership card, and sends attractive promotions and discount offers to customers via the electronic payment application of their choice. And every customer’s chief loyalty is to value.
• Networking via the Customer – incorporating easy to use social media components into every venue where customers access your operation is crucial to a successful integrated retail plan. Giving your customers a concrete vehicle for spreading the word makes them happy – and your bottom line too.
• Mobile Apps – shoppers use their phones to search, and buy, more and more each year. Having your own smartphone app simply puts your operation where the shopper is increasingly likely to be too. When they see your app – they’ll smile.

All for One
One of the key, and somewhat hidden, aspects of the increasing complexity we’re witnessing in the technological bells and whistles available to retail operations today, is the pervasive simplicity and ease of use it delivers to your customers. With each addition to a modern plan of integrated retail components, another layer of customers is incorporated into your network.

What seems rather confusing and complex when viewed as a whole is actually the picture of simplicity from the customer’s perspective. They don’t care that you have several elements to your marketing web that do not apply to them – they only care about the one that does. And since each one of these components delivers increasing ease of interaction to someone – your integrated retail plan constitutes a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Keeping an engaged and delighted customer base is one of the keys to the success of any retail operation. Developing an intelligently designed plan of integrating tools customers already love into the very structure of your retail operations will provide a steady stream of shoppers, and sales.