New Year’s Resolutions for Brick-and-Mortar Retailers
January 4, 2024
Ever since the retail peak period began this past holiday season, Bill, an executive at an international retail store chain, hasn’t gotten a good night’s sleep.
But as he breaks out the 2024 calendar, he finally takes a breather. January is the time for retrospection, reflection, and resolutions. Bill finally has time to look back at the previous year to analyze what worked and what didn’t—and make plans for the year ahead. He especially wants to review the lessons from Black Friday and Cyber Monday and decide what can be improved regarding staff operations and customer journeys.
The store’s 2023 numbers were not terrible but not great, either. Bill is determined to turn that around for 2024 and offer such an extraordinary experience for their customers that they won’t stop talking about it until everyone shops at Bill’s store. Ambitious goals, huh? But Bill has his eyes on the prize: to be the vendor of choice for his industry.
Top Resolutions for Retailers Like Bill
Bill sits down and creates a game plan with resolutions that he won’t ditch after the infamous Quitter’s Day, aka the second Friday of January, when most New Year’s resolutions go down the drain.
Here they are:
- This year I’m going to be more prepared when hiring and managing seasonal help.
- This year I’m going to get a better understanding of my customers’ journey.
- This year I’m going to make my customers’ online experience better, faster, and more convenient.
- This year I’m going to listen to my customers more so I can deliver the products, services, and experiences they want – on the channels they want.
Feeling inspired, Bill even adds a personal resolution to his list, remembering a promise he once made to his daughter. This year, they are going to run a half marathon together.
1. Effectively Staffing the Stores
Bill wants to start the year right, so before anything else, he looks at his workforce. Last year they had challenges managing staff idle time in low seasons and getting short-staffed during peak periods. Not only did it mean overtime for store associates and contact center agents—but also long wait times for customers.
In 2024, it will not be the case!
This year, Bill will have the right employees doing the right work at the right time. To ensure that, he plans to invest in Verint Workforce Management (WFM) which can provide his staff with flexible schedules and meaningful work while still meeting service goals. Here’s how:
- With Forecasting, he can predict customer arrivals, determine optimal staffing levels, and inform hiring plans.
- With Scheduling, he can align staff to customer volumes and demand to maximize utilization.
- Mobile Workforce gives his employees the visibility, flexibility, and scheduling control they need to achieve work-life balance.
Verint WFM comes with the new Verint Interviewing Bot, which automates the analysis of candidate assessments using AI, proprietary audio models, and predictive analytics. The bot identifies high performers, reducing attrition and hiring costs, all while increasing performance outcomes.
It saves recruiters time and speeds the decision-making process. The bot is available 24/7, making it easier to engage with candidates at a time that is convenient for them, helping ensure Bill doesn’t miss out on the best possible candidates for his open positions.
2. Driving a Consistent and Seamless Omnichannel CX
It’s good to have a grip on the workforce, but without being familiar with his shoppers’ journeys, Bill cannot offer a great customer experience (CX). To engage with customers seamlessly on every channel, including online, on social media, and in-store, he implements Verint Retail Choreography solutions.
- To increase in-store foot traffic, he simplifies online appointment booking, making it available on the website, mobile app, social posts, and more.
- To reduce wait times and walkouts, he creates virtual waitlists for walk-in customers, giving them a more informed and relaxed waiting experience.
- To cater to consumers’ desire for experiences instead of solely transactional purchases, he organizes online and offline events, such as special preview sales for loyalty program customers.
- To oversee how store associates spend their time and identify ways to boost productivity, he utilizes Task Management.
By capturing data on why people are visiting their stores, either through the Verint Appointment Booking, Queue Management, or Event Management solutions, Bill’s team can provide more personalized targeted services. Not only do these services span their digital and physical channels, but they can also engage the customer to build stronger bonds and greater customer loyalty.
3. Managing the Increased Customer Interactions
Now that Bill has workforce management under control and has a better understanding of his customers’ journeys, he wants to figure out where and how he can lessen the load on his employees. With customer interactions multiplying on every channel imaginable, every minute of every day, his current resources simply cannot serve everyone.
Bill doesn’t want his staff to work harder year after year, leading to burnout. There should be a smarter way—and there is. To efficiently manage customer interactions, Bill decides to leverage AI and CX automation. It’s 2024, after all!
He brings Conversational AI onboard to automate customer service responses with the help of self-service chatbots and intelligent virtual assistants (IVA). Using these bots means that customers can get immediate help 24/7 for simple inquiries, while live agents can focus on more complex tasks.
Bill can leverage Verint Channel Automation to:
- Power great experiences across all his Engagement Channels and scale them via private messaging channels with chatbots.
- Respond rapidly to common customer queries, such as returns and exchanges, and provide immediate, personalized customer service with Voice and Digital Containment Bots.
- Use Verint Knowledge Management, including the Knowledge Creation Bot and the Knowledge Suggestion Bot, to speed up customer service and enable customer self-service to reduce inbound volumes.
Bill can now mitigate contact center costs while providing a more immediate, accurate response to customers. It’s a win-win for all.
4. Keeping Up with the Changing Customer Demands
Besides handling the increased customer interactions, Bill also wants to understand and analyze them. He knows that consumers today are more impatient and vocal than ever. To keep them happy and loyal to his brand, he decides to ask less, listen more, and act fast in responding to them.
While that’s easier said than done, he can do it seamlessly with the help of Verint Voice of the Customer (VoC) solutions.
Bill wants to listen to his customers across every touchpoint and channel to uncover the “why’ behind their actions. With VoC, he can capture and analyze direct, indirect, and inferred customer feedback and experience data to create a cross-channel view of CX across the entire customer journey.
Drive Revenue and Loyalty Across Channels with Retail Solutions from Verint
Using such smart solutions by themselves can bring about good results for retailers, but they work best when connected. Verint Open Platform with the Engagement Data Hub at its core gives Bill a centralized source of all customer interactions, workforce performance, and customer feedback data so that he can have a complete view of his customers’ journey and experience.
The solutions incorporate the latest in CX automation, artificial intelligence, and an open cloud architecture to help brands close the gap created when customers’ expectations for engagement exceed an organization’s ability to meet them.
With the Verint Platform and his CX automation solutions, Bill can get a head start on the new year. These smart solutions can prepare his business not only for the next holiday season, but for keeping his customers happy, loyal and spending 365 days a year.
Staying consistent with his business goals even helps Bill stick to his resolution of morning runs. By the end of the year, he will be ready for that half marathon.
If you’d like to hear more about Verint’s CX automation solutions and how they help retailers, join us at NRF 2024: Retail’s Big Show on January 14-16 in New York City. See you at booth #1521, where we will show how you can drive higher CSAT, NPS, loyalty and revenue across channels and journeys with retail solutions from Verint.
And check out our other retail resources on Verint Retail Resolutions Week, Road to NRF 2024!