Empowering Sales Associates
As channels converge, the importance of the store associate increases substantially; they are the ones responsible for the customer shopping experience. As a result, they need to be able to leverage data in a meaningful way.
This all boils down to training, the final element in the omnichannel checklist. Retailers need to ensure their associates are up to speed on the latest technologies and know how to complete cross-channel sales to not only improve customer engagement, but also enhance company performance. Some things to consider:
- Training and Incentives: From brand differentiation to store procedures, retailers must train associates to use new devices and applications. Consider putting incentives in place to encourage these employees to actually use the new devices, as well.
- Finding inefficiencies: Empower store associates to identify where challenges may arise and work to find a solution. This could mean ensuring replacement devices are on hand or replacing inefficient kiosks
- Store associate key performance indicators (KPIs): Aligning KPIs across online and in-store channels encourage the retailer to look at not just sales and sales growth, but also returns, demand fill rates and in-stock goals.
The in-store shopping experience needs to adapt to changing customer behaviors, something that is heavily influenced by online shopping capabilities. By seamlessly bringing together multiple shopping channels, retailers can significantly enhance the customer shopping journey.
Here are four more points to prepare your omnichannel strategy (click to continue):
Richer Product Information
Personalized Customer Information
Better Order Processing
Seamless, Secure Checkout
Brandi Slaughter is a Senior Solutions Marketing Manager at Demandware, where she focuses on strategies and best practices for omnichannel enablement and order management functionalities.