Originally posted in: Retail TouchPoints

Today, consumers demand a seamless shopping experience at their own convenience. From curated discounts to automated checkout processes, convenience and customization have become key differentiators between success and failure in a fiercely competitive retail environment.

Last year, ‘summer holidays/vacations’ ranked in the top four seasonal events for increased consumer shopping, according to YouGov. Busy shopping periods provide retailers with enormous growth opportunities, such as increased in-store footfall and website traffic. Retailers must cater to both: existing customers who return to purchase following a great previous experience as well as shoppers who sneak in to find great deals, a variety of choices and, of course, better customer service. However, it can also negatively impact retailers who fail to live up to the expectations of today’s consumers. 

Avoiding Costly Mistakes: The Need for Accurate Stock Control

Out-of-stock items can be highly frustrating for customers, who could ultimately turn to another retailer to make purchases instead. To earn and retain their loyalty, retailers must be able to offer the right product, through the right sales channel, at an appropriate time and price for their customers. As omnichannel capabilities evolve, it is becoming increasingly crucial for retailers to deploy advanced inventory solutions that can easily integrate with their wider retail tech stack, and communicate in real time to deliver fulfillment options that provide customers with a range of purchasing options.

Today, state-of-the-art solutions can provide accurate inventory-related information in real time, helping retailers make smarter decisions. Retailers can customize where inventory is assigned and how it will be fulfilled, in seconds. In fact, the latest inventory solutions can even alert retailers of when to order more, providing customized recommendations based on trends and historical performance data. What’s more, retailers can also assign a status for damaged or defective items and remove them from the on-hand inventory, synchronizing directly to the cloud.

Alternatively, retailers can leverage these disruptive solutions to deliver and improve omnichannel offerings such as buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS) and buy online, return in-store (BORIS). This can further enable them to provide customers with clear and accurate inventory information in real time, creating a seamless experience and reducing the amount of time spent waiting around in-store, further helping retailers meet those challenging customer expectations.

Maximizing Loyalty Through Convenience

According to PWC, 73% of consumers globally agree that a positive experience is key in influencing their brand loyalties. Long queues and delays can be a nuisance for customers, compromising their overall experience with retail brands. To avoid this, retailers must find effective ways to bust queues to keep up during busy periods while ensuring a top-tier and convenient shopping experience for their customers.

A seamless and efficient checkout experience is crucial for boosting customer satisfaction and loyalty. In fact, 37.1% of retailers in the U.S. and the UK claimed that their customers would opt for other merchants if they did not offer consumers the ability to scan products and pay without waiting in a queue. To optimize their checkout process, retailers can lean on innovative solutions including advanced POS systems, mobile payment solutions and even self-checkout terminals.

The latest mobile POS systems can prove to be a game-changer, enabling staff to serve customers from any part of the store. This can significantly help retailers reduce checkout queues and serve their customers more quickly and seamlessly. Alternatively, retailers can utilize RFID-powered self-checkout solutions that optimize the checkout process by automatically scanning all of a shopper’s items at once. This can be significantly useful during busy shopping periods, with more customers completing their transactions in a much shorter amount of time.

With either of these solutions deployed, in-store associates can better devote their time to helping and interacting with customers, providing value to their shopping experience and ultimately increasing customer satisfaction levels.

Driving Retail Success with Tailored Interactions

One of the best ways to add value to the shopping experience of customers is to personalize their interactions at every retail touch point throughout their shopping journey. Retailers have already started to leverage data to curate customer experiences. However, to thrive in a rapidly evolving landscape, they must be able to identify change, new trends, and habits as soon as they occur, This is only possible through harnessing data in real time.

With the right mobile POS solutions integrated with wider retail technologies such as inventory management solutions, data and analytics or even customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, in-store associates can access crucial data about customers’ preferences at the tap of a button. This helps them to better assist customers and deliver a highly personalized experience for shoppers.

As customers flock to stores and websites to purchase their summer essentials, retailers must be prepared to earn and boost their loyalty. Deploying cutting-edge solutions can enable retailers to capitalize on opportunities around these busy shopping periods.

Amber Hovious is the  VP of Marketing and Partnerships at Teamwork Commerce. She has been part of the Teamwork Commerce family for seven years, building out the marketing strategy, business growth and approach as well as cultivating a wide array of partnership relationships to drive long-term success.

Net Zero Week, the UK’s National Awareness Week that takes place from 1-7 July, aims to highlight the urgent need for action to combat climate change.

Everyone must play their part to reduce emissions, and retailers are no exception. With fast fashion, high waste levels and inefficient supply chain processes, there is still a lot of work to be done in order for the retail sector to achieve net zero. Today, sustainability has become a pressing concern for consumers. Individuals are making conscious efforts to adopt more environmentally-friendly practices in their daily lives, with consumers across the globe actively making more sustainability-conscious purchases.

In an era where sustainability is given greater prominence, retailers must look for ways to become greener. From the supply chain through to the store shelf, retailers need to deliver sustainable practices at every step. Technology can play an important role in facilitating greener operations, and in this blog, we discuss three key ways retailers can harness technology to reduce emissions and become more sustainable: 

1. Reducing Energy Consumption and Streamlining Inventory

A 2023 Deloitte analysis shows that retail supply chains account for 25% of all global greenhouse gas emissions. The reduction of wastage across the supply chain has become a critical objective for retailers in their pursuit of sustainability; one key factor that plays a pivotal role in achieving this goal is complete visibility and data-driven insight.

With Teamwork Commerce’s Inventory Control solution, retailers can gain real-time access to accurate and comprehensive information at the tap of a button, enabling them to make more informed decisions related to their inventory. With high-level inventory accuracy, retailers know exactly how many items are required in all locations and can order or produce products based on demand. This optimizes their stock and significantly reduces the unnecessary consumption of materials and energy.

2. Eliminate Unnecessary Transportation

Transportation is one of many key components of a retailer’s ecosystem, but is also,  unfortunately, accountable for CO2 emissions. Whether at the start of the supply chain – where raw materials are transported to production sites – or at the end – when the final merchandise is distributed to stores, the global shipping and delivery of products can result in significant amounts of carbon dioxide being emitted into the atmosphere.

To reduce unnecessary transportation, retailers need accurate data in real time. By tracking individual store performance and analysing stock requirements across all locations, retailers can make smarter decisions that can help them to streamline their distribution, minimizing unnecessary transportation.

Retailers can leverage Teamwork Commerce’s Reporting & Analytics to forecast and make these decisions effectively. The tool provides retailers with automated recommendations and reporting capabilities, which can help them make effective decisions faster. This can help to significantly reduce unnecessary transportation during different stages of their retail ecosystem.

3. Minimizing Landfill Waste

Landfill waste is another major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.  In fact, the landfill waste from returns alone contributes 15 million metric tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Ultimately, to reduce emissions, it is essential for retailers to reduce their landfill waste, and this can be achieved by streamlining their returns management operation. Not only does this benefit customers by ensuring a smooth return transaction, but it also allows retailers to send more items back to the shop floor, avoiding landfill sites and minimizing CO2 emissions.

By deploying Teamwork Commerce’s Order Management System (OMS), retailers can also leverage its in-built Returns Manager, which helps them streamline the process of receiving and restocking returned items. Retailers can send pre-approved return codes included with the shipping documents to allow customers to return or exchange items with minimal effort easily. This can speed up the return process and help retailers get the merchandise back on their shelves.

Driving sustainability today isn’t a choice but a necessity to thrive. By prioritizing sustainable practices, businesses can attract and retain customers and drive long-term value for their brands.

Our solutions are flexible and can be customized to your specific needs. Want to see them in action? Book a demo here.

The retail sector appears to be getting more competitive by the day, and the cost of living crisis is only exacerbating the issue for retailers. In fact, according to a Deloitte report for the 2023 US retail outlook, only one-third of retail CEOs had a high degree of confidence in their ability to sustain or increase profit margins throughout the current economic climate.

With the cost of living increasing and consumers only becoming more demanding, retailers need to find effective ways to stay ahead of the curve – and exceptional customer service is one of them. Fortunately, the latest technological innovations can help retailers to create unique, personalized and overall customer experiences, and stand out from their competitors to generate sustainable long-term business success. Whether selling online, in-store, or leveraging the best of both channels, retailers need to provide not only and excellent customer service, but meaningful and memorable experiences to succeed throughout the cost of living crisis.

Delivering a High-Quality In-store Experience

Today, customers expect a top-tier in-store shopping experience. While the definition of a ‘high-quality’ experience may vary between customers, convenience and personalization are two of the key factors that remain at the core of each shopper’s expectations. If a retailer isn’t able to deliver these two components, customers will quickly turn to another retailer who can. With multiple touchpoints within the in-store customer journey, retailers have a number of opportunities to provide personalization and convenience to customers. One highly effective opportunity comes at the point of sale (POS).

To live up to customer expectations and enable staff to provide the ultimate customer service, retailers can utilize the latest mobile POS systems to create unique and streamlined experiences.

With Teamwork Commerce’s mobile (POS) solution, retailers can integrate the system with their wider technology stack and provide associates with real-time information at just a tap of a button. Combined with an inbuilt customer relationship management (CRM) tool, staff have a plethora of information that can be used to personalize each customer interaction.

Whether viewing unique customer profiles and understanding their purchasing history, preferences and buying habits, or tapping into inventory management tools to help locate items for customers, associates can provide shoppers with everything they need in seconds. Once customers have their items, the mobile POS solution can also complete transactions from anywhere in-store, removing the need for shoppers to queue, and further streamlining their overall experience.

For larger stores with consistently heavy traffic, retailers can still ensure a seamless and faster checkout experience for their customers through the power of the RFID-Powered Self-Checkout solution. Automatically scanning all basket or cart items within seconds, the technology significantly reduces both checkout and queuing time for customers.

Ensuring Frictionless Online Offerings

In today’s competitive retail environment, success hinges on having efficient and effective processes in place to manage orders, inventory, and fulfillment across all sales channels. In 2022, US consumers were estimated to have returned over $816 billion in retail goods. To mitigate issues such as returns, many retailers are turning to retail solutions that enhance their fulfilment capabilities. Teamwork Commerce’s Order Management System (OMS) enables retailers to simplify complex retail processes, providing an automated solution to generate shipments. This comprehensive platform integrates with retailers’ eCommerce platforms, enabling them to quickly and easily manage orders, inventory, and customers. OMS provides a streamlined experience that ensures accuracy and reduces overhead costs while improving customer satisfaction.

To take their online and wider retail offerings to the next level, retailers need to leverage data to its full potential. Teamwork Commerce’s Reporting and Analytics solution has grown to be a vital tool for retailers, giving them timely information that aids in forecasting and better decision-making. This information enables retailers to make more informed choices and efficiently optimize their operations. What’s more, the solution also provides retailers with automated reports that enable them to make more effective decisions and take action quickly in order to increase their bottom line.

Building Unified Commerce

Today’s state-of-the-art innovations help retailers match evolving customer expectations. However, it can get difficult for retailers to manage several customer-facing and back-end solutions. To ease that challenge and to help improve efficiency, retailers can utilize an all-encompassing approach, connecting their entire retail stack from back-end to front-end, to communicate and share information in real time. All managed on one interface, retailers can gather data from all areas of their operation to make smarter decisions. Utilizing the Teamwork Commerce Application Programming Interface, retailers can streamline workflows, reduce costs and save time. With this approach, retailers can quickly deploy new features and updates without hassle.

With convenience becoming increasingly sought-after by customers, retailers need a unified view of customer interactions, products, and management systems to identify gaps and improve the customer experience at every retail touchpoint. Implementing intrinsic data-driven technologies can help create an omnichannel journey that is tailored to the needs of each customer.

The retail industry is changing as a result of advancements in data-driven processing solutions. These technologies allow retailers to create a comprehensive strategy that enables them to streamline operations, enhance customer satisfaction, outperform competitors, and adopt an all-encompassing perspective of their entire technology stack. Leveraging the latest solutions, retailers can deliver an improved customer experience by identifying areas for growth while boosting efficiency and profitability.

To understand how your retail business can leverage the latest solutions to help you elevate the shopping experience of your customers, get in touch here.

Originally posted in: retailcustomerexperiencie.com 

Retailers that can effectively provide consumers with desired levels of convenience greatly enhance their overall shopping experience.

June 22, 2023 | by Amber Hovious — VP, Marketing & Partnerships, Teamwork Commerce

As we find ourselves at the half-way point through 2023, the global retail landscape continues to keep the sector on its toes. However, we’ve kept our finger on the pulse of the latest retail news and industry developments so that you don’t have to.

In our last Retail in Review blog, we explored why US sales had dropped-off while the UK market rallied, and took a look at how self-checkout was revolutionizing the landscape. Read below to read some retail market updates, and find out how the retail industry has continued its development during May and June…

Fighting Against Theft

As reported in Financial Times, Target has informed its investors that shrink – the loss of inventory as a result of shoplifting, employee theft, and organized retail crime – will reduce the retailer’s profits this year by approximately $500m more than it did in 2022. Retail shrink appears to be on the rise, with New York mayor, Eric Adams, claiming that the city experienced a 45% increase in retail theft complaints last year compared to 2021.

The article calls for communities and wider law enforcement to step up in the fight against theft to take back control. Of course, retailers cannot eliminate shrink alone, but they can take steps to help their odds. RFID technology, for example, can track products at item-level and play a significant role in reducing shrink at checkout.

Many view self-checkout as a less secure point of sale (POS) option, which can contribute to increased theft without in-store associates on hand to personally complete transactions. However, Teamwork’s RFID-Powered Self-Checkout solution automatically scans all items in a shopper’s basket or cart within seconds, and is capable of triggering alarms if items are not paid for. Ultimately, retailers experience fewer losses as a result, and checkout security can be significantly enhanced.

US Retail Sales Increase in May

Theft concerns haven’t kicked off our review of the retail industry in the brightest light. After all, it’s not all doom and gloom. In fact, while in March the US may have seen retail sales drop, this time around we’ve noticed that the numbers have started building up again.

According to Bloomberg, US sales unexpectedly climbed by 0.3% in May, proving consumer resilience despite continued economic challenges.

Reuters goes on to explain that while the cost of living crisis has resulted in shoppers becoming more selective and sensitive to prices, strong wage gains from the labor market have held up spending.

While the market is rebounding, retailers must continue to remain in-tune with customer demands. With the right clienteling and CRM solutions, retailers can create personalized in-store experiences that provide value to customers, recommending products and highlighting promotions that best suit them. On top of this, a personalized approach helps in-store associates to deliver high-quality customer service that helps set retailers apart in a highly competitive environment.

Physical Stores Continue Their Comeback

With US sales rebounding, much of the success can be attributed to the boom of physical stores. That is, at least, according to members of the KPMG/Ipsos Retail Think Tank (RTT), who have been discussing the latest developments within retail.

According to the RTT, in-store sales are making a strong comeback despite brick-and-mortar retail being written off by many over the past few years. The reason for the resurgence is believed to be due to the ongoing cost of living crisis, where in-store shoppers are better able to track their spend. The RTT also cites a post-COVID appetite for real-life experiences as a contributing factor.

With brick-and-mortar shopping on the rise, it is important that retailers can leverage increased footfall by providing seamless in-store experiences that deliver on the current desire for experiential retail. While RFID-powered self-checkout can help customers complete their own transactions in seconds, Mobile POS allows retailers to deliver a personalized touch to their sales, while being able to complete transactions from anywhere in-store.

With built-in CRM, our Mobile POS solution allows retailers to create a single source of information around every individual customer, allowing them to visualize customer purchasing history, buying habits, and shopping frequency across sales channels and make relevant recommendations. Not only does the solution help to minimize a customer’s time spent waiting around in-store, but it adds the personal touch that consumers crave.

Building Towards a Summer Spree

As we make our way to the summer months, consumer appetite is clearly on the rise, with demand for in-store experiences leading the charge for customer expectations. The next few months could be crucial for retailers looking to capitalize on vacation purchases and refreshed summer wardrobes, and staying on top of their competition. A personalized approach will be the key to success.

Find out more about how Teamwork Commerce’s solutions can help your retail business deliver the ultimate customer experience. Get in touch today!