Challenges faced by Retailers in the Stores
I was at a roundtable discussion with some 20+ retaile VPs and CTOs. It was a very lively and interesting discussion. We were talking about challenges faced by the retailers in the stores. These were the top challenges in the stores,
- How to improve morale of the store employees. How to keep them motivated, informed and educated on corporate vision and goals.
- How to help customers find products they're looking for without hiring many more employees. It is the most common complaint of customers in the stores and improving in this area improves overall customer experience in the stores.
- How to improve productivity in the stores to enahnce customer experience and build customer loyalty
To enhance customer experience in finding products, some suggested self-service infromation kiosks where customers can do product searches. However these kiosks do not inform the customer about the exact location of the product in the stores. So another suggestion was providing customers with a Toll free number that customers can call and speak into for product information. This can be an automated systems using products such as Microsoft's TellMe. Another suggestion was to use text messaging. Customers can text message the product number and the response should be the location of the product in the stoers. All of these excellent suggestions and should be considered by the retailers seriously.
On improving employee morale, some suggested employee portals as the most important element. Products such as Microsoft's SharePoint Server make it very easy to build employee portals that can be used to communicate corporate vision and goals.
I will provide more information on the architecture of a voice based solution in the next blog..
