FUTURE OF POINT OF SALE MOVING BEYOND TRADITIONAL POS TO RETAIL ENGAGEMENT

Transcription

1 FUTURE OF POINT OF SALE MOVING BEYOND TRADITIONAL POS TO RETAIL ENGAGEMENT

2 INTRODUCTION Shoppers are all too familiar with the classic shopping scenario when you walk into a store, you re greeted and asked how you can be helped. The associate then proceeds to show you options that match your needs. You are excited, you have made a connection with the sales associate because of the associate s product knowledge, but then you are directed to stand in line to pay for your product. A break in the sale has just occurred, sacrificing experience, engagement, relationship development and customer service for a transaction. Today s point of sale (POS) solutions should go beyond capturing retail transactions; they should be leveraged to increase customer engagement, improve enterprise wide inventory visibility, and drive more revenue. Advanced POS functionality includes omni-channel fulfillment processes, which include: drop shipping from vendor, ship-from-store and pick up in store, as well as the ability to sell from an existing or future catalog. More importantly, advanced functionality provides visibility of customer information to drive clienteling and customer service. This paper will explore the evolution of POS and the features and functions that can empower store associates and improve retail engagement of consumers. In this paper, the phrase Point of Sale (POS) is replaced with Retail Engagement Solution (RES) because it is important to emphasize that POS is transactional and Retail Engagement is social and focused on the experience. the customer engages with multiple sales associates: a sales floor associate helping the customer and a sales associate tethered to a fixed point of sale station. This three-step process is not conducive to maximizing the customer experience or service because the buying process is not a seamless interaction between the customer and a single sales associate. Oftentimes after engaging and forming a relationship with the client through the selection of merchandise, the sales associate disengages and hands the transaction over to the cashier or person at the register when it comes time to take payment. This is known as a break in the sale, contributing to a loss in intimacy with the customer. However, there are now solutions that can significantly improve the buying experience for the customer. Customers today look for new age ways of interaction. They want to buy what they want, whenever and wherever they want it. To deliver a seamless and integrated buying experience, retailers need a flexible POS system that will facilitate retail engagement. A RES is a shift away from traditional POS, which is almost always focused on the transaction itself. RES is more about interactivity with the customer and creating an experience that STATE OF POS For most store retailers, the customer experience is a three-step process 1) the shopper finds merchandise he or she wants or needs 2) the customer makes a buying decision to purchase, and 3) the customer purchases the items at a fixed station cash register. In many, if not most cases, [1]

3 Retail Engagement Solutions deliver a true omni-channel customer experience by dissolving channel boundaries and adapting to innovations. captures the customer s attention and invites the customer to participate in the transaction. The use of POS systems will not disappear, but instead, they will remain a function to facilitate rather than drive a transaction. TRANSITIONING TO A ONE-STEP PATH TO PURCHASE PROCESS The future of POS is RES for retailers. It s an integrated system that enhances customer service and increases sales. It delivers a true omni-channel customer experience by dissolving channel boundaries and adapting to innovations. Retailers that decide to transition into an RES, or a one-step path to purchase process, will encourage single store associates to interact with the customer from merchandise selection to payment. Retailers will immediately see compressed sell time, no loss in face-time with the customer and a more cost effective solution. This one-step process should always be facilitated using a modern architecture focused on retail engagement rather than a POS sales transaction alone. PRODUCT, PERSON, PAYMENT In order to make a sales transaction, product, person and payment are necessary components. For many retailers, the person and payment aspects of this mix are present, but due to limited store space, the full assortment of a retailer s products is not available in every store. However, due to expanded channels, retailers often have inventory available in other stores, at distribution centers, or through their supply base. That s where enterprise inventory visibility comes into play, eliminating the channel boundaries that often result in lost sales, even when inventory is available elsewhere. New functionality allows RES systems to integrate across all channels and have visibility to where inventory is located. For example, if a customer wants to buy a product but the store does not have the desired color or size of the product on hand, the store associate can use a RES to access inventory across channels and find another channel that has the item available in the desired color or size. The store associate can then order the item for the customer. The RES system can then successfully notify the other channel to fulfill the order. It then creates only one payment and one receipt for the customer for items purchased across multiple fulfillment channels. The customer also has the convenience of having the order delivered by the customer s preferred method, whether it is to pick it up at another store, ship it to the customer s home, or pick it up at the current store at a later date. This inventory visibility, a RES function, prevents the retailer from losing a sale with a shopper who desires the retailer s product and facilitates retail engagement resulting in a happier customer more likely to make future purchases from the retailer and tell other potential shoppers. [2]

4 FACILITATING THE BUY PROCESS When a shopper is in a store, there is a good chance he or she is already interested in buying a product from that retailer; the store associate s role is to merely facilitate the buying process. A retailer s goal should be to focus less on the transaction and instead on creating a positive shopping experience that customers want to share with other people. Many POS functions, when using RES, can help facilitate the buying process, including: 1. Offering customers the option to choose from a variety of SKUs not carried in the store Stores are often limited in the number of SKUs they can carry even though the retailer may offer many more SKUs within its e-commerce channel or future seasonal catalogs. An RES solution can enable a store associate to look at all of the retailer s SKUs available across multiple channels to seek out a customer s request for a product or make additional recommendations of products the customer might like that are not available in store. 2. Clienteling New RES solutions can create customer profiles that a sales associate can quickly access; these profiles can include information like previous items purchased, average dollars spent per transaction, amount purchased through e-commerce vs. in-store, and amount purchased at full price vs. discounted, among many others. A store associate can use this information to make educated product recommendations to the customer and increase the likelihood of a sale. Using this profile, a store associate can also capture information from a customer, such as the customer s likes and dislikes, and contact the customer to make future product recommendations based on that information. This information helps further the relationship between the sales associate and the customer. 3. Remaining untethered Retailers can make themselves more available by not being tied to a cash register that way they can view the entire [3]

5 store and even capitalize on other in-store opportunities to make things more visually and physically appealing to customers, i.e., the store layout. The use of a tablet or mobile device that is hardware and operating system agnostic and cloud-based is an easy way to transition the current state of POS into a one-step path to purchase - compressing the sale transaction time and improving the relationship between the consumer and retailer because the sales relationship is never broken or interrupted by another party to complete the transaction. 4. Catalog availability Most retailers POS systems cannot look at their upcoming catalogs. However, new RES functionality can access upcoming catalogs, like future seasonal offerings. A sales associate could use this functionality to reference future catalogs and show items to shoppers and note the items the customer likes in the RES. When those items become available in the future, the store associate can contact the customer. This is another way to continue the customer and sales associate s relationship and drive sales in the future. CONCLUSION In conclusion, POS should go beyond securing a transaction behind the counter. Customers should be able to experience an exceptional level of customer service, and sales associates should feel empowered with greater information in order to interact with customers like never before. The future of POS is RES, offering access to more product and increasing sales through a fully integrated, one-step, consumer-focused engagement process. For more information, please contact ENSPIRE or info@enspirecommerce.com. POS should go beyond securing a transaction behind the counter. Customers should be able to experience an exceptional level of customer service, and sales associates should feel empowered with greater information in order to interact with customers like never before. For more information: Phone (US): (800) (Intl): (001)(252) RetailPoint North Meridian Street Suite 415 Carmel, Indiana