Sphere No.43 (Oct 2017)

SPHERE #43 2017 22 THE ULTIMATE SHOPPING EXPERIENCE >> “As consumers become more mature in accepting new ways of shopping, technological innovation opens up opportunities to enhance the customer experience,” Mr Ho says. “This in turn enables better integration of all our sales channels and platforms. These are genuine omnichannel experiences.” It begins with self-checkout. The technology has already been deployed, in one form or another, in many places around the world. It requires the shopper to act as their own checkout assistant by scanning products at the point of self-checkout. It has had its fair share of challenges, as frustration with checkout failures, perhaps due to creased or otherwise unreadable barcodes, can lead to shopper rejection of the technology. When it happens with a cashier, they simply enter the barcode manually, but the shopper can’t do that at the self-checkout. Shoplifting can also be a problem, even inadvertently from honest buyers who simply lose their composure following a self-checkout failure and head for the door with a product instead of taking it to a manned checkout. ASW teams have a variety of people and technology-based practices to solve these problems encountered by many in the industry. Even if the world is not quite ready for pure self-checkout yet, that doesn’t mean that significant gains in customer experience and efficiency can’t happen. On the human side, simple fixes can do the trick. From drugstore Rossmann in Poland to Watsons Malaysia, staff will be able to support self-checkout lines to make sure shoppers don’t feel frustrated and then reject self-checkout, perhaps forever. “Call assistance” buttons can bring those staff into play to alleviate minor frustrations. A helping hand and friendly voice can go a long way to promote customer adoption. EYES ON THE PRIZE Camera technology has also advanced dramatically to provide greater resolution, improving the blurry black and white images known to us from crime TV. But Mr Ho tells us that the technology isn’t as important as the experience of using it. The installation, positioning and configuration of cameras has become just as important as the cameras themselves. Knowing how to position them can give full coverage of the entrance to measure traffic count and derive conversion rates (measured as the number of shoppers compared to the number of visitors) for the business. Those tempted to head for the door without paying may not know that camera technology can also be deployed as a big part of the self-service operation. So cameras are looking at regular shoppers and even products to find better ways to serve customers, not just to catch them red-handed. Without needing to collect personal data, a great deal of information can reveal to analysts which parts of stores are most visited, suffer the most congestion, or invite the most leisurely lingering as people collect information on products or even try them out. The positioning of products can be tested to see which configurations provoke people to look, pick up, and, ideally, purchase a product. With proper responses to such intelligence, customers will theoretically find stores more engaging and stimulating. ALWAYS AT HAND Nothing is more frustrating for shoppers than making a trip to the store, only to find that what they’re after doesn’t appear to be in stock. ASW is deploying an array of new technologies to ensure that doesn’t happen, from online shopping to real-time stock and ESL technology. Far from “English as a Second Language”, the ESL in retail stands for Electronic Shelf Labelling. Originally, ESL was deployed to support dynamic pricing while the product was still on the shelf, allowing retailers to change prices on the fly. In countries like China, where QR codes are ubiquitous, they could be used to help provide product information. ASW’s Store Technology teams under Mr Ho are now using the technology, combined with real-time stock information, to make sure that if the product is in the store, it isn’t languishing “With the help of more advanced devices and stronger analytics tools, we can also capture customer touchpoints in our physical stores and convert unknown store traffic into known customer interactions.” Mandy Ng Group Project Director A S Watson Group