Shaping the customer experience in retail, smartly

When you want to buy a high-value product in an exquisite fashion house, at a jeweller or in a sports shop, you surely expect to be advised personally and competently. After all, you are about to spend a lot of money. Yet what often happens at the retailer you trust? Plenty of other customers expect exactly what you expect. Endless queues form and you leave the shop annoyed. The result: the retailer loses your custom and you, the customer, are frustrated. Our Smart CX solution avoids that situation and improves the customer journey deliberately.

How does it work?

You book your advisory appointment online in advance and receive a confirmation with a QR code. So you do not have to visit the retailer of your choice on the off chance — you know that they are prepared for your visit and have reserved time for you. The retailer, in turn, releases appointment quotas for advice-intensive sales in the system according to the availability of their trained staff. That produces an optimal match between prospects and the right members of staff. Visitors who state at booking time that they want to buy "only" a bicycle helmet in a sports shop, say, are assigned to a queue that needs less qualified staff.

Once you arrive at the retailer, you check in at a terminal and are immediately told the expected waiting time. When it is your turn, you learn where your personal contact is already waiting for you. You are therefore accompanied from booking through to the actual meeting, save unnecessary waiting time and meet an advisor who can deal competently with your request. This approach offers plenty of advantages for retailers too. Knowing in advance how many visitors to expect and what they are coming for, they can plan their staffing deliberately and assign the right contact with the right time slot.

Smart CJM Customer eXperience for bicycle retailers

Lörper Fahrrad GmbH already uses our customer journey management solution successfully. The company faced the challenge that at weekends in particular a great many customers visited the shop, all of them wanting competent advice. For the staff this often led to stressful situations, especially as there was no differentiation by request — whether it was a bicycle repair, buying accessories or the advice-intensive purchase of a high-end e-bike. Instead of a positive shopping experience, customers often met with restlessness and stress at peak times.

With the introduction of our solution the situation eased considerably for customers and staff alike. Customers can now book advisory or service appointments through the website, and even walk-ins are handled by our terminal, which issues a paper or digital ticket for them. Every request is captured, the order is clear, and advisors are brought in with the relevant expertise. Integrating the solution into both the advisory and the service area now ensures an ideal customer journey for every service. "By integrating the SMART CJM solution we were able to raise customer and employee satisfaction substantially," sums up Carlo Lörper, the company's managing director, adding: "At the same time we optimised our processes and can now react faster to customer needs, which contributes considerably to raising our operational efficiency."

Another field of application for our solution at Lörper is the efficient planning of staffing. Here our intelligent technology, based on neural networks, uses historical visitor-volume data to derive future visitor numbers. On that basis the solution recommends staffing levels and appointment quotas for particular times of day, specific weekdays or seasonal events.

Conclusion

With a smart solution for visitor guidance and queue management you, as a retailer, can steer your visitor volume deliberately and optimise your processes at the same time. Integrating AI technologies also lets you plan staffing to demand and use your resources optimally. You as the owner, your customers and your staff all benefit — as the practical example of Lörper Fahrrad GmbH vividly shows.