KEY DIGITAL TRENDS FOR POST PANDEMIC RETAIL

4 trends in technological solutions The technological industry is in a deep phase of interaction since the beginning of the pandemic, in which businesses dedicated to the end customer seek to provide solutions to their demands, whether in terms of service excellence, shipping logistics, quick response to the search for products or services, among others. […]

4 trends in technological solutions

The technological industry is in a deep phase of interaction since the beginning of the pandemic, in which businesses dedicated to the end customer seek to provide solutions to their demands, whether in terms of service excellence, shipping logistics, quick response to the search for products or services, among others. We can talk about a myriad of customer service solutions, among which we highlight the following: self-service solutions such as self-checkouts and kiosks; solutions to automate customer service such as virtual assistants, AIs, conversational IVRs, recording systems, VOC, RPA; and finally, solutions for analytics and prediction through data, such as predictive monitoring, big data, etc.

Employing the combination of these technologies, we are seeking to improve interaction with the end consumer and make the points of contact more profitable.

In this sense, despite the boom in digital innovations, we cannot ignore that the customer still privileges the fact of being able to look, touch, compare, smell and try products; experiences that cannot be replaced with the purchase process through a screen.

The enormous number of sales that are transacted today in e-commerce, social networks, applications, in addition to the information provided for dispatches, provide a great amount of information about the consumers, their behavior, tastes, flows and willingness to buy. Therefore, through the use of Data Mining/Big Data, we can predict actions, average ticket, and preferences, in order to improve the business performance towards its customers.

Renewal in terms of digital trends is, therefore, a must for current companies for establishing a successful future.

Below, we present 4 digital trends that we consider as essential and key for this post-pandemic technological evolution:

Experience stores: to understand this concept, Retail Analytics explain it like this: “in simple words, the retail experience or experience stores consists of the customer’s experience from the moment they arrive at the store and observe its façade, to every step they take inside, which will generate positive or negative opinions that will be decisive when deciding to return and that will also be transmitted to friends and family.” For example, large supermarkets already have mostly self-service checkouts, experiences that help to build loyalty among customers who are looking for autonomy both in their shopping and in their time management, seeking to obtain an increasingly better customer experience; as well as providing great fluidity and speed during the shopping interaction.

One of the changes that has made the greatest impact is the multichannel approach. According to Telefónica’s digital blog “The think Big”, “the technological tsunami has radically changed the way consumers relate to brands. One of the changes that has made the greatest impact is multichannel. In the retail sector, the point of sale is competing more and more with ecommerce, mcommerce and social networks”.

Unified commerce: one of the great challenges facing Retail is the convergence between the physical and the virtual, namely, Phygital, which according to the same article we published in April, it’s one of the latest trends in UX. It unifies a person’s experience in both a physical and digital environment, the elevation of two worlds that today is present in commercial transactions more than ever, driven by social and economic factors and empowered by behavioral change in the wake of the global pandemic.

Big Data in Store: thanks to technological advances, it is now possible to store and analyze an unimaginable amount of data, generating historical evidence, trend prediction, frequency visibility. This allows businesses to generate strategic plans for customer service, along with greater effectiveness and efficiency of points of sale, both online and offline, and a more efficient management of their customer service flows.

Robots: they help in the purchase, the user service, the checkout, in problem resolution, and relieve executives’ service channels in order to redistribute service more efficiently. Rather than replacing humans, (a concept we also discussed in one of our previous posts), this technology comes to support, leaving tasks of analysis and greater cognitive complexity to us, thus building a robust customer service team.

In short, digital evolution is paramount and is not an option, especially considering the changes in the industry that are driven by diverse factors.

Even though we presented 4 trends here, there are undoubtedly many more. It all depends on how strategic you want to be, the solutions you want to provide, and the story you want to tell. In Belltech, we support you during the process, we adapt to your requirements and fit our technologies to your goals. We are a company that supports and advises you in your transformation and technological development projects.