We’ve entered the age of the consumer, where the customer is at the center of the retail universe, and data has made this possible. Customers are empowered with more information than ever before; with online stores, social media, and smart phones. Their expectations from in-store shopping experiences have changed, and so should the role of the sales associate. Clienteling is a customer centric CRM retail system, which empowers the sales associate with customer data in the palm of their hands to facilitate a highly personalized and delightful shopping experience that drives repeat visits.
Clienteling solutions help associates in various stages of assisting the customer:
- Getting Customers To Visit The Store – Engage with existing customers by sending personalized communication to various channels, based on the context and past shopping behavior.
- In-store – Recognize the customer in-store and personalize the interaction to better assist the customer. Effectively use customer preferences, notes from previous interactions and recommendations based on the customer’s past shopping behavior to increase your customer engagement.
- Transform Customer Service to Customer Delight– Clienteling, when done effectively, also means handling customer returns and customer feedback effectively with the goal of achieving customer delight.
While clienteling systems have seen an impressive growth in adoption over recent years, this space has been rapidly evolving with the recent technology trends. Mobile devices and interactive displays are redefining the in-store experience for both sales associates and customers. Tablets have dramatically impacted how sales associates can participate in the customer shopping process. Tablets allow store associates to have a 360-degree view of every customer; information on the move as they engage in assisted selling and double as a product expert with relevant information at their fingertips. Experiences such as this, can bridge the gap between online and offline retailing and bring personalization in-store with all other advantages of in-store shopping.
Tablets also make it easier to enrich customer data by capturing customer preferences and interests based on one-to-one interactions. As this data becomes more accurate, retailers are able to serve customers better in the forthcoming shopping experiences, as well as use it for targeted communication to announce new arrivals, sales and other events the consumer may show interest in.
Beacons, among the other recent technological innovations have made intelligent customer identification in-store possible. This technology will also open doors to mobile phones becoming a customer’s trusted digital assistant to enhance their shopping experience inside the store.
Regardless of the promise many of the new technologies show, the final touch point inside the store will always be the sales associate and hence a critical link in building and maintaining the relationship between the brand and the customer.
