Challenges

Challenge 1: How do you link your in-store and digital shopping journeys?

If your customers see the same logo on your storefront, your social media channels and your website, then they increasingly expect to enjoy a joined-up experience between them.

But integration is still a problem for many retail CX systems, so it can be hard to deliver a common experience across all channels.

The Solution

To stay in tune with today’s shopping habits, probably the most important factor to consider when choosing a CX platform is the extent to which it can help you form a single view of your customers’ online and offline interactions. Look for a platform that can handle a wide range of channels – phone, email, webchat, bots, social media and so on – and efficiently route conversations to contact centre or in-store staff in a seamless fashion.

Challenge 2: How do you give agents the same tools wherever they work?

The explosion of home-based working since COVID-19 has helped improve agent recruitment and retention for many retailers, but from a CX perspective it has also introduced complications.

It can be hard to ensure home-based workers use the same environment as their office-based counterparts, which can lead to a loss of CX features and security issues if systems outside the contact centre are not patched and updated as required.

The Solution

The best approach is to select CX on-demand as a cloud service (Contact Centre-as-a-Service or CCaaS), removing the hassle and costs of managing IT infrastructure and ensuring a homogeneous work environment irrespective of location. Your CCaaS provider should also automatically take care of security patching, upgrades and so on.

Similarly, it naturally helps to choose a partner that can offer a host of licencing options with no hidden fees.

Challenge 3: How do you maximise customer loyalty?

Getting your customers to stay loyal is hard when cost considerations are driving people to shop on price.

In the UK, 64% of consumers now view affordability as the most important factor when deciding where to shop, compared to 59% that claim to have been loyal to a brand for as long as they can remember.⁵

The Solution

Improve your CX game with AI innovations that surface relevant knowledge, recommend next-best-actions and auto fill data entries. This could also release agents to listen and deliver more personalised retail experiences.

Likewise, ask if your CX platform includes AI-powered routing that matches shoppers to the best salesperson for each purchase and predictive analytics that alert agents to help struggling website and mobile shoppers.

Challenge 4: How do you manage peak demand?

In today’s competitive retail landscape, you can ill afford to lose customers during peak shopping periods such as Christmas and Black Friday.

But it can be hard to find reserve staff to fill in for these periods, increasing the likelihood of in-store and online sales opportunities being lost.

The Solution

The best CX platforms on the market will not only allow you to quickly add temporary or remote workers as needed, but also be highly intuitive and easy to adopt, reducing time and effort spent on staff training and onboarding.

A good CX platform will also help you route customer queries to the correct agent or have them answered quickly by a chatbot – saving time and satisfying the 68% of shoppers willing to spend more with brands that offer superior customer service⁶.

Challenge 5: How do you reduce agent churn?

Agent churn is a perennial problem in retail, with staff turnover contributing to poor customer experience and high costs.

Research has found that monotony and lack of acknowledgement are among the factors that can negatively affect agent’s perception of the workplace⁷.

The Solution

Leading CX platforms now include gamification features that can help enliven the agent experience and provide recognition on the achievement of corporate targets.

To get the best of such features, it makes more sense to choose an open, future-proofed platform from a major vendor as this will be more familiar to your agents. Plus, an established brand will be supported and enhanced for decades to come.