Blog: Navigating the Shift to a Customer-Centric Retail Experience

In these times, inefficiencies in the shopping experience, particularly at checkout, could cost the industry billions. As reported by the National Retail Federation, long wait times at the checkout is one of the causes of basket abandonment in physical retail: customers may become frustrated if they have to wait in a long line to make their purchase, which leads to 32% of them leaving the store without making a purchase.² This will generate significant revenue loss, with US retailers losing over $30 billion annually due to long queues.³

Blending Digital and Physical Spaces for a Seamless Shopping Experience
The pandemic has accelerated changes in consumer interactions with both digital and physical shopping environments. Today the shopping experience is fluid, with consumers seamlessly navigating digital, physical, virtual, and social platforms. This ongoing evolution transforms purchasing into a continuous, multi-channel experience: as Niraj Dawar writes in the Harvard Business Review “…the pace and evolution of markets are now driven by customers’ shifting purchase criteria rather than by improvements in products or technology."⁴

In this scenario, physical stores, especially in fashion and beauty, play a crucial role. They are becoming hubs where consumers can experience the brand, increasing brand awareness and differentiation. Stores are transforming into service centers where consumers collect orders, make returns, seek advice, and engage in unique experiences. Holger Blecker, CEO of Breuninger, states that their goal is to “inspire customers daily by offering an all-encompassing experiential destination, integrating online and offline seamlessly, …becoming a destination: much more than just retailer.”⁵

Consumers at the Center of the Experience
Putting consumers at the center of the store experience is essential. Technology now makes understanding their needs, anticipating them, and creating memorable experiences possible.  Brian Solis, Digital Anthropologist and Futurist, reminds us that “True innovation and even disruption is exploring not only new technology and trends but also how people are changing in parallel.”¹ In today’s competitive environment, the crucial question is: where to start?

Competitive customer experience (CX) in fashion requires the right tools and innovations to ensure staff can create meaningful interactions that drive satisfaction, conversions, and loyalty. Improved customer relationships are within reach for any retailer ready to transform their CX game with modern self-service tech such as the Vynamic^® Self-Service solution. Picture this: seamless integration with existing systems, plus a building-block approach that lets you customize everything to fit your exact needs. That's what this solution is all about.

Streamlining Self-Checkout with Modular Solutions and RFID Integration
DN Series^® EASY, a highly modular solution that includes DN Vynamic software, can be tailored to specific goals and targets. It automates those once-manual aspects of the self-checkout process and alleviates common consumer pain points while increasing security. That security comes in the form of RFID integration that makes inventory management and tracking a breeze, ensuring greater consistency.

RFID helps to address chronic retail pain points like theft and long wait times while also helping store associates track and manage inventory. It facilitates next-generation self-checkout by speeding up the process to create a truly seamless experience.

In fashion, brand identity is everything because it motivates the value and desirability of your product, which in turn differentiates your brand and generates customer loyalty. A strong loyalty program keeps consumers engaged and provides targeted promotions. According to a McKinsey survey, 65% of customers are more likely to increase their purchase frequency if they are loyalty program members⁷ . Brands can also use loyalty members’ data to target them with more personalized messaging, ranging from simple email campaigns to AI-driven product displays on a brand or retailer’s app.⁸ Solutions like Vynamic^® Engage help to manage, execute and personalize your CRM strategy in a way that is effective and consistent.

Creating the right mix between digital and physical could also unlock unpredictable upselling: up to 33% of the fashion consumers who choose the digital receipt are willing to click on the advertising link on it⁹ and start a new shopping journey. Vynamic^® Digital Receipt is the easiest, most convenient, and cost-effective way for retailers to provide legally compliant receipts to their customers while enhancing the customer experience.

By streamlining that self-service process, manual intervention by associates becomes less and less necessary, freeing staff up to create meaningful customer interactions. Within the fashion world, leveraging RFID has been a true game changer for creating seamless, fast and advanced self-checkout experiences.

Flexible Checkout Solutions Enhance Customer and Staff Expectations
Today’s consumers expect knowledgeable in-store staff who can help them understand and experience the brand. Sales staff are no longer tied to checkout duties but are dedicated to serving consumers in the best possible way. For example, integrating mobility technologies with loyalty applications can instantly recognize customers, offering personalized advice, checking stock, and completing purchases without the need to go to the checkout.

The presence of self-service checkouts proved to be the perfect solution for the multinational fashion retail chain C&A, which debuted its investment into seamless self-checkout technology in partnership with Diebold Nixdorf. In a talk with Jochen Probst, Domain Lead Selling & Markets with C&A, one immediate advantage was the flexibility offered by the solution:  “[Diebold Nixdorf’s solution] is high resolution, which means you can use this either as a self-checkout system or as a regular till, which gives the retailer the full flexibility to use it in both scenarios,” helping to ensure that all types of customers are served via the channels they prefer. This flexibility also allows retailers to decide how they want to tackle peak times and seasons.

It’s one of several key features of modern, adaptable solutions that helps to ensure the transition to those solutions is flexible enough to cope with emergent needs rather than locking retailers into a solution that may not be able to address every consumer want.

When you combine that flexibility and speed with modern, AI and computer-vision-powered security solutions, you form an offering that allows associates to focus on the human-to-human interactions that truly define high-level customer service.

To learn more about how innovations like RFID and AI is revolutionizing retail operations, download our white paper, Maximize Employee Potential to Meet Modern Needs. Or contact us to speak with a retail expert.

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Sources:
¹McKinsey “State of Fashion 2024” - November 29, 2023
² Basket Abandonment – Are we looking at it the wrong way? Lessons from Physical Retail https://conferwith.io/knowledge-base/livestream-ecommerce/basket-abandonment-are-we-looking-at-it-the-wrong-way-lessons-from-physical-retail/ - January 31, 2023
³ Adyen annual retail report
⁴ Niraj Dawar, Harvard Business Review - When Marketing is Strategy, December 2013
⁵ Email conversation completed on August 14, 2023, as reported in Redefining Retail by Giuseppe Stigliano and Philip Kotler.
⁶ Brian Solis Blog, Innovation is a Gift Worth Getting: Competing for the Future Starts with Letting Go of the Past – June 26, 2017
⁷ https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/winning-in-loyalty - August 2, 2022
⁸ https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/retail/customer-retention-loyalty-programme-repeat-purchases/
⁹ https://anybill.de/en