Future of The Retail Customer Experience

The past few years have seen the retail industry undergo a huge transformation. Customers are swapping the high streets for the comfort of their own home when it comes to making purchases. Online shopping is not right for every purchase and every person however, so there remain many factors that affect the way that we shop and more importantly how we shop. Some of these factors are out of the control of High Street stores – but deploying retail queue management solutions can help ensure customers have a great experience in their store.

Current technology trends in the retail customer experience

Investigating and investing in technology will be a crucial part of any retailers’ strategy in order to compete. It’s proven that digital signage within a store, for example, can help to heighten the retail customer experience. In addition to that, virtual interactions between a customer and the product they are considering create an immersive and personalised in-store experience. Retailers should carefully consider the omni-channel experience, ensuring a smooth and joined up transition between the online and offline experience of their customers.

The Tensator Virtual Assistant solution is an example of the use of technology to improve customer experience. Virtual Assistants can be programmed to deliver customisable messaging in a store and they even have the ability to relay many different language variations of your message. Examples of their applications include finding products, offering reviews of products, and guides on how to purchase the product. In fact, there are lots of quick messages that can be delivered to the customer whilst in the store with the aim of increasing both sales numbers and service levels.

The not-so-distant future of the retail customer experience

An instance where a retailer is leading the pack towards the future of the retail customer experience is Amazon. Traditionally an online retailer, Amazon has taken the leap from strictly online to experimenting with physical stores. Seattle is home to Amazon Go – a store for their employees where no checkout is required and thus no queues! The technology in place detects when products are taken from or returned to the shelves and tracks them in a virtual cart. Once the customer has left the store, they will then be charged and sent a receipt.

Amazon Go is an extreme example of advanced shopping technology used to remove queues from shops but does it heighten retail customer experience? There has been drive recently for retailers to turn towards a more personal approach at the request of their customers.

The not-so-distant future of the technology and retail

As for other futuristic means of enhancing the customer’s retail experience… there’s plenty of speculation as to what we’ll witness in coming years. Who knows – maybe it’s not too long until we can walk into a store, be recognised by a device and have special offers, targeted from our purchase history and personal profile, delivered to our smartphones.

The here-and-now technology for retailers

If you don’t want to wait a few years to improve retail customer experience, you can get more information on the Tensator Virtual Assistant and other Tensator retail queue management products in our brochure. Unlike technology used in Amazon Go, Tensator’s Virtual Assistants are widely available now with a compact design that provides for easy deployment in your store!

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