*Per Elói Assis
The social isolation imposed by the new coronavirus pandemic has left everyone in doubt about the future. And for retail, this is even more accentuated, because not only was it necessary to understand the size of the impact on business, thinking about the abrupt drop in sales and the consequent impact on teams, but also what would be necessary to change to adapt to customers started to look for new ways to consume. Thinking about how to solve these new challenges, many entrepreneurs started to accelerate their transformation strategies to a new reality, looking for solutions to emerge stronger during this period.
Although the retail segment has been quite impacted, since shopping malls, physical stores and small businesses have closed the doors for about ninety days, the first positive signs of recovery in the sector are beginning to appear. However, this is the moment to seek to understand the change in consumption habits after social isolation and adapt to meet customer expectations.
If before the pandemic it was already necessary to have an online presence, after that we will have to be ready to serve a new customer who, transformed by three months of practical experience with new modalities of consumption, will enter physical stores or online hoping to be served in a truly multichannel way , trying to find all the possibilities that you have tried, from simple purchase on e-commerce, through click and withdraw, sale of any stock (to withdraw in the store or receive at home) and the various delivery options, including the next day or even on the same day.
To support this point, the latest Webshoppers 41st report by Ebit Nielsen showed that purchases through the self-service modality (where the customer buys online and he withdraws the product himself) grew 31% in new consumers, which boosted the growth of digital channel billing.
And going beyond this new behavior and taking into account the pandemic itself, many retailers have intensified their convenience solutions such as drive thru, scheduling at checkout, lockers for withdrawal, partnerships with applications and even their own delivery. In this scenario, we realize that the tendency is to meet the demands of buyers, minimizing risks of contagion and valuing health, which is only possible with the extensive use of technology.
Therefore, the first step is to understand the journey that your consumers expect to take in traffic between online and physical stores, to identify which additional revenue opportunities can be taken advantage of and which improvements should be made in processes, culture and systems. There are tools on the market that help to collect various information about a particular user to understand their journey and classify them according to their habits. By doing a good analysis and the proper management of this data, it is possible to extract extremely valuable inputs for the construction of the customer profile. And regarding these profiles, it is possible to define which technologies are necessary to attend the different days.
When we talk about how to operationalize the sales of these new channels, it is no different. How to guarantee the availability of the product and make the best inventory management, for faster delivery? How to ensure that the service to all these new types of consumption does not result in a high impact in the rear of the stores and in the administrative area, dealing with several new possibilities, such as returns, cancellations and multichannel exchanges? How to effectively scale multichannel beyond one or two model stores? The answer is always the same: technology.
And just as there are numerous new technologies in contact with the customer that start to demand that the retailer invest in more than just a POS to issue electronic tax coupons, in the same way new solutions have emerged in the rear, which enable retailers to function in a way scalable, efficient and integrated, ensuring that the multiplicity of customer service options does not result in uncontrolled costs.
It is also important to note that technology is not a balm that alone cures all ills. Without the team going through a strong cultural change so that they understand and not only accept, but embrace the fact that the consumer is now definitely multichannel, and without clear and good defined processes to deal with the infinities of new situations that the new modalities consumption will impose the team, it is impossible to succeed.
The fact is that the change in consumer behavior brings with it a great opportunity to explore new avenues of revenue and will have an advantage, both financially and in the loyalty of its customers, who is prepared with the right technological tools and willing to transform the its own retail, seeking to do so as quickly as its customers have been transformed.
* Elói Assis, director of retail and distribution at TOTVS
Notice: The opinion presented in this article is the responsibility of its author and not of ABES - Brazilian Association of Software Companies
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