Shoptelligence's last newsletter touched on personalization and personal assistance tips to unlock retail success. One of our featured tips was to rethink the role of your sales associates. How can you do that?
Here are our top tips on how you can empower your sales associates to create an exceptional customer experience and drive business growth:
- Leverage Customer Data: Equip your associates with customer data gathered from all points of interaction, whether it be online browsing history, past purchases, or feedback from in-store surveys. This data can help associates understand individual shopper preferences, enabling them to make tailored recommendations and personalized assistance that align with the customer's style, budget, and lifestyle. Utilizing this data empowers sales associates to provide a more engaging and relevant customer experience.
- Invest in Training: Provide comprehensive training for your sales associates that covers in-depth product knowledge, customer service skills, active listening, and effective communication techniques. Ensure they understand the importance of accurately answering customer questions, demonstrating product features and benefits, and offering alternatives when needed, ultimately guiding customers through their shopping journeys. Each customer journey is unique so training them on how to effectively use customer data to enhance each shopping experience is also crucial.
- Foster a Customer-Centric Approach: Encourage your associates to prioritize customer needs and preferences over pushing for immediate sales to secure a commission. Train them to actively listen, ask relevant questions, and understand the customer's style, budget, and requirements. By focusing on building relationships and meeting customer needs, associates can create a positive and personalized shopping experience. To ensure sales associates have focused on the ideal experience for the customer rather than pressuring them in-store, you can implement cross-channel sales associate attribution to accurately and fairly compensate store associates for online purchases that occur after an in-store visit. To learn more about how to do this, check out our solutions for stores.
- Foster a Personalized In-store Experience: Retailers should equip their associates with digital tools that help create personalized in-store experiences. For instance, Shoptelligence's Room STylist helps associates provide personal assistance with dynamic product recommendations and completed looks that are tailored to each customer, and STyleMail helps you stay top-of-mind by sending personalized emails to remind shoppers of products they liked in-store. This enhances the customer experience and can lead to increased sales and customer loyalty.
- Encourage Collaboration and Continuous Learning: Create a culture of collaboration among your associates and provide opportunities for ongoing learning and development. Rather than creating a competitive atmosphere based on commissions, encourage knowledge-sharing, brainstorming, and teamwork. Regularly update your associates on new product launches, industry trends, and sales techniques. Not only does this maintain motivation, but it also enhances expertise and keeps them up to date with the latest developments in the industry.
By empowering your sales associates with these tools and training, you can transform the in-store shopping experience, building customer loyalty and driving business growth.
For a more in-depth look at the importance of providing your sales associates with the most innovative and advanced tools and training, check out our blog article, "The Importance of the In-Store Visit."
Empower your sales associates with Shoptelligence's Store solutions.?Schedule a demo today.
