Three common problem patterns faced by traditional retailers

My idea for Palexy came about when I was shopping for an anniversary gift for my wife. After spending a lot of time in an upscale mall searching in vain for a proper gift, encountering issues such as stock-out, lack of staff assistance, and long waiting time, I was late and frustrated.

After 5 years working with hundreds of retailers in the region, I realize that all of our clients have the same three common problem patterns:

A. Problems related to sales KPIs and lack of helpful indicators

At the end of the day, retailers invariably look at the sales results as the most important KPIs to work towards. But sales alone may be misleading. Without knowing the root causes of sales performance, you cannot take action. When sales are good, there is no deep-dive data to replicate the success. When sales fall short, there is no deep-dive data to correct the situation. Even when sales rise, your staff may still be losing sales and customers, unseen. That cannot be good for your long-term growth.

To overcome this limitation, retailers may use methods such as checking the camera footage regularly, counting traffic manually, or using an old-fashioned traffic counter. Results usually vary from mild success to complete letdown, because the data acquired is either inconclusive, inconsistent, or incomplete, which means few actionable insights.

The lack of actionable data is a chronic problem in retail. Nearly 70% of store managers that we have interviewed verified that the lack of store traffic data prevented them from doing their job. Without accurate traffic, there is no accurate conversion rate, one of the most critical metrics in retail operations. Brands also need industry trend data to know how they are doing compared to their competitors, and whether to adjust their strategies in the face of market fluctuations, but timely, in-depth market data is not always available or accessible.

B. Problems related to customer experience

This group of problems include issues such as low rate and quality of staff interaction with customers, lack of support from staff, insufficient staff, suboptimal store layout. To identify and address those issues, managers need more data at both store level and category section level. Unfortunately, the majority of the useful data is hidden from them.

The consequences of bad customer experience might be severe. Time and time again, research by Microsoft, Oracle, Forbes, etc., have stressed how a large percentage of consumers choose to leave a brand due to poor customer service. Investing in customer experience not only ensures your business’s short-term success but also fosters customer loyalty, the key to sustainable growth and longevity.

To partially resolve the lack of visibility, some retailers have relied on methods such as mystery shopping and surveying customers. While those methods do yield quality data, there are two main drawbacks: one, they are not conducted frequently enough, and two, the data takes time to translate into meaningful action, which usually means a longer lead time than desired.

C. Problems related to staff experience

Retail staff is the backbone of retail, but they are usually overlooked. In retail, staff burnout is an extremely real and serious issue which affects not only the frontline workers but also managers, leading to high turnover rate across the board. The immediate consequences include staff shortage plus the cost of attracting and training new staff, but it goes further than that.

Unhappy staff perform poorly. Unhappy managers not only perform poorly but also negatively influence the workplace morale, directly contributing to unhappiness in frontline staff. Retail managers are notably under high levels of stress because they usually have to monitor multiple stores at the same time. The lack of accurate data also makes everything harder, from making reports to making decisions. For example: 65% of the managers that we surveyed worried about effectively monitoring their staff’s performance.

Therefore, retailers need to support their staff from the top down, not only to retain employees, but also to create the kind of environment that everyone can thrive in. Places that manage to do that could get a 50% increase in revenue, according to Harvard Business Review.

The common theme of all those problems: inaccurate and insufficient data!

How Palexy solution addresses those three problems

Empowered by AI, Palexy solution disrupts and transforms traditional retail in three major capacities:

1. INTERPRETATIVE

Extracting observational metrics from raw footage is extremely challenging due to both the enormous quantity and the elusive quality of data. Our AI technology refines and translates all that information into lucid, user-friendly insights.

For example, Palexy’s AI processes stores’ CCTV footage to give you the traffic count, age groups and genders of your customers.

2. CONSOLIDATIVE

Siloed data is a big problem for any organization. Our AI technology unifies siloed data from security cameras, POS, store layout, roster system, etc., to give you a coherent picture of what, why, and what next.

For example, Palexy’s AI combines conversion and heatmap to help you improve sales.

3. PREDICTIVE

Knowing what happens is hard enough, but knowing what will happen is indefinitely harder. Our AI technology analyzes huge amounts of patterns in your data to project future performance and automatically suggest an appropriate action plan.

For example, Palexy’s AI detects when sales targets may not be met and recommends more staffing during 10am-12pm.

By unveiling data that impacts store performance, Palexy solution not only assists the managers in doing their job but also alerts them in cases of sub-par customer service and lost sales.

The benefits include a clearer path to achieve both sales KPIs and customer service improvement, easier task fulfillment, and efficient remote management, among others.

Not only that, thanks to our access to industry-wide data, data from other stores, and market trends, we also possess the unique ability to inform and advise our clients.

We have proven our values for retailers in improving sales, customer experience, staff happiness, and more!??