Your Customer Is Waiting

As consumers, the array of choices we now have, compared to just 5 years ago, is mind boggling – but not everyone is celebrating.?

When considering choices you might think about product or merchandise – but this is only one dimension.?How you buy, when you buy and how quickly you take possession are all variables you can select from.?

Equally what you can choose to do in a store has expanded.?As well as locations for transacting and taking possession, stores have transformed into pick-up locations for online orders, showrooms and customer service centers.

But these choices increase customer experience expectations.?Each time a consumer is exposed to a new or improved retail experience, their expectation for all retailers is reset to a new and higher level.?Meeting these expectations is tough - 58% of retailers admit that evolving customer expectations are highly disruptive to their business.

Consumers no longer see channels – they see brands.?Their experience should be the same irrespective of channel or touchpoint that they engage with you through – before, during and after the sale when customer service is required.?Consumers are short of time – and are bombarded with messages.?They need customer service interactions to be rapid and fluid.?Messages they receive need to be contextual for them to reap the desired response.?Stores must become more efficient – responding faster to consumer behavior within the store. ?With expanding purpose, the profitability of stores – and indeed the entire business – is likely be under threat.?Delivering new revenue streams is critical.

In short: consumer expectations have elevated.?Retailers must be able to elevate a response.?

Without a structured response, customers will choose to shop elsewhere.?Research shows that 30% of consumers will go elsewhere if their expectations are not met.

What if you could meet these elevated consumer expectations with the agility to adapt to new requirements as they arise. ?This would allow you to deliver productivity improvements and incremental revenue while maximizing customer lifetime value whilst giving you the confidence to be ready for yet further elevated expectations.?

To deliver this requires a combination of five capabilities:

Intelligent stores

Deliver productivity increases and maximize sales by providing real-time actionable insights into store operations.?Furnish merchandisers with sales performance data – allowing rapid, performance enhancing, adjustments while optimizing deployment of in-store resources.

Unified commerce

Provide a fluid and harmonious experience to your consumers - ensuring the key elements of the customer's journey sing beautifully together, regardless of touchpoint or channel.?At the same time be adaptable enough to expand into new channels and customer touchpoints as they appear - today's BOPIS could become tomorrow's BIMPIS!!(*)

Real-time personalization

Deliver increased customer engagement and sales through hyper personalized, intelligence driven recommendations and search results. ?Maximizing context for your consumers deliverers improved sales conversion and retention.

Digital advertising

Retail media is a $75 billion , high margin business that is too good an opportunity for retailers to ignore.?Alongside incremental revenues it offers additional customer insight that can help attain new customers and increase customer lifetime value.

Seamless customer service

Intelligently automate your customer service to resolve the most common issues quickly and easily thus freeing your customer service teams to tackle the most challenging issues.?Predicting customer needs and eliminating issues before they occur will reduce customer frustration.

Elevate the shopping experience is a key retailer priority that Microsoft is addressing through the Microsoft Cloud for Retail - supported with retail industry-specific data models, APIs and an ecosystem of partners that are purpose built for retail-specific scenarios.

These capabilities are in use by some of the world’s most successful retailers - learn how they deliver for you here .

* BOPIS - Buy online, pick-up in store. BIMPIS - Buy in metaverse, pick up in store.