A few weeks back I was at a retail,technology show checking out the latest in shopper/store technology. On Monday this week I was at my usual training session where I keep up with the latest in what's happening in the business world. It's always great and led by my friend, the Futurist, Craig Rispin. www.futuretrendsgroup.com
He introduced us to the latest innovations in shopper monitoring technology. Some of which I had seen at the show. Systems that watch what your eyes are doing and what you look like and change the ads in response. On Tuesday I visited a vendor of a technology that looks at how people - customers and staff - operate in a retail and banking space. This is fascinating and can provide some excellent insights.
In our business as customer experience consultants we see these as valuable tools. They help us see what type of people the business is attracting and also what takes their attention. They told me about a store that wanted to know about the behaviour of people who chose a particular brand of sweets. They learnt that people who bought the particular sweets also bought two other items over 48% of the time. But they had to go across the store to get the extra items. So the store ran a test to see if they placed all the items close together would more people buy all the items more often. They did!
This is hardly new. There used to be a biscuit aisle in the supermarket. It was the place you went to get all the types of biscuits that they stocked. using the same principle as above you will now find the cracker biscuits at the cheese section and chocolate biscuits placed strategically near the coffee. Using this new technology as you approach the coffee the system will scan you, make decisions about our age and sex and then alter the ads on the digital display accordingly based on some pre-determined persona's.
Here is an article from the Sydney Morning Herald which looks at this new area.
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/look-customers-in-the-eyes-to-lock-them-in-the-aisles-20110625-1gkwo.html
There is a trap here! Its all to easy to be seduced by the technology that tells you how people behaved. What it won't tell you is how people are feeling.
In simple terms it will tell you the metrics of the customers and react accordingly, it won't tell you the mood of the customers.
Consider this. A large US retailer (industry withheld to be polite) set up the fastest checkouts in their industry. They thought that this would give them an advantage. This new technology may also have made them extra sales. They surveyed their customers to find that their satisfaction scores had not gone up despite a substantial investment is systems and speed at the checkout. Their competitor also did surveys and exit interviews of their customers and found the major drivers of satisfaction and heightened experience.
The second store chain sold more product. Why? The customer feedback from both stores showed the major drivers of a Magnetic experience were - being able to find a sales person withing 90 seconds, someone who knew what they were taking about or who found someone who did, and someone who knew where things were in the store. The first store did not have all these attributes so their CSI score was way down. People could get out fast but they were not very happy when they got to the super speed checkout.
As a result of the research the first store put on many extra staff and did much more product training.
Whey the long story. Mood is just as important as metrics. Store one with only metrics may have missed what the questioning of the customer mood turned up.
A great example of this is the brand new Bunnings store in Chatswood, NSW. When it opened it was just full of staff. All armed with little maps that they gave customers so they could find their way round the unfamiliar store. As a frequent offender at hardware stores I met a fellow I knew from the Artarmon store. I asked if he had been transferred. No he said. He had been put on secondment while the customers became familiar with the new store and the layout. He was then told he would go back from whence he came. Over time he explained the staff number could be reduced to a normal level as regulars would need less help. at the new store no one was a regular!
Great customer experience thinking. Manage the mood by getting the experience drivers right!
Call me on 0414 55 33 33 if you want to look at the latest metrics and mood solutions for your business.
