Бизнес и финансы

Put The Power Of Digital Retail In The Hands Of Your Firstline Workers

Author: Insights Team / Source: Forbes

You Have The Assets To Digitally Thrive Right In Front Of You

The retail industry is at the tip of the iceberg of the digitally transforming world. Shifts in demographics, in the way information is found, shared and used, and in the near-instant ability to get anything where and how you want it are more prevalent in retail than any other sector.

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These digitally driven shifts present both challenges and immense opportunities, the latter for those retail companies that can get it right.

It is not about digital for digital’s sake, however. Digital solutions are simply the tools in the hands of people—customers and workers. In retail, it is the Firstline workforce–sales associates and store managers—that uses these tools every day that holds the key to improving the customer experience in a world where consumer expectations keep rising and new entrants keep changing the landscape. The impact of the Firstline worker is immense: Despite the 1.1 billion SKUs available on the top online destinations, physical retail will, by 2020, still be 87.4% of the overall retail industry in the U.S. (online and physical). The in-store experience must transform, and the customer/employee experience must evolve with it to stay relevant. This often means empowering and investing in the Firstline workforce.

Firstline workers are not only brand ambassadors but are often the first to engage customers and see products and services in action. Empowering them with technology can lead to higher-value transactions and increasing brand loyalty. They have the potential to help create a consistent look, feel and experience at every touchpoint, making omni-channel shopping a seamless experience.

Much of this potential remains untapped, as physical retail—and the tools that define the employee, and thus the customer, experience—still has to evolve to be as responsive to the consumer as the online experience. Digital transformation was a $2 trillion industry in 2018, according to IDC, but spending more on technology is not enough.

Inc.Digital and Forbes Insights’ recent research, based on algorithms incorporating 26 sets of metrics of digital transformation success across 135-plus variables, reveals that successful retail companies think about transformation very differently from their less successful peers.

These retail digital thrivers account for 40% of the retail sector but are generating over 60% of the economic benefits. What sets them apart is that they are 3.5 times more likely than their peers to invest in new skills and tools for their Firstline workers, thus enabling them to create delightful customer interactions.

Omni-Channel Consistency Sits With Firstline Workers

The significant differences in consumer satisfaction with online experiences (generally much higher) versus consumer satisfaction in a physical retail store are something retail brands need to address in order to give consumers a truly consistent omni-channel experience.

Michael Gale, coauthor of the Wall Street Journal and Amazon bestseller on digital transformation The Digital Helix: Transforming Your Organization’s DNA to Thrive in the Digital Age, explains how to create a uniform and delightful customer experience: “Technologies are replaceable, but the way retailers can lever those moments with technologies and people will be the new asset base for digitally thriving retailers in the next 10 years.”

Putting the right tools in the hands of Firstline workers involves aggregating a range of insights, ideas and perspectives with near-instant ease. Imagine being able to bring together logistics information, peer Firstline feedback on what a like-minded consumer did in other stores, and then accessing wider social media ideas during that consumer interaction.

Consumers want all the power of a digital experience in person. The power to connect expertise through the hands, words and actions of Firstline workers means they will now be seen by consumers more as educated advisors than as sales assistants, focusing on the higher-value interactions where margin, total revenue and even OPX reductions can be instantly delivered. The illustration below is a simplified view of the data consumers might need in that sales moment with a Firstline worker. In these 15 separate elements lie thousands of different examples of combinations. The right technologies, vision from leadership and organizational design can make these real right now.

“Human value is the distinctive difference we have seen in all our research work in retail,” says Gale. “Being able to use technology and platforms that the consumer and the employee can share in real time is like making the employee a retail doctor and not just the administrator. It is the bridge needed to make physical retail truly appealing in a digitally minded age.”

Thriving Retail Companies Are Already Transforming Because Of All The Digital Market Developments

The Digital Helix defined seven digital drivers that are transforming the world around us:

Thriving Retail Companies Are Reorganizing With Firstline Capabilities As A New Core

Inc.Digital and Forbes Insights designed additional research to extend learnings and the models from The Digital Helix by testing which of the seven digital drivers companies were focusing on for success in retail. We found that retail thrivers were consistently leveraging all of these drivers, while other retail companies were only starting to plan to leverage some of them.

With the retail sector being the most affected by the seismic changes illustrated by the seven digital drivers, we found that retail thrivers were more open to organizing differently for success than companies in any of the 10 other industries. Firstline workers are not successful by accident—retail thrivers understood that three organizational dynamics are vital for success, and each connects to the well-being and productive power of the Firstline worker. You could call this an ongoing cycle of interactions that drive Firstline power.

Firstline Success Takes Place at the Intersection of 3 Insights