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How COVID-19 is impacting retail and how it will shape the industry’s future
Read MoreAs the effects of the coronavirus continue to unfold, retailers are adapting their business continuity plans to suit current and anticipated changes to rapidly changing consumer preferences and spending patterns.
E-commerce is dominating retail
Industry-wide, the global pandemic is accelerating e-commerce’s takeover of retail. A recent UBS analysis predicted that COVID-19 will immediately increase the online portion of total retail sales from 15 percent to 25 percent per year.
Brick-and-mortar storefronts are finding their direct-to-consumer (D2C) footing as online shopping across all products and services grows in popularity: one-third of Americans bought groceries online in March, and tens of millions of them did it for the first time. Similarly, American restaurants now make more than half of their revenue from delivery, drive-through, and takeout.
Source: McKinsey & Company COVID-19 US Consumer Pulse Survey 4/20-4/26/2020
As retail further transitions its sales and engagement to e-commerce, consumers continue to expect communication on …
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How 3 top retail and eCommerce brands lead CX from the contact center
Read MoreBrick-and-mortar retail and eCommerce, once considered rivals, are now two sides of a unified strategy to engage customers through the entire customer lifecycle. And, between in-store and digital shopping experiences lies the hub of customer communications: the contact center.
Today, customer loyalty is heavily based on the quality of customer experience—often more even than the product or good itself. Retailers who prioritize self-service, proactive alerts, and guided customer support provide the kind of customer experience that promotes customer loyalty—namely, characterized by personalization, real-time notifications and messaging, 24/7 customer service, secure payments, and the flexibility to communicate with customers on their preferred channels. Here are leading examples of retailers who are designing experiences centered around ease, speed, personalization, and convenience for customers.
Marks & Spencer uses speech-to-text technology to get customers where they need to go, faster
Marks & Spencer’s AI-powered Interactive Voice Response (IVR) with natural language processing (NLP) …
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Three factors shaping the future of enterprise contact centers
Read MoreIn today’s market, there are more channels than ever on which brands and companies can engage with their customers. At the same time, customers expect a seamless experience from one channel to the next and want to engage with their chosen brands and companies on the channels they want, when they want to.
Not ready to rip-and-replace? No problem. Read about powerful ways to augment your contact center.That means the contact center of old, with locked-in phone trees, long wait times, and unclear menu options—among a lot of other disadvantages—just don’t cut it anymore. Building strong relationships relies on clear, consistent, trusted communications before, during, and after a purchase, and that means the contact center is the lifeblood of customer loyalty. To help inform how you approach improving customer interactions, here are three critical factors shaping the future of enterprise contact centers into 2020 and beyond: a changing workforce, …
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