Service 2020: The changing face of retail
THE way consumers buy goods, and how they are served by retailers, will continue to be shaped by mobile technology in the coming decade.
This is a key finding of ‘Service 2020: Megatrends’ for the decade ahead, a major report on future trends in customer service from business advisers BDO and the Economist Intelligence Unit.
Technology giant Apple, the pioneer of the game-changing, über-trendy mobile gadgets the iPhone and iPad, is seen as a leader in the way it has changed the concept of the retail store.
In Apple stores, customers are encouraged to spend time touching, feeling and experiencing the products – staff members are there not only to give advice but also to take payments via hand-held devices – removing the need to queue at a till.
Megatrend 8, which looks at how technology will help the retail store evolve, predicts a change from the present situation where shops are largely transactional places.
Graham Elsworth, partner and retail specialist at BDO in the Midlands, says: “The high street will continue to have a place in the market but its role might shift to become a more contact sport: looking, feeling, asking.”
More than a third of the 479 senior business leaders who took part in the survey, predict the next decade will see the distinction between the online and offline experiences completely blurring by 2020.
In the future, more businesses – not just in technology retail – will adopt the Apple model. The BDO study says: “Physical stores will focus more on advising and guiding customers.”
It notes that in financial services many banks have reversed the trend of closing branches in favour of automation and online banking, and are now focused on providing advice and expertise to help with complex queries.
Providing customers with an ‘experience’ to draw them into the store is also expected to increase.
One of the experts quoted in the report dubbed this process the “fetishisation” of service – where a relatively mundane transaction becomes an experience.
He explains: “Buying coffee 15 years ago was a fairly transactional process. Now it’s an extraordinary, customised, fetishised process, which comes with a whole language of its own.”
Another key challenge and opportunity for retailers is to capture and use data from customers’ social media feeds so they can adapt and improve their customer service offering.
Social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook have given consumers a degree of empowerment never previously experienced and this form of customer feedback obviously needs to be captured and analysed.
Currently, just 37% of companies feel they do an excellent job of collecting and addressing customer feedback.
Increased availability and volume of data will be a further key trend, BDO predicts, allowing retailers to “better understand their clients and personalise their services accordingly”.
Nearly half of the survey participants (46%) believe companies in their industry will use analytics to do this in the next 10 years and just slightly less (43%) to assess customer behaviour.
Technology also presents new opportunities for retailers to engage with and potentially sell to customers.
Mr Elsworth added: “The rise of always-on, location-aware smart phones, combined with social media tools, is adding reams of new data for firms to tap into and potentially use for customer service, as well as sales generation.
“Retailers can now track customers and link their purchase behaviour with commercial offers through a range of new applications. It’s not exactly a new concept but a new version of the last decade’s loyalty card.”
