This week I decided a change of scenery was due and worked from a local coffee shop. While I typed away (at lightning speed, high from one too many espressos some four hours in), I caught sight of an unveiling of a new shop in the high street. It was a new Next store, but not the typical one many of us Brits know and love. It was a Next Returns store that boasted a glistening shop front and shiny, happy door staff. The building itself was impressive, big with a large glass front and light blue lettering instead of the traditional dark for the logo. But gone were the clothes, shoes and furnishings the company are known for. A sign on the front explained to customers this was a store purely for Next returns. I snapped a picture of it and sent it to my Today Digital colleagues with the caption: ‘The future of shopping’. A wave of replies followed.
In reality, I shouldn’t have been shocked by this. The truth is, we are now firmly living the ‘future’ of most things, particularly shopping. When the pandemic hit, I admit to being one of many agitated at being somewhat forced into online consumerism. But now it’s the norm, as Five9 have told us in an exclusive article we produced for them this week.
“It’s amazing. COVID has accelerated 10 years of retail trends in just one year,” explains Jeff Woodland, Director of Vertical Marketing at Five9.
Two key trends accelerated at the same time, he added.
“One is the trend of brick-and-mortar stores reevaluating how to retain shoppers, as Amazon and other retailers use e-commerce to take a larger and larger portion of their business.”
The other trend has to do with technologies that are now mature enough for contact centres to expand their services.
“Some existing technologies were either cost-prohibitive or didn’t work as promised, like AI. Fortunately, leaps in innovation occurred, which creates exciting new possibilities.
“Here is but one example: Retailers can use IVAs and AI-driven chat-bots instead of IVRs. ‘Intelligent Virtual Agents,’ as we call them, can help eliminate the wait and offer self-service and call back options. Also, thanks to things like PCI compliant IVAs, shoppers can complete credit card transactions without revealing any personal financial information to a live agent.”
I found it interesting that despite the jump in advances, some technologies simply don’t work for some businesses. Each company must have the right strategy to enforce the right solutions for them. It left me wondering what Next’s was, a huge business that like their competitors had scope for digital solutions to make it easier for customers to make returns.
Or perhaps, Next shoppers didn’t want to use a contact centre solution to return their goods – maybe, like me, they just want a change of scenery.
