Since the onset of the pandemic, retailers have been experiencing significant challenges due to the changing needs and habits of consumers. Some of these changes have been a long time coming.
“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.
“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.”
The New Front Door to the Business
All of this results in the contact centre covering more stages in the customer journey than used to be the domain of on-premises retailers.
“The post-pandemic customer has fallen in love with the convenience of shopping from home, and retailers must bend towards them and meet the customers where they want to be met. We’re seeing this very clearly now by the success of those retailers who have adapted.”
Some retailers that have embraced more digital options have found that the past year has been one of their best years yet.
And when e-commerce is on the rise – so is contact centre activity.
“We saw at Five9 that the average monthly agent minutes had doubled during 2020. This is proof that more conversations that probably would have happened in the store are now happening online. And it’s directly related to e-commerce penetration, which went up like a hockey stick once the pandemic restrictions set in.”
Balancing Value and Convenience
According to Woodland, the consideration stage of the customer journey, when the client is showing active intent, is the most challenging stage for the contact centre.
“Shoppers navigating by value and convenience remains the same. What’s changed is what value and convenience actually mean for the post-pandemic shopper,” Woodland notes.
In the past, we used to go to the mall and hit our favourite stores until we found a new shirt that we liked. But during the pandemic, this became problematic. People were concerned about their health and trying their best to navigate the safety rules like social distancing. The pandemic forced the shopping experience into the only place where shoppers could do it with zero hassles: the comfort of their own homes.
“The pandemic forced shoppers to rethink what convenience means – and that’s a big deal for retailers. Because once you shift behaviour, and the new behaviour becomes a habit, it becomes really hard to break it.”
Recent stats demonstrate that clearly: according to a recent study by McKinsey, an overwhelming percentage of over 77% of Americans tried either new brands, places to shop or shopping methods between March 2020 and June 2020, primarily driven by value and convenience.
This means that retailers must rethink their selling tactics to fit the changing habits of their consumers.
But how do you address the consideration phase, where the client wants to touch and feel, without being able to be physically present in a store?
This is where the new technologies come in.
“There are many new and exciting customer touchpoints. One of them is a Guided Shopper Experience, where a customer sets up an appointment virtually. It’s a one-on-one shopping experience, where you can relax and shop from home. Moreover, the contact centre, with the help of the customer’s phone camera, is able to create a kind of ‘tunnel’ that gives retail experts access to our closets, makeup bags or living rooms – enabling them to give us ultra-personalized service even if we were not able to get to the store.”
“The big idea here is how the contact centre can now support retailing. It can use its power before (promotions, reminders, scheduling), during (routing, monitoring, AI-powered suggestions, PCI), and after the appointment (surveys and quality control).”
Ultimately, the contact centre creates amazing retail opportunities that none of us had access to in the past.
Honestly, what more do you need?
