Technology
Network technology emerging as backbone in POS customer experience
Jeff Bradbury, senior marketing director, Hughes North America, explains how due to the rapid evolution of technology, there are points of decision everywhere. These point-of-decision technologies and the network that powers them have supplanted traditional POS as the cornerstone of a positive customer experience.
November 13, 2020 by Jeff Bradbury — Sr. Director, Marketing, Hughes
Not long ago, the concept of retail "point of sale" was relatively simple: where a customer executes payment was the ultimate purchase decision point and therefore an important focus in retail marketing and customer experience. Now, due to the rapid evolution of technology, points of decision are everywhere, and smart retailers must focus on the quality of customer experience at a number of touchpoints — both real and virtual — previously unimaginable. These point-of-decision technologies and the network that powers them, have supplanted traditional POS as the cornerstone of a positive retail customer experience.
Decision points everywhere
Historically, retail marketers focused heavily on POS because that was the place in the shopper's journey at which they made a purchase decision, especially on high-margin items. But consider how different the customer journey is today. Before they even walk through a retailer's doors, a customer may have already comparison-shopped online. Their phone may buzz with the latest in-store deals customized by their purchase history. And once inside the store, they'll feel the powerful influence of technology on purchase decisions and customer experience everywhere — with interactive shelf talkers, digital signage and targeted mobile marketing offering information, recommendations and purchase incentives.
At some brick-and-mortar sites, it's hard to identify a single point of sale at all. For example, at spirits retailer BevMo!, AI-equipped robots assist customers while they shop — guiding them to products and providing recommendations based on customer preferences. (Retail robots can also verify planogram accuracy and determine out-of-stock products, price discrepancies and misplaced items through visual recognition and machine learning technologies.) Research from Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute shows retailers lose $26 billion per year from customers unable to purchase items they want due to lack of inventory or inability to locate the item. Retail robots are one emerging trend that will contribute to an improved customer experience with a continuous, rather than definitive, POS.
The new checkout
While technology creates new decision points from start to finish of the customer journey, it also transforms the traditional point of sale, with retailers implementing solutions to make the checkout process faster and more efficient. Given that 41% of shoppers will change their minds about a purchase if there is a long checkout line, retailers increasingly offer so-called "frictionless" checkout. Originally the term implied ease and less hassle, but frictionless has reshaped the consumer shopping experience with innovations such as mobile wallets, digital receipts, free and fast shipping, and one-click purchasing.
The industry has also seen the advent of mobile checkout, putting POS on a tablet for employees to checkout customers from anywhere in the store. Mobile checkout allows customers to purchase in-store items and even have items shipped directly to their homes — for convenience or because they are out of stock in the store.
A frictionless experience today is synonymous with greater speed, personalization, "wow" experiences and anticipating (not just meeting) consumers' needs. Moreover, the global pandemic introduced new reasons for retailers to embrace frictionless checkout and mobile payments, as consumers increasingly focus on a more hygienic customer experience.
Amazon is an industry leader in frictionless checkout. Its Amazon Go stores, introduced in 2018, feature no formal "checkout" at all. Now, the company is opening Amazon Fresh grocery stores. The new store model is a tech marvel with conveniences such as: integrated Alexa shopping lists; wayfinding and purchased item tracking built into carts; frictionless checkout; and lots of digital signage. It's a perfect example of how technology has redefined the customer experience and the concept of POS.
The importance of the network
In comparison to the classic aisle and register retail environment, today's high-tech stores are a complex system of digital touch points — with the network being the invisible force that powers the new customer experience. Retailers that want to keep pace with technology — and their competitors — need to invest in a network capable of supporting the technologies that enable the modern "point of sale."
Here are a few ways a strong network supports in-store technologies:
• Strong, reliable customer Wi-Fi supports mobile connectivity, which is essential for in-store mobile marketing, QR code scanning and operation of mobile payment apps. With customer analytics, in-store Wi-Fi can also provide a trove of insights on customer behavior to help inform marketing or operational innovations and improve customer experience.
• A separate and secure store network helps support dynamic digital signage and IoT connectivity for technology like robots and interactive shelf-talkers, as well as essentials of the most advanced frictionless checkout operations, like mobile POS platforms, cart or shelf sensor and high-definition cameras.
• The right network also allows for seamless integration of technologies — for example, buy online, pick up in store operations, which can combine location data from customer Wi-Fi with the in-store network managing the order preparation process.
Powering a positive experience
Technology is emerging as the backbone of customer experience, increasingly responsible for delivering on retailers' overall brand promises and driving consumer appeal and satisfaction. A.T. Kearney's 2019 Consumer Retail Technology Survey revealed that 73% of customers say that technology influences their future store visits — a nearly 50% increase year over year. But studies also show that more than half of customers have been disappointed by digital experiences in stores — the majority because the technology didn't work as they expected.
Just as a positive experience with in-store technology can yield a positive customer experience, a disappointing experience with store technology can translate to a negative overall customer experience. And, as all retailers know, bad customer service — whether from humans or technology — has a negative impact on business. It's critical that the network on which the digital experience relies be optimized to deliver superior performance.
In today's retail, the traditional point of sale is no longer the central (or even most meaningful) point of engagement with customers. The continued evolution of game-changing technologies has created a multitouchpoint retail environment in which any encounter can be a point of sale — or a point of failure. In this new digitally enabled environment, failure at any point in the customer journey is not an option.
Jeff Bradbury is senior marketing director, Hughes North America.
About Jeff Bradbury
Jeff is currently Senior Marketing Director at Hughes, a leading provider of fully managed SD-WAN and digital media services dedicated to transforming distributed organizations into better-connected, customer-focused enterprises. In this role, Jeff works across markets to understand customer needs, technology adoption trends, and the direction of digital transformation to ensure Hughes is ready with the solutions customers need to meet their business goals.
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