A customer walks into your store. They think they know what they want but they need some guidance and they have questions to ask.
They look hopefully towards your store associate for help. Your store associate wants to help but, without the right tools and information at their fingertips, they know they can’t provide what the customer wants.
They’re scared the customer knows more than they do. Your customer leaves without buying anything, your store associate is miserable and deflated, and you’ve just lost a sale and a loyal customer.
It’s time for this to change.
When assisted selling is powered by a unified commerce platform and made simple through the flexibility of a cloud-native point of sale, everyone goes home happy.
It’s the perfect way to stand out from your competition, build customer loyalty to generate long-term sales and make sure your customers feel time spent in your store is time well spent.
In this article, you’ll learn:
How cloud-native technology takes assisted selling to the next level
How your associates can sell more with knowledge and personalization
The importance of being able to access all available stocks everywhere
How to make it convenient for customers
So what are the key ingredients to achieve successful assisted selling?
Cloud-native Assisted Selling
The best POS systems are cloud-native and use all the advantages of cutting-edge technology to enable unified commerce and make many of the features needed for successful assisted selling a given.
These include:
1. Real-time Omnichannel Data
Unified data is something your associates have been wishing for but with cloud-native technology it becomes a reality. Real-time omnichannel product, inventory, customer and order data gives you the power to boost your customer experience and maximize opportunities for sales.
2. Mobility & Flexibility
When your POS is a native app it’s by default mobile first, and it’s the same POS whether you choose to station your mobile device on a counter or engage customers on the shop floor.
Mobile devices, combined with contactless payments and digital receipts, also give you the ability to quickly adapt to the need for things like touchless interactions, curbside pickup, temporary pop-ups or shops at events.
3. Intuitive part of the POS
With a “one-app-strategy” all assisted selling tools are an intuitive part of the POS application. Whether it’s built-in assisted selling features or features added through a third party integration, they are all a natural part of the POS interface. Your store associates don’t have to switch between apps. Plus the intuitive interface eliminates the need for training.
4. Interacting in-store devices
Great assisted selling is very often based on teamwork. Your store associates may have different roles or expertise to give each customer the best experience. A runner is engaged to bring out a product or you transfer a customer’s cart to a colleague who might have specialist knowledge or who just handles the checkout. Therefore it’s important that devices interact in real-time.
Knowledge and personalization
Shoppers are better informed than ever before and many visit your stores already knowing what to buy. They want to touch and feel and listen to recommendations of your store associates, before making the purchase decision. You can take advantage of this by making sure your associates have the right tools to be as, or even more, informed than your customers.
These include:
1. Enhanced Product Information
With rich product information and high resolution pictures, your store associates have access to in-depth product knowledge which improves their ability to advise, solve potential doubts and recommend products.
Knowledgeable store associates, with confidence in what they sell, can impact their own success and are more likely to get engaged in the brand they represent. This not only increases sales, but also builds your customer trust and loyalty in a natural way.
2. Recommendations
By suggesting relevant product add-ons, matching products, upgrades or what others have bought, customers are more likely to listen to your store associates.
Integrated upselling algorithms or manually connected products, provide associates with the most suitable recommendations to boost your sales and loyalty.
Customer guidance becomes even more powerful if you, through a seamless integration to a loyalty service, connect upselling tools to your customers’ profiles and their order history.
3. Clienteling
All the assisted selling tools promote customer satisfaction by personalizing the shopping experience. But, to personalize the 360° customer profile, you need to complement your POS with a third party customer loyalty service specifically created to generate, track and analyze customer loyalty. The best POS systems have standard integrations to market leading loyalty solutions and they provide open APIs and SPIs, giving you the possibility to easily integrate any loyalty solution of your own choice.
Access all available stock everywhere
If a customer walks into one of your stores to buy a specific product they should be able to get that product whether it’s available in that specific store, in another store, centrally or through the webshop.
1. Endless Aisle
With an intuitive real-time stock-look-up and access to the complete inventory, your associates can display, sell and fulfill products from your entire omnichannel catalog.
2. Real-time stock look-up
By searching or barcode scanning, your store associates will immediately get a real-time view of a product’s omnichannel stock availability. You can easily change the variant to get the stock availability in other sizes or colors. If the product is available in another store or online you can make a reservation or fulfill the customer’s wish straight away.
3. Advanced Search
You can refine a search with product attributes or by using filters such as only showing a certain brand or category, products in stock and products that are part of a campaign. You can also search an external database – if required – and add products from that database to the cart. This enables you to sell products outside the store assortment.
4. Mixed cart with cross-channel orders
Make it fast and convenient for both your store associates and shoppers, with a mixed cart functionality that can combine in-store and elsewhere purchases in the same transaction and on the same receipt. It also gives your associates credit for their cross-channel sales.
5. Nearby Stores
In the POS your store associates can view nearby stores and their real-time stock levels. They can help customers reserve a product and guide them to the store that has the product they are interested in.
Make it convenient for customers
A big part of assisted selling is to give your store associates tools that make it convenient for customers visiting the stores.
This includes functionality like
1. Digital Receipts
Digital receipts bring significant benefits. They have environmental benefits, are less expensive and a natural way for you to retain customer information.
The benefits of digital receipts include:
Enables mobility and flexibility
Customers don’t risk losing their receipts
Reduces the cost of fraudulent returns
Icebreaker for adding customers to loyalty program
Speeds up the checkout process
Drives interaction with webshop, social media and loyalty programs
Increase chances of personalization
Reduces overhead operating costs
Aligns to consumers’ values for sustainability.
2. Runner
With a runner functionality your store associates can meet customer needs without ever having to leave their sides. The runner functionality increases the productivity of your store associates, cuts waiting time, enhances your service and improves the overall customer experience.
Store associates scan a barcode or search a product, get an overview of the in-store inventory, and then, just by pressing a button in the POS, request help from a co-worker operating the backroom who then brings out the product, whether they are, in-store, at the shop front or by the curbside.
3. Service & Repair Orders
With service and repair orders you can extend your business model and the lifetime value of your customers while you at the same time build loyalty in a natural way. The service also drives traffic to your stores and it is a proven tool for stimulating upsales.
In a world where sustainability becomes increasingly important for customers, offering repair and service is a good way for you as a retailer to, not only be in line with customer expectations, but also reduce your own and your customers’ environmental footprint.
4. Contactless Payments
Contactless payment methods are a great complement to your traditional payment methods like cash and credit card. Your customers can make the payment anywhere and it’s convenient for both your customers and associates. Plus it’s a great tool when you have a need for touchless interactions.
In Summary
When your assisted selling is powered by a unified commerce platform anchored by POS, the benefits include:
Higher in-store conversion rates
Increased cross-channel sales
More upselling & cross-selling opportunities
Increased customer satisfaction & loyalty
Higher customer lifetime value
Empowered & engage store associates
If you’d like to find out more about how to empower your associates and build customer loyalty with assisted selling then we’d love to speak to you.
