Unlocking a positive customer experience with an engaged and empowered frontline workforce
Many retailers will be pleased with 2022’s Christmas performance, which saw sales rise 3.1% compared to the festive period of 2021, according to data from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and KPMG. As Helen Dickinson OBE, Chief Executive of the BRC has said: “After an exceptionally challenging year which saw inflation climb and consumer confidence plummet, the uptick in spending over Christmas gave many retailers cause for cheer.”
However, with growth remaining below inflation, retail leaders would be forgiven for eyeing with caution a challenging year ahead. To protect margins this year, cost management will be an essential ingredient for success. And with expectations of a personalised customer service continuing to grow, retail leaders will need to innovate and transform how they engage customers to deliver quality experiences for less.
At the heart of this is people. A physical retail experience is only as good as the people who are delivering it – the store associates. Retailers should ask themselves if their frontline workforce is supported, engaged and equipped with the tools and flexibility needed to deliver the service that customers expect.
Well equipped?
To remain competitive in 2023, retail leaders should prioritise their employees’ wellbeing and engagement to unlock the positive customer experience that will differentiate them from the pack. That’s no small feat in a cost-constrained environment, but technology can help. Microsoft recently carried out research as part of our ongoing Work Trend Index, surveying thousands of frontline employees and managers in eight industries across five continents – including a specific focus on retail. The results shed light on the role for technology in enabling your frontline staff to deliver standout service in 2023.
Just over a third of retail workers told us that they are not equipped with the digital tools, tech or solutions they need. Far from fearing the encroachment of technology, three fifths (60%) of retail workers are excited about the job opportunities that technology can create. Areas where frontline workers told us they feel that tech can help with most includes team scheduling, onboarding new teammates, automating repetitive tasks, providing real-time task updates, and managing appointments.
Automate to liberate
Retail staff are particularly interested in tools that save time and energy by working more efficiently and automating or accelerating lower-value tasks. By streamlining mundane, repetitive work, staff can be freed up to provide a more imaginative and personal service to customers – or simply to make their days a little easier.
For example, the Shifts app in Microsoft Teams helps retail managers quickly create, update and manage store associate shift schedules, and message people individually or together, while also making it easy for staff to see rotas and make requests. Meanwhile the Bookings feature can automate customer appointment scheduling and management while the Planner feature can help organise teamwork with visual task management.
Culture connection
Most frontline retail workers told us they feel that leadership does not prioritise building workplace culture. 2020 brought many frontline retail workers closer together as they valiantly kept local services and commerce running through the pandemic, but it’s vital to help people feel connected to the wider organisation too. Especially as ‘head office’ staff are now likely to be dispersed in a hybrid working model.
An integrated employee experience platform can help centralise key information and resources. It gives associates a bridge into your organisation’s caring culture, direct access to daily support, and a place to be publicly recognised by leadership.
One organisation utilising technology to better connect management and frontline workers is British retailer Marks and Spencer, which has provided store managers with a Surface Go – a portable touchscreen 2-in-1 PC – so they have all the information they need at their fingertips, including sales reports and back-of-store inventories, giving them more time to spend supporting store associates and responding to customer demand.
Right from the start
More than half of retail workers say they receive no formal training, even when they can access the tools they need. The short-term or seasonal nature of some retail work is not a reason to not invest in training. As the old saying goes – don’t ask, ‘What happens if I train them and they leave?’, ask ‘What if I don’t train them and they stay?’ Retail staff want to learn, but they need support to do so.
Technology can help to lower the training and development costs for organisations. For example, Microsoft Viva Learning is a centralised training hub that sits in Microsoft Teams to help retail staff more seamlessly integrate learning and skills development into their day. Technology solutions such as this make it easy for store associates to access learning materials and share and discuss the content in digital communication channels.
By equipping frontline workers with the right technology this year, they can be freed from lengthy operational processes, be better connected to the culture and leadership of your organisation, and better supported with the skills needed to deliver their work. This needn’t require significant new investment – indeed many of these features are either already included in the technology retailers have in place, or represent minor add-ons. But together they can help to create happier, better-informed and more empowered frontline retail colleagues – the recipe for standout service in 2023.
To find out more about Microsoft and the services they provide to the retail industry, click here.
This article was also published in The Retailer, our quarterly online magazine providing thought-leading insights from BRC experts and Associate Members.