Suresh Krishna is the president and CEO of Northern Tool + Equipment, and has two decades of diverse industry experience.
For years, a common refrain has been that e-commerce is the wave of the future, with most, if not all, retail activity moving toward an online-only environment. While there can be no argument that internet-based selling is here to stay and will continue to flourish, it would be a mistake to assume that physical stores will disappear or have little to offer businesses and consumers.
There is an aspect of customer experience that is unique, and that happens only in a physical retail store. While it’s certainly possible for any retailer to sell everything in their inventory online for a truly great customer experience, I believe that nothing can beat a face-to-face interaction with a knowledgeable expert in a retail store.
Here are five different ways brick-and-mortar retailers keep pace with e-commerce.
Expertise
In today’s consumer environment, it’s simply not enough to hire, as the saying goes, anyone with a pulse. You need those knowledgeable experts who are committed to providing a compelling customer experience. Your retail workers must be sufficiently invested in the business and eager to become educated about the products you sell. Store employees need to be viewed as front-line product specialists who are integral to the success of your operation.
In our operation, the most common feedback we receive is that customers feel we are advising them on solutions, not selling them products. In an online-only environment, it’s harder for customers to find experts they can count on to understand the problem they’re trying to solve and offer solutions.
Especially for retailers selling higher-knowledge items such as computer components or specialized tools, customers often believe they know what they need when, in fact, a different product would be a better fit for their situation. When you have a brick-and-mortar store where experts interact with customers, those customers are much more likely, in my experience, to leave the store after a positive experience with the best solution to their problem.
Immediacy
Shopping online is convenient because customers can do it from the comfort of their homes, but it is inconvenient when customers then have to wait days and sometimes weeks before the product they bought arrives. From a logistical standpoint, solving this problem is extremely difficult.
Meanwhile, the customer who buys at a retail store acquires the product at the same time they pay for it. That’s hard to beat. With curbside or in-store pickup, retail stores can also speed up online shopping. Customers can complete their shopping online, and if they don’t want to wait for shipping, they can simply go to a physical store and pick up their order. This allows for e-commerce but with product delivery speed beyond what’s possible for e-commerce-only operations.
Service And Repair
Online-only retailers that sell serviceable goods are at a disadvantage when it comes to servicing those goods. Should a product need repair, their customers have to either ship it back to be serviced or take it to an unaffiliated repair shop where the employees may not be experts on the brand. This means a large amount of downtime during which the customer is unable to use the product.
Stores with physical locations can have service centers, allowing them to repair and return products in less time. That’s not just a value-add for the consumer; satisfied customers are much more likely to become regular customers, so it’s a direct benefit to the retailer as well.
Dual-Duty
By having retail stores in conjunction with online sales, you give yourself a fantastic opportunity to supercharge your fulfillment process. Whereas an online-only retailer must have large warehouses to avoid having to drop-ship everything, a retailer with both online and store-based sales can leverage those brick-and-mortar stores as auxiliary warehouses. A customer who lives across the country from the warehouse may live within 50 miles of a store, meaning shipping the product from the store will get the merchandise to the customer much faster.
Differentiated Shopping Experience
Some people use brick-and-mortar locations to look at or research products they are interested in. Many people want to see and feel the item they’re looking at before they commit to buying it. Embrace those shoppers by providing a differentiated experience from your employees. Stores where employees are merely there to show customers where products are without having much, if any, specific knowledge of those products is much more likely to be used as demo centers.
Customers appreciate an expertise-centric approach to staffing. When a customer knows they can come to your store and get valuable information from people who understand not only the products but how and where they’re used, that customer is more likely to make their purchase at the store that proved so helpful to them.
Online shopping is here to stay, but so are brick-and-mortar stores. By investing in those locations and the people who staff them, you can set yourself apart and offer a unique experience to your customers.
Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?
Read the full article here
