11 Oct Man Your Battle Stations! The Festive Season is Almost Here

The busiest time of the year for retail is fast approaching, which means that it’s time for brick and mortar consumer environments to man their battle stations to maximise profit. Syenap is an ally to retailers and we’re here to help you win not only the battle, but also the war.

I suspect that you’ve already reviewed some of the data from your various sources in preparation for the 2016 seasonal rush (if not, then you’d better get started!). Most retailers review the previous year’s sales figures to identify times of high customer traffic because this is typically seen as the most important point of contact for a customer’s in store experience.

They’re wrong.

Every moment of the customer’s in store journey is valuable

If you truly want to win the festive season battle this year, you need to consider the customer’s entire in store journey, from the moment they walk past your entrance to the moment they leave (with their trolley hopefully filled to the brim).

Customer tracking gives you insight into the behaviour of your customers. Understanding their movements, speed and dwell times will give you the decision-making power to optimally prepare your store for peak season. Knowing the flow of customers through your store empowers you to make important decisions on where to position new or high value products, as well as enticing marketing material.

But the best part is, you’ll quickly know if your decisions are working or not, allowing you to reposition marketing & products for optimal exposure. Focus your efforts on crafting an effective battle plan and designing the layout of your store using the customer tracking data we provide, and in doing so, you can identify how effective your marketing campaigns are in time for the festive season, and tailor them accordingly to ensure the maximisation of profits.

Happy customers spend more

Contrary to the propaganda that always accompanies the festive season, shopping during this time is not a pleasure. Queues are long, people are moody, and money is tight. But this can work to your advantage. Creating an in store experience that truly is a pleasure is easier than you may think – especially with Syenap in your corner.

To have the advantage in this seasonal battle, you need to understand the crux of customer behaviour: they will abandon their carts when experiencing even slightly inefficient service levels. This could be due to lack of stock on shelves, too few employees to answer product-related questions, or long queues due to understaffed till points.

Syenap’s state-of-the-art customer tracking analytics allows you to pinpoint the times of day when your store will experience a surge in customer foot traffic. But more importantly, it can alert you via SMS with enough time to take action.

Need more convincing? I’ll let the stats do the talking

We helped one of our clients identify times when their staff-to-customer ratio was incorrect and performance was below average. They took action and improved customer service levels by 10%. All of this with 23% less staff! Now that’s a win win.

Not to brag (well, maybe a little), but we helped another client of ours deploy additional staff prior to peak traffic times, which led to increased conversion of 12% . This increase in revenue equated to the equivalent of 20m more of trading space.

I think you get the idea. But if you don’t, I suspect we’ll be chatting again around this time next year.