It happens all the time. You walk into a specialty goods retail store—such as a do-it-yourself home improvement or electronics retailer—and have not even taken a few steps, and you hear that voice: How can I help you?
Check out this week’s video summary with Ken:
Intended to be proactive, it really limits the ability to browse. In one way, it is great because it can help a customer get directly to the item or items they are looking to purchase. Conversely, you are holding back the customer from impulse buying. Certainly, there are options to have the employee suggest other items. Still, with staffing levels the way they are, they probably have moved on to the next customer just as quickly as they get you to your necessary aisle, let alone to the specific product.
Proactive, absolutely. Effective, it depends. If done correctly, it can enhance the customer experience. However, it can also rub some customers the wrong way. When I enter a store, I usually have one of two missions. On one path, I am heading directly to the item I intend to purchase with time on my mind and the desire to avoid any delays—someone asking if they can help me just slows me down.
The other path usually involves browsing the store before picking out the item I want. Often I know where it is placed, but I might be just comparison shopping or possibly looking for accessories first. In this case, I might just be browsing with nothing in mind.
I might end up purchasing something extra, or I might not. In both cases, having someone approach me too early has a negative effect on the potential extra purchases I might make almost every time. If they approach me too late, I may end up forgetting an essential accessory that I could end up purchasing elsewhere.
When is the perfect time to approach me? If I think about it for a while and do some analysis, the answer is “I don’t know”. Yep, even I would not be able to tell you exactly when that moment would be. As much as I know myself, I know this could be affected by what I am looking to purchase, my schedule on that day, and even the weather outside.
Why is this important? We are on the front end of an innovation that can help us better predict how to transform our customer interactions. Machine learning models and AI can look at all the varied scenarios and predict the best “moment of truth” to approach a customer based on where they are in a store (location), the time of day (someone strolling around an electronics store in the mid-afternoon probably does not have much on their schedule) and even the weather (cold weather means more linger time inside the browsing store).
Will it work for everyone? Absolutely not. However, in the operations research management science space, optimization is everything. Using tools like this can enhance both the customer experience as well as the potential revenue for a given customer. AI tools can significantly enhance these models based on historical data and existing conditions. I created store-wide sales forecasts based on past sales data and economic conditions. These models took months to build and could be rendered useless by an unexpected circumstance such as a snowstorm.
Current tools could be set up to have a store employee getting key information on the best way to approach a customer based on time of day and day of the week (data already contained in the model) along with simple details about the customer (which section of the store they are browsing). You already have an idea of what they are looking for, so the predictive model should be able to tell you what could be the best option (for both the store and the customer) and recommended accessories.
Imagine the possibilities. An employee approaches the customer at the right time, with the exact information they are looking for, with ideas on optimizing the purchase, and provides insights to potential concerns such as ease of setting it up.
Proactive customer service and personalized interactions. Coming soon to an AI tool near you.
My prediction is that you will want to join us for XDay 2024 on October 3rd in Austin, TX. Last year, this event sold out, and the feedback was outstanding. It will be a day of learning about Research, Customer Experience, and Employee Experience, and it will also be a lot of fun. Contact me if you want to be my guest with a complimentary ticket. Find out more here.
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