The retail market has experienced many changes over the past decade. The development of e-commerce has changed the way businesses operate, and adapting to a new digital landscape is key for your business to thrive. Using digital tools such as UCaaS (Unified Communication as a Service) is a great way to differentiate your business from your competitors.
The retail landscape has changed significantly over the last decade. The need to be present both online and offline via stores has increased enormously and has therefore placed demands on how and in which channels we should respond to our customers. How do we ensure that we keep track of whether the individual customer has contacted us via store, email, phone or chat? Or perhaps a combination? Do we keep track of all flows?
This is where Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS ) comes in. When you see our service being used in the retail industry, you can see that it is a model that provides clear improvements in both a more efficient administration for yourself, but also a more relevant and controlled customer service.
Read more: Discover how Telavox’s platform helps retailers reach their full potential
With our solution, your customers get a tailored experience
Today’s customers don’t just want lower prices – they also want satisfying shopping experiences. They want to feel important to the store and expect personalized attention. UCaaS makes this possible, both by simplifying processes and adapting them to the retail environment, and by providing innovative solutions that deliver exactly the kind of experience customers are looking for.
The responsiveness and availability that UCaaS brings also leads to better service and experience for customers, while reducing stress and the risk of irritation. But UCaaS is about so much more than using mobile devices.
UCaaS and geographically dispersed or mobile teams
For many retailers, staff need to be mobile. With the infrastructure in the cloud, UCaaS can put geographically dispersed teams in touch with customers, store staff and support centers. This leads to fast service and seamless call transfer for customers, and instructions and information can be passed from managers to people in the field and vice versa.
Via Telavox, your customers can easily be routed directly to the person best suited to answer. An example could be to automatically route the incoming call to your responsible KAM. Retailers who already use UCaaS say that they experience improved communication and reduced telephony costs and significant time savings in the form of more efficient invoice management and a user-friendly administration experience.
Read more about how to achieve better unified communications with a cloud-based PBX.
Integrations provide a coherent customer journey
When you integrate your UCaaS solution with a contact center solution (such as Zendesk, Salesforce, Freshdesk, or Dynamics), customers don’t have to answer the same questions for every new person they talk to, which is appreciated by everyone and saves a lot of time.
Staff who have access to advanced tools that simplify their work are more productive and proactive – which in turn leads to increased motivation and better morale. Play with the idea of being able to see all customer interactions in a single interface, regardless of the channel through which your customers have tried to reach you. Then add that in the same interface you can see statistics and link the calls to a colleague of your choice.
Programmability helps transform the customer experience from ‘good’ to ‘great’
A great way to impress your customers is to make sure their experience is top-notch if they ever need to contact you. One way to do this is to use programmability in your telephone switchboard. Simply put, programmability means including elements like keypad inputs and API connections to give the agent as much information as possible about the caller.
For example, you can play a pre-recorded message asking a caller to enter their order number using their phone’s keypad. The system can then automatically check their order status in your e-commerce platform and then play another pre-recorded message to notify the caller that their order is out for delivery.
This means your customer gets a clear answer right away, freeing up your agents to focus on complex support requests that need more attention.
UCaaS and scheduling
If your business is of the larger kind, you probably have lots of staff. This also means scheduling, which takes up a lot of valuable time. In case of vacations and absences, shifts have to be distributed to others, which is also challenging and time-consuming.
Often, multiple managers need to keep track of last-minute changes to work schedules, but with UCaaS with mobile presence, everyone knows who’s working and who’s available. Colleagues can easily forward phone calls and help each other when they are short-staffed. When used properly, UCaaS can reduce stress for both staff and management.
Unified Communications improves onboarding and training capabilities
New employees obviously need some onboarding, but managers do not always have time for it. In retail, it is common for new staff to complain about the lack of training before they are expected to fend for themselves.
It is even more difficult in environments where everything has to move fast, people work different shifts and may not be in place at the same time as the new ones. UCaaS can help solve this with extensive phone and video conferencing capabilities. Videos and documents can also be shared with UCaaS so that new employees can watch and read up on important information to do their best work, or rehearse processes when memory fails.
Read more: Successful digital onboarding with Ewa Thylén at Tillväxtverket
What to do during public holidays and vacation periods
Staffing needs in the retail sector are often seasonal. Planning needs to be done several weeks and sometimes months in advance. With UCaaS, you can streamline the process and implement the schedule much faster. Thanks to analytics and stored data from statistical tools in your UCaaS solution, you can improve the decision-making process and easily make adjustments, in one location or several at once.
The number of retailers who see UCaaS as a sustainable digital solution for both growth and success is increasing. It is an extremely adaptable and flexible solution, meeting multiple business needs at multiple levels and providing owners, management and staff with the tools to meet future challenges. Read more about how to set up a budget for UCaaS.
For those who want to know more about UCaaS in other industries:
