Success Formula: Understand Your Customers = Good Business

In the retail sector, understanding your customers has never been more important. On-line Retailers are impacting the traditional bricks and mortar store. Retailers know that their customers are more knowledgeable and informed well before they enter the store. How can we ensure the “customer experience” in store is on point and ensures they keep returning.

Collecting data is critical to security, but evaluating the right data goes a long way in understanding your clientele and informing your business. Could you do more to utilise customer data in your store?

What can the right data tell you about your retail store?

Good data means good business

A recent survey from Infosys revealed that 78 per cent of global consumers would be more likely to purchase from a retailer if they provided offers targeted to their interests, wants and needs.

How do we find out these interests, wants and needs? Data collection.

To know your customers is to sell to them, and having a complete customer profile is essential. You create such a profile by collecting information from multiple sources, evaluating it, cross checking it and putting it together to create a holistic view of your customer.

What data to collect?

A lot goes into a customer profile – you’ll want to understand what they share on social media, which apps they use, and what email offers resonate. Retailers can understand this with surveys and generalisations, but it’s only useful if they reconcile it with in-store behaviour.

To understand the customer’s experience, watch their journey from entrance to either the point-of-sale, or exit. How long are customers staying in the store? Which areas are most attractive? Identify these patterns and use them to drive the efficiencies of your business.

A comprehensive solution

Today’s consumers are more informed than ever before. Shoppers go into stores knowing what they want and expecting to find those items easily. Retailers can use customer monitoring to make decisions about everything from floor organisation to staff rostering.

By counting the number of people in your store at any given time, you can identify busy periods and roster staff accordingly.

Heat mapping shows retailers which areas of the shop are busiest. This not only shows you which products are popular, but can also help you understand how to organise and arrange the shop floor, – what to move to the front, and what to relegate to less accessible areas.

How long customers stay in particular areas is also critical. If customers leave an area quickly, but you know from social media that the item is popular, your location or display might be off-putting.

Gunnebo retail solutions are so well integrated that you can even view POS overlay. If, for example, you want to look up a particular transaction to check on how an unhappy customer was treated at checkout, you can search for that particular sale.

Looking ahead

Data collection can help retailers predict trends and identify patterns customers aren’t even aware of yet. Knowing what your customers will be after, however, starts with knowing who they are.

Security experts, Gunnebo, know how vital data collection is to your business. If you want a complete data collection solution, check out our product offerings today.