Operating a retail business can sometimes feel like leading an army during wartime. You pass long periods of relatively little activity and your troops face intense boredom. Suddenly, a peak holiday weekend hits and the line is out the door and around the block. Madness ensues, and the boredom is broken in the worst way.
After running a retail business for so much time, one develops a sense for when to dig the trenches and ready the troops for battle. The dangerous times are when a busy weekend sneaks in unexpectedly and catches you off guard.
Fortunately, modern retail stores have a secret weapon: predictive analytics tools. Smart predictive analytics for your business are not only possible, they’re easy to adopt. It starts with automatically capturing store visitor activity with a WiFi analytics platform and tracking it with smart tools that can figure out when the masses will strike.
These are the top benefits of integrating analytics tools into your retail operation.
1. Improve Customer Experience
The impact of overwhelmingly busy days on your business has many faces, but one important consideration is the bad experience that repeat customers can have on a busy day in your store.
Imagine a customer who enjoys the experience and brand that your store offers. This customer comes in regularly and expects a certain level of customer service. If this customer comes in on an unexpectedly busy day and you haven’t staffed properly, you risk providing a worse-than-expected experience and losing a loyal customer. Retail marketing can rely on information to combat this dilemma.
If you take advantage of data collection tools, you can properly prepare for busier-than-usual days and staff accordingly. This will enable you to provide a consistent customer experience for a wide range of visitor volume.
Additionally, a great way to automatically collect data is by providing free in-store WiFi. Your wireless network can gather data, automate your predictive analytics, and allows you to further improve your customer experience by providing the amenity of in-store connectivity.
2. Improve Peak Day Revenue
A tragic effect of understaffing for peak days is the loss of potential revenue you experience. When disappointed visitors decide not to purchase because of long lines or poor customer service, you are not only hurting your brand; you are missing out on some of the most important revenue-generating opportunities of your year.
When you staff and stock accordingly by watching your predictive analytics tools, you ensure that you are prepared to make every sale you can on the busiest days while seeing every customer off with a smile on their face.
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3. Improve Staff Morale
The negative effect of a surprise busy day is as damaging to your brand reputation as it is to your staff morale. If you don’t staff and prepare properly for busy days to come, you risk upsetting your staff.
If your staff members feel unsupported, their negative attitude will spread to other staff members – and to the customers they are helping.
A huge advantage of applying predictive analysis to your business is that you can ensure that your staff has the backup it needs on the days they need it most. When they feel like a part of a strong team that can handle a huge volume of business, their morale and positivity will spread throughout your staff and to your customers.
4. Pull Off High Volume in Style
When you accurately anticipate busy days and prepare accordingly, your store and staff will hum along while handling the high volume of business. This goes a surprisingly long way to improve your reputation.
Customers will perceive your store as a high volume business that is popular and handles their volume well. This indicates to customers that yours is a trustworthy brand that is popular for a good reason.
If you can take predictive analytics and incorporate them into your business, it’s truly a game changer. Staffing properly means you’re using your resources efficiently and getting the most out of the volume of visitors you receive!
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