Most customers are willing to leave an eCommerce website within 3 seconds if their needs aren’t met.
If customers aren’t willing to wait longer than 3 seconds online, then why wait 5 minutes in-store?
Luckily, communication technology can bridge the gap between customer expectations of service and colleague capacity.
By improving staff connectivity, technology can get answers to customers quickly. (Although we still predict it takes longer than 3 seconds).
Our research
Last month, VoCoVo asked over a thousand UK retail colleagues to respond to a series of questions about their work. We discovered a link between technology and customer experience. Read the full report here.
Colleagues feel underprepared for customer questions
54% of staff feel that customers know more about products than they do
Colleagues waste time looking for answers
26% of colleagues felt trying to find information was the biggest cause of inefficiency in-store, as well as time spent looking for colleagues with required knowledge (26%)
Colleagues want to be more closely connected
39% of colleagues felt they would deliver a better service if they had improved communication with co-workers
38% felt they would do a better job of customer service if they had access to technology
Of the colleagues we talked to, there was an overwhelming trend. They felt that time was being wasted searching for answers to customer questions. They wanted to be more closely connected with each other, to save time looking for knowledgeable team members.
Help your team tackle challenges together, talk to us today.
The connected store
In future, we predict that technology will play an even bigger role in retail. Since the global pandemic transformed the way we shop, more and more customers expect high standards of safety, hygiene as part of their shopping experience.
Half of the retail colleagues we spoke to felt that maintaining communication with colleagues was the biggest challenge whilst social distancing. We believe that retail communication technology will grow in importance as the UK faces potentially a second wave of the virus.
In a store connected with smart technology, colleagues have the benefit of team morale, and customers have the benefit of the whole team’s knowledge base.