Giving The Gift That Lasts Year-Round: Training Employees For The Holidays

By Gary Stonell, Opterus

While forecasts for this year’s holiday season may currently be up for debate, one thing’s for certain: retailers must be ready for in-store shoppers. This is especially true as retail sales during 2021’s holiday season grew 14.1% compared to 2020 and are expected to grow between 6 and 8% this year. Heading into the holidays, retailers must prepare for an influx of store traffic and an increase in demand, a responsibility that often falls on consumer-facing associates.

To guarantee a successful holiday season, retailers can digitize store operations to train employees adequately, ensure efficient processes, and give customers a quality shopping experience. This sets retailers up with a gift that lasts year-round: productive employees and customer satisfaction.

Train Associates Sufficiently

The holidays are known to be hectic when retailers look for additional support, but this year, major retailers like Macy’s are scaling back on their seasonal hiring. With this slowdown, it’s essential for retailers to adequately train the employees they do onboard, from tasks at the register to stock and inventory handling.

With digital management processes, retailers can help associates learn the ropes as holiday shopping picks up. A unified place for communications and assignments makes it easier to onboard employees, as they can quickly access resources or ask their manager questions. For example, associates can easily find information about whether a shoe brand is still on promotion for the week.

Giving employees the information needed to be productive and informed throughout the season sets them up for success. By having an onboarding process that is already established, retailers will have the peace of mind that new associates will be trained adequately and have all the resources needed for a smooth onboarding.

Streamline Task Management And Communication

When retailers use digital-first technology, associates have more structure and accountability, resulting in efficient operations. They also have access to the information needed to handle tasks competently, whether that’s being able to quickly search inventory to help a customer find an alternative product for a gift or build a festive window display that highlights holiday promotions.

For example, if a customer asks an associate if there is a different size of a product in stock, they can immediately find that information using a handheld device, instead of leaving the customer to search for the item in a backroom. As well, associates can efficiently and accurately set up a merchandise display that features the retailer’s holiday sales, with little assistance from the store manager. Not only does this help boost customer satisfaction, but this also guarantees that associates won’t be overwhelmed with assignments on top of the existing holiday rush.

Create A Valuable Customer Experience

Heading into key holiday sales days such as Black Friday, consumers are dealing with how to manage the busy season, ranging from concerns about finances to time-consuming gift shopping. On top of that, consumers are hoping for convenient, helpful retail experiences, with 42% of shoppers planning to shop both in-store and online.

Driving consumers to shop in-store is only successful when associates on the floor are prepared to assist them. Retailers can use digital workforce management to ensure that employees are ready for shoppers, equipping them with the tools needed to help customers. When associates speak confidently to customers and provide answers to questions in real time, customers receive exceptional service.

Retain Customers Into The New Year

With effective digital management processes across the store, retailers can increase revenue, cut operational costs, and boost customer satisfaction. Not only can retailers use digital workforce management to create an efficient workplace, but retailers also can create quality relationships with shoppers during the holidays, building loyalty.

By setting employees up for success and improving the in-store experience for shoppers, retailers can get the gift that keeps on giving: increased associate productivity and continued support from customers even after the holiday rush has ended.

About The Author

Gary Stonell, SVP of Sales and Operations, Opterus, has 20 years of sales management and business development experience in CPG and SaaS. Beginning his career in CPG, he worked for Kraft Foods, Philips Electronics, then SunRype Products fostering partnerships with retailers and managing various aspects of the sales and marketing processes. More recently at Sysomos/Meltwater, a SaaS-based social media content management platform, Gary led the enterprise sales team responsible for managing existing clients and new logo acquisition. The key to his success has been a meaningful focus on building business relationships with collaborative solution-based partnerships.