How Wearable Technology Can Benefit Retailers
By Anna Rose Welch, Editorial & Community Director, Advancing RNA
Companies, like The Container Store, are arming themselves with technology to blur channels, engage customers
Wearable Technology is a big topic in retail these days, as new devices like Google Glass make it possible for customers immediately to connect to the Internet and see new products — and new deals at nearby stores. The blurring of online and brick-and-mortar channels has made customers more aware of the many options they have available to them. For retailers, however, as consumers are quicker and more knowledgeable as they access this information, stores need to be even quicker: wearable technology is one of the ways stores can provide an alluring shopping environment for customers.
VentureBeat discusses some of the benefits available for stores that choose to invest in wearable technology. Of course, one of these benefits is that stores can provide customers with the personalized experience they’ve been craving more and more. These investments can also tie together mobile technology, online convenience, and the brick-and-mortar experience to make the shopping experience more convenient and unique. And the more convenient and unique the experience, the happier the customers — and the more likely a retailer will gain sales and new customer loyalty.
How Omni-Channel Impacts Your In-Store Merchandising
But what if wearable technology could be integrated into the store experience and be used to strengthen employee’s interactions with customers — and with each other? A good example of this kind of innovation can be seen in The Container Store, where its partnership with Theatro has led to new developments in wearable technology. As RSR Research discussed in a newsletter article, this new technology enables voice driven communication between employees throughout the store. What makes it unique however, is that this new technology enables employees to communicate and gather information from others outside of the store. With the aid of Wi-Fi and a small device, employees can communicate with buyers in the corporate office or customer service reps within a call center, as well as other sales associates in the store. In the future, the company hopes to add the capability of an employee in one store communicating with an employee at a different store. As The Container Store’s VP John Thrailkill says, “The idea that an employee in Miami could help an employee and a customer in Seattle is really exciting.”
While many retailers are equipping employees with new forms of technology like iPhones and tablets to speed up communication among employees and in-store fulfillment, The Container Store had a different idea they wanted to see carried out. “What we really wanted was something that would pull together phones, walkie-talkies, and mobile devices for employees,” Thrailkill told RSR Research. They also wanted something that would encourage face-to-face interaction with customers that didn’t involve lots of staring down at a screen. The solution: a small device that has just a few buttons and a jack for a headset. With the pilot implementation of this device, there was no longer a need for walkie-talkie that broadcast messages for a single employee to everyone in the store. In turn, communication between employees increased by 30 percent as employees focused more closely on the messages meant specifically for them.
Investments in this sort of technology only stand to increase communication between retailers and their customers. By equipping employees with technology that connects them to others with the right answers, a retailer and its employees can provide customers with a more convenient, quick answer — no need for the customer to turn to the Internet to look it up. However, as The Container Store has learned, wearable technology also stands to make employees more communicative with each other and more educated, keeping the brick and mortar store with its base of knowledgeable employees a key part of the omni-channel shopping experience.
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