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Customer Service Tips Every Boutique Retailer Should Try

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Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily

Customer Service Tips Every Boutique Retailer Should Try

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Supplied makes it easier for small boutique owners around the world to access high-quality, affordable wholesale boutique items, whether to stock their physical store or IG shop.

Do you remember the last time you had a truly fantastic customer service experience?

Maybe a cashier complimented your earrings, or maybe the person at the drive-thru unexpectedly threw an extra taco in for free. Or maybe you were just really vibin’ with the enthusiasm you could hear at the other end of the customer support line. Whatever it was, chances are it made you more excited to return and support that company with your business in the future.

Now… think back to the last time you had an awful customer service experience.

Was someone being unnecessarily difficult while you were trying to return a sweater you’d bought a week ago? Or did someone leave you on hold for hours and hours? Or maybe someone just would NOT honor your coupon, even though you received it in an email yesterday?

Whatever that bad experience was… I’d be willing to bet it made you a whole lot less likely to go back anytime soon.

As Vince Lombardi famously said, “It takes months to find a customer and seconds to lose one.” One poor customer service experience could cause you to lose all of a valuable customer’s future business.

Offering better customer service skills often doesn’t cost a dime, but it can make a world of a difference for your profits. Studies show that acquiring a new customer can cost five times as much as retaining an existing customer. Plus, the success rate of marketing to a customer you already have is 60-70%, while it’s only 5-20% when marketing to a new customer.

If you haven’t been making great customer service a major priority in your boutique lately, now is the time to change that.

Read on to learn 25 powerful (but easy!) customer service tips every retailer should try implementing in their business.

(If you’ve hired someone else as the main customer service rep for your boutique business, send this article along to them as a reminder!)

Top 25 Customer Service Tips

Focus on the customer in front of you

As a boutique owner, you’ve constantly got about a zillion and one things that need your time and attention. But when it’s a customer you’re dealing with, zero in on them and their needs. Nobody likes feeling unimportant – make sure you give them your undivided attention while they’re talking to you, whether it’s over the phone, in person, or in your site’s live chat.

Be empathetic

Chances are, you’ve been in the exact same situation your customer’s in right now – whether they’re trying to figure out what size shoe to purchase or they’re trying to initiate a return for something that didn’t turn out the way they’d hoped. Do your best to see the situation from their perspective. You’ll be able to provide a better customer experience if you’re in touch with their needs and emotions.

Make an extra effort

Work tirelessly to solve your customer’s problems. If a customer wants a certain size that’s out of stock, double-check your inventory, let them know when they can expect that item to come back, offer them alternatives, or give them a discount code for their trouble. Your customers will appreciate you going the extra mile for them.

Improve systems

Customer service isn’t just about making your customer feel valued while you’re speaking to them – it’s also about providing a great all-around customer experience. Do a quick audit of your website and make sure it’s user-friendly. Is it easy to check out? Browse new arrivals? Search for specific items? Purchase using the payment method they prefer? If not, set aside some time to make some adjustments.

Identify their needs

There might be all sorts of things you could be doing to provide a better customer experience that you don’t even realize yet. Put together a short survey to send out to your customers about the checkout process and their past customer service experiences. It’ll show you what’s going well and what you could improve.

Use their name

Simple, but effective. Whenever a customer reaches out to you, take note of their name and use it. It’ll give your communications a more personal touch. (Don’t forget to introduce yourself by name, too!) Bonus points if you remember other personal details about them for next time.

Smile

Yes, even if you’re not talking to the customer in person! Make an effort to be friendly and positive, even if you’re just sitting at your desk at home – you can totally hear a smile through the phone, and it makes a difference.

Be generous

If you could spend $5 to secure a customer who’s loyal to you for life… would you do it? Sometimes, that’s all it takes. When a customer reaches out to you, your priority is to make them happy – offering free shipping or accepting a late return can do just the trick. And that’s not just common sense – research shows that accepting someone’s generosity makes you feel indebted to them, which can translate to return business.

Don’t say “I don’t know”

Sure, you’re not gonna immediately have the answers to every single one of your customers’ questions… but it’s kinda your job to know. So when you tell a customer “I don’t know,” what they hear is “I don’t care.” Not exactly the message you’d like to get across when you’re on the phone with a customer! Practice saying “Let me check on that for you” instead.

Celebrate birthdays

Acknowledging your customer’s birthdays is a surefire way to make them feel valued and appreciated. Ask your customers for your birthday as they sign up for your mailing list, then send them an email with a promo code for a free gift or a discount right before their special day.

Be clear about your policies

Your customers aren’t mind-readers – if you don’t let them know, they have no idea about how long shipping should take, where you ship to, or under what circumstances you accept returns. Be sure your shipping and returns policies are clearly stated on your website to avoid confusion. It’ll answer some questions before they’re ever even asked!

Honor your promises

Your customers need to know that they can trust your boutique to deliver the value it promises. Stick to the shipping and return policies you have listed on your website (unless you choose to go above and beyond them, of course!) Honor coupons and discount codes for as long as you said you would. Post any giveaway winners publicly in your stories. Trust is key!

Acknowledge frequent customers…

Let your return customers know how much you appreciate them! Whether you throw a quick handwritten thank-you note into their next order or you offer a discount code that’s good for their next purchase, it’ll definitely make them want to keep coming back.

But make sure new customers feel the love, too!

It’s a big leap to order from a company you’ve never purchased anything from before – make sure new customers feel super welcome. Acknowledge new customers by offering free shipping on their first order, sending a promo code when they sign up for your mailing list, or even sending a quick thank-you email for taking a chance on your shop.

Be transparent

Running a business is tough, and sometimes extenuating circumstances make it even tougher. Be open with your customers about the hurdles you’re currently going through, especially if it will affect shipping times or restock dates.

Sincerely apologize

We all make mistakes – especially when we’re doing huge, crazy difficult things like running a business. If you’ve made a mistake on a customer’s order, own your error, sincerely apologize, and do whatever it takes to make things right. It’s much more professional than shrugging off responsibility or blaming someone else. (Bonus points if you reach out and own up to it before the customer even notices!)

Make it easy to get in touch

Have you ever sent an email to a company’s customer service team… and then never heard anything back? Yeah, that’s the worst. Don’t be that company. Let your customers know the best way to reach you, whether it’s through Instagram DMs, email, or over the phone. If you want to go the extra mile, include a live chat feature on your website that’s available 24/7. (Also, word of advice: if you have a contact form on your website, make sure to check it every so often!)

Offer self-help customer service

If your customers can find their own answers to their questions, it makes their lives easier AND your life easier. Include a comprehensive FAQ page on your website that answers common questions about shipping, sales, returns, and more. For more complicated questions, you might want to write up an entire blog post to give your customers more information. Just be sure your customers still know that they can reach out to you with any questions they can’t find the answers to.

Plan for the holidays

Here’s a hot tip: over the holidays, things get BUSY. Even if you usually don’t have very many people blowing up your inbox about shipping questions, there’s a very good chance you will during the holidays. Make sure you’re prepared with multiple customer service reps helping respond to questions (if need be) and detailed holiday shipping info displayed on your website and social media pages.

Respond quickly

Make it a goal to respond to all customer emails within 48 hours whenever possible. No matter how busy you are, customers want to feel like their concerns and questions are a top priority. As for Instagram DMs, Facebook messages, and comments, try and get in a habit of responding to those right when you see them. (Your customers will like that and so will the algorithm!)

Hire the right people

If you’ve only recently opened your boutique business, you might be the only person your customers ever interact with. But as you grow and add more people to your team, make sure they’re people who are kind, friendly, and pleasant to interact with. Nobody’s perfect, but a positive attitude can make all the difference.

Be polite

Pretend you’re at the dinner table with your strict aunt – say lots of pleases and thank yous. Not only is it common courtesy, but it’s also good business. It’ll also help you still sound friendly and polite even when you’re communicating via messenger or text.

Set clear expectations

Sorry, but you’re not superwoman. When your customers approach you asking when they can buy an item you aren’t planning on restocking, or when they ask if you can make sure the package they just ordered gets to them by tomorrow, sometimes you just can’t give them the answer they were hoping for. Be realistic in your responses and don’t make promises you can’t keep. Setting clear expectations is also helpful in responding to emails – sending an automated email letting a customer know when they can expect a response is also helpful, even if they were initially hoping for a reply right away.

Be human

There isn’t a robot at the other end of all of those incoming customer emails – it’s bright, bubbly, sparkly you! Don’t be afraid to infuse your communications with your genuine personality. Strike up a conversation with a customer on the phone, ask about their day, say “top of the morning to ya” instead of “hello” when you feel like it. It’ll help forge a relationship with your customers!

Offer suggestions

Have you ever asked a waiter what you should order, only for them to respond, “I love everything on the menu equally!” Yeah, that’s not helpful – don’t be like that guy. When your customers ask for your opinion, politely give it. You’re the real expert on the products you carry – use your insider knowledge to guide your customers to the right decision for them.

Create Your Free Wholesale Account Today

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Joseph Heller is a small businesses expert and CEO of SuppliedShop.com

e-commerce
Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily

How has E-Commerce Adapted During the COVID-19 Outbreak?

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The pandemic had a massive impact on the retail industry. People were driven to the safety of their homes, which was an opportunity that e-commerce did not miss. E-commerce adapted during the COVID-19 outbreak with ease, in such a way that had never been seen before.

E-commerce growth was documented even before the COVID-19 outbreak

Over the past ten years, e-commerce sales have grown from 13% to 18% approximately every year. The consistency is simply astonishing. The difference from offline sales is substantial because retail stores haven’t increased their sales by more than 4% for more than 16 years now.

2020 was the most successful year for e-commerce

Because most retail stores and shops all over the world closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, people needed a different shopping channel. E-commerce proved to be a safe way to purchase food and other necessities. With that said, it is not strange that the increase in online sales for the last year went up by a whopping 32.4%! Overall, e-commerce shops achieved sales in the value of over $270 billion! By some predictions, that level of increase in online sales would have happened around 2022 or later if it hadn’t been for the pandemic to speed up the process. Offline sales also had an increase of 6.9%.

How e-commerce grew by product category

E-commerce adapted during the COVID-19 outbreak at a fast pace. Let’s see what product categories had the highest jump in sales.

Food and groceries online sales

By far, food and groceries were sold the most via online channels. The jump in online sales was over 100%. In fact, around 17% of people in the United States had their first online shopping experience last year. The need for social distancing and a mandatory curfew in countries worldwide made people stay at home. So, the only way of acquiring groceries was through an online delivery system.

Toy sales jumped through the roof

It is not strange to say that toy sales jumped through the roof in the last year. Stuck in their homes for most of the day, people craved a little bit of fun and excitement. Video games and puzzles were the most sold items, closely followed by musical instruments. The increase in sales was by over 63% since 2019. The overall profit of toy stores was somewhere around $1 billion, which is a jump of 500% in online sales from the previous year. It is even more amazing to say that online sales of toys and games jumped by 1000% in the first two months of the pandemic.

People still need physical activity

Gyms all over the world suffered a defeat thanks to the COVID-19 outbreak. However, the European gym and fitness equipment market increased online sales of home fitness goods, and the same thing happened in the United States. It is good to know that people still need to exercise, even if prevented from going out.

Before the lockdown, sporting goods retailers had a steady jump in sales by +45% over the past few years. The most sold items were bicycles and rollerblades.

However, when the gyms shut, the online sales of gym equipment for homes increased by over 100%. What is impressive is that stores that didn’t previously sell online, nor did curbside pickup delivery, launched these channels in less than 48 hours.

The COVID-19 pandemic was the right time for house remodeling projects

When the pandemic started, there was a noticeable increase in people moving to the suburbs. Living in a less populated area sounded like an excellent way to stay protected and follow social distancing rules. As a result, suburban housing and furniture sales propelled the American reconstituted wood product market.

Furthermore, people used the opportunity to make massive home improvements and start remodeling projects they were postponing for months or years. Also, the online sales of home improvement products substantially increased by 52% thanks to the people moving into their new homes.

Nonessential items also had an increase in sales

Nonessential items belong to those categories that didn’t have a direct connection with the shift in the shoppers’ habits caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. These include car parts, clothes, jewelry, flowers, and similar categories. However, even those online sales jumped by more than 30% since the last year. The growth increase was a bit slower than the essential markets, which is not that strange.

E-commerce adapted during the COVID-19 outbreak, but what comes after?

It is true; e-commerce adapted during the COVID-19 outbreak at a fantastic speed. However, what can we expect in the years to come? Without a doubt, this trend of using online sales will continue even after the pandemic is over. Nevertheless, the retail industry should not be concerned for the time being. Even with this spike in online sales, most purchases, in fact, over 80%, still happened in stores. The majority of people are slowly getting used to the benefits of online shopping. We are all creatures of habits, and habits die hard. It does not come as a surprise that the benefit of staying at home while shopping is growing closer to our hearts with every passing day.

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Kayla Jenkins is a passionate blogger and writer for Best Movers NYC, with a degree in economics and marketing. Encouraged by the recent fluctuations in the retail industry, she now focuses on exploring the effects of the pandemic on the future of online and offline sales.

e-commerce
Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily

The Future of E-Commerce: Five Post-Pandemic Trends Sellers Will Need to Know

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Kenny Tsang, industry expert and Managing Director of PingPong Payments, provides his top five trends to define success in 2021.

In the past year, the rules of e-commerce have effectively been rewritten. In an increasingly touchless society, our lives have become digitized, changing how we engage, interact, and view day-to-day life. Now, new online buying behaviors have emerged, and millions of consumers that previously relied on brick-and-mortar sales are shopping online to meet everyday needs.

But the rise of e-commerce hasn’t been without shortcomings. At the height of the pandemic in May, sellers, welcoming millions of new consumers, were faced with supply chain disruption, shock shortages, and business loss. Many turned to international options to mitigate issues, and cross-border sales saw a staggering 21 percent increase in year-on-year sales in June.

With uncertainty surrounding the year ahead, sellers will naturally be wondering if this growth is sustainable. It will be vital more than ever to plan for a post-pandemic environment.

To prepare, here are five key trends that will define success in 2021:

Growth of Cross-border, Global Marketplaces

In a year of uncertainty, the global marketplace has become one of the very few resilient, effective, and profitable platforms to weather the storm. Fuelled by the transformation of shopping, Alibaba, Amazon, Etsy, and Taobao all reported record figures this year as consumers turned to these new ‘virtual shopping malls.’

By the end of 2020, an estimated two billion people will have made an online purchase, and the rise in users is beginning to signal a shift in online sales. As important as the U.S. market is to this growth through marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, and Etsy – sellers can often forget that 85 percent of the industry purchasing power lies abroad. In fact, in China, e-commerce sales have recently overtaken the U.S., and the country’s ‘Singles Day’ shopping event eclipsed Black Friday in the U.S.

At the end of December, the global e-commerce market was expected to reach $1 trillion and early forecasts anticipate the trend to continue. With new cross-border payment solutions that can manage overseas logistics, pay suppliers in a local currency, and make VAT payments in real-time, becoming an international seller is easier than ever before.

Diversifying Supply Chains

To say that lockdown restrictions affected supply chains in 2020 would be putting it lightly. At the peak of the crisis, disruption to factories highlighted the fragility of relying on one single source for inventory. With little to no option left for sellers, the shift to diversifying supply chains to mitigate financial repercussions has called for an industry-wide rethink.

However, disruption isn’t new, and one of the biggest mistakes sellers often make is overlooking future risk planning and the prioritization of corrective actions.

Instead of assuming there won’t be interruptions to one supply chain, consider other sources. With an abundance of cross-border services such as parcel consolidation, global fulfillment, and payment providers, sellers can – and should – explore international markets.

Faster, and Faster delivery

As the world changes, consumer preferences, schedules, and expectations are also rapidly affecting the speed and manner of how products are delivered. In an age of immediacy, the industry standard of the typical 7 to 10 delivery day window has become outdated. Over 90 percent of consumers are now willing to pay for same-day or faster delivery.

Thanks to online marketplaces such as Amazon Prime, Walmart, and Best Buy, the ‘new normal’ of instant delivery in as little as two hours has challenged sellers to rethink their customer service approach. Now, the speed, price, and the previously optional ‘add ons’ are differentiating sellers through competitive advantage in an e-commerce race that most cannot afford to lose.

The key is to be flexible. With diversified supply chains, robust inventories, and reliable fulfillment management, sellers can use their agility to deliver to the right customers at the right time.

The Rise of Social Commerce

The business advantages for retailers to sell directly through social media in a year that has seen e-commerce become a focal point of day-to-day continuity has drastically strengthened. The opportunities to buy, sell, or promote on one integrated platform through leveraging channels that millions of people are using now appears to be a no-brainer for most sellers.

Staggeringly, over 87 percent of e-commerce shoppers believe social media helps them make a shopping decision, and yet, only 40 percent of sellers are using it to generate sales. In 2021, experts project this number will rise significantly; we’re arguably already seeing its value in China, which has hosted its biggest sales event – Singles Day – on record so far. Through live-streaming, two-thirds of Chinese consumers said they purchased products via the platform in the past 12 months, citing “instant information” as a significant deciding factor.

Live-streaming is bound to become part of the U.S. shopping experience, and with more features evolving and launching alongside industry growth and demand – sellers should keep up with new trends.

The Transformation of Retail Shopping Events

As online commerce continues to prevail, annual in-store holiday season doorbusters promising discount deals have begun to lose their relevance. During the 2020 holiday season, deals popped up early, 24-hour sales lasted a month, and by late November, most of the ‘festive shopping’ had been done online.

Retail shopping events have changed, accelerated, and turned in favor of digital commerce, with sales increasing 30 percent year-on-year during the 2020 holiday season. More importance is being placed on the broader e-commerce market, and the increase in competition in an already saturated market will require sellers to work smarter.

Instead of waiting for domestic season events, think globally. By partnering with the right cross-border payment provider, sellers can enter new markets, effortlessly move money to all corners of the world, and grow a larger audience that will effectively move sales forward post-pandemic.

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Archives, Dispatches, Global Trade Daily

REPORT: MORE THAN HALF OF COMPANIES LACK END-TO-END VISIBILITY INTO THEIR SUPPLY CHAINS

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The majority of companies that lack end-to-end visibility into their supply chains instead rely on a picture of supply and demand that is based only on internal data from the company itself, according to the new research report from The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) research report. 

Lacking proper visibility leaves many of these companies vulnerable to unexpected risks, the EIU concludes in the report titled “The Resilient Supply Chain Benchmark: Ready for Anything? Turbulence and the Resilience Imperative,” which was commissioned by the Association for Supply Chain Management.

Packed into the report are findings on how 308 publicly listed retail, pharmaceutical and consumer electronics companies have adopted resilience-building capabilities to manage real-time and longer-term risks, and how they have performed over the past year.  

“While each industry faces unique supply chain dynamics, in a time of increased turbulence it has become critical to reconsider the balance between efficiency and resilience,” said ASCM CEO Abe Eshkenazi, CSCP, CPA, CAE. “The Resilient Supply Chain Benchmark provides both data and analysis to better understand the critical capabilities driving resilience, where the most common vulnerabilities lie, and how to strengthen operations for the future.” 

Find the report here: www.ascm.org/eiu-benchmark

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Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily, Trucking

The Demand Supply Chain: How to Win as the Bar Continues to Rise in the Retail Industry

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The year 2020 was a year unlike any other, and supply chains were more front and center than ever before. This is especially true in the retail space, as a surge in ecommerce and pandemic-driven demand volatility increased the rate of change in an already rapidly evolving industry. For many, a complex global supply chain became even more challenging to navigate. As we kick off 2021, those complexities are still present, but with a new year comes new opportunities to innovate and address some of the biggest challenges for our retail and consumer packaged goods (CPG) customers, such as:

-Planning environments are complex and can lead to costly surplus Days of Inventory on Hand (DOH)

-There’s a desire to meet and exceed heightened consumer expectations

-Industry volatility and logistical complexity creates a risk of high on time in full (OTIF) fines

-Increased reliance on the transportation spot market due to industry planning uncertainty

-Transportation requests for proposal (RFPs) are labor-intensive and can be out of alignment with customer needs

Annual transportation RFPs can take up to half a year to conduct and can become quickly out of date. This challenge has become more prominent as market unpredictability has continued to disrupt these plans. There are two main variables to blame: Changes in demand or sales, and shifts in supply and demand in the transportation market. But those two functions only come together once a year, if ever—when bids are being prepared and shippers are trying to predict what they have to bid out. After that, they really don’t talk to each other.

When demand for a certain product explodes, you can overload the carrier who signed on for less. You start paying more immediately for backup carriers, or worse, pay much more if you go to the spot market to procure trucks.

Retail and CPG shippers need innovative solutions to help them overcome these challenges and succeed today and into the future.

This is why I am excited about C.H. Robinson’s recent partnership with SAS, a trusted analytics powerhouse, to bring end-to-end supply chain processes and technology solutions that connect demand and inventory planning data with procurement and transportation data, in real-time. This solution is delivered through a powerful combination of C.H. Robinson’s information advantage and technology built by and for supply chain experts, and SAS’ demand planning and forecasting technology and expertise.

We’ve joined forces to unify two functions that have often worked in autonomous siloes, demand planning, and transportation optimization. Our partnership creates a first-of-its-kind integration of demand planning data and real-time transportation data that will drive smarter, more agile supply chains.

Steering a supply chain from a centralized operation like this will allow companies more fluid adjustments in scheduling, transportation optimization, and responses to changing consumer demand while inventory is still moving on the ground.

Our retail and CPG customers, both at C.H. Robinson and SAS, look to us for cutting-edge solutions that will help them succeed in the marketplace. As we continue to listen to the pain points within the industry, we are working together to create solutions that will enable shippers to reduce inventory, improve service, increase savings, and gain efficiencies.

Reduce inventory

-Reduce inventory levels with a demand-powered supply chain. Carrying inventory is a major expense. Some safety stocks are needed when it isn’t possible to plan and adapt to changing conditions in real-time, which this solution now enables you to do.

Improve service

-Provide more predictability to carriers in real-time, letting them know what is changing in demand.

-Align the largest pool of reliable transportation capacity to the specific needs of your demand plan.

Increase savings

-Spend less on spot market procured freight, by allocating your freight the way carriers want it. In most of 2020, spot market rates were around 30% higher than the previous year, and are usually much higher, at times double, than contract planned rates.

-Reduce fines for late, missed, or incomplete deliveries which can be common in retail.

Gain efficiencies

-Spend less time on your annual procurement event by taking advantage of SAS’ and C.H. Robinson’s technology tools that help you rely less on the static annual plan.

We are just getting started. Today, our solutions are focused within the retail space, but we recognize there are opportunities to expand beyond that as other industries face similar challenges.

I am looking forward to continuing to partner with SAS to bring innovative solutions to the table that will help shippers overcome industry challenges.

If you are interested in learning more, you can view our recent press release. And, if you are ready to discuss these solutions, connect with our experts.

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Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily

Omnichannel is Everything – How the Pandemic has Made Direct-to-consumer a Priority and is Upending the Old Supply Chain Model

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If 2020 taught us anything, it demonstrated that to succeed, maximize resilience, and ensure business continuity, companies need to utilize every available channel – e-commerce, direct-to-consumer, retail stores, distributors, and marketplaces like Amazon. That way if one channel is disrupted, whether by natural or man-made causes, the show will go on. In this environment, enterprise and functional silos, coupled with batch processes, won’t do. Companies will need to rely even more on supply chain networks to consolidate demand across every channel and have a view into every point of supply, to be able to satisfy customer demand efficiently, grow revenues, and minimize costs.

The pandemic highlighted the urgent need for businesses not to rely on a single channel for servicing customers. Many companies that were doing well through brick and mortar, both retailers and manufacturers, suffered a huge blow when the pandemic hit and stores closed. Many of them are now scrambling to catch up and bolster or create their e-commerce channels and just in time. E-commerce has surged with Accenture reporting that “much of this new e-commerce activity has been from new users. COVID-19 will permanently change consumer behavior. Consumers’ attitudes, behaviors, and purchasing habits are changing—and many of these new ways will remain post-pandemic.” It is clear that companies that can exploit this channel, but those who fail to do so will slip behind their competitors.

Meeting the Challenges of Direct-to-Consumer

Organizations today know the value of being customer-centric, focusing on the end-customer, and tailoring the supply chain to serve customer demand as and when it happens. However, this means having products available, keeping customers informed of the progress of their order, and ensuring a timely and smooth delivery experience. In these times, it’s extremely difficult and costly to acquire a customer, and a single bad interaction can lose them.

That becomes a major challenge when customers are everywhere, in stores, physical and virtual, shopping on third-party marketplaces, and researching and reviewing on social. Today, being customer-centric requires a view across all demand channels and the ability to aggregate that demand. It also requires visibility to all available supply so organizations can coordinate that supply to meet demand at the lowest cost. That might be a pick-up in store, ship from store, ship from DC, or from the manufacturer direct to consumer.

To do so efficiently requires the ability to plan, collaborate, and execute across the extended supply chain. What does it take?

A Connected Real-Time Business Network. Companies need to be connected, not just to their immediate trading partners, but to their entire supply network. This means connecting and coordinating with distribution centers, fulfillment partners, retail locations, and parcel carriers, and perhaps with “white glove” installation and service partners.

Processes to Support Order Size of One. Companies of all sizes need to become better at efficiently managing single item orders. However, those new to e-commerce and accustomed to shipping bulk order quantities to distribution centers and stores will need to move to smaller order quantities through to the end customer. The rule upstream has been to enforce minimum order quantities in order to drive efficiencies and lower costs. Today, shippers must process a “little-and-often” approach that is predicated on point-of-origin collaboration and consolidation to move smaller quantities more frequently based on real-time demand updates.

Real-Time Data. It is possible to move to smaller order quantities and actually decrease costs by using the end-to-end network since it can provide real-time data down to the item level. This eliminates information lead times and enables real-time visibility and collaboration. In turn, this reduces variability and the bullwhip effect for all trading partners by providing real-time insight into demand across all tiers. It creates better alignment between departments and partners and coordinated response to demand and makes possible truly demand-driven logistics. From a transportation perspective, mixed loads will become the new normal.

A real-time network also enables visibility to, and the ability to redirect and reallocate supply from all sources, stores, warehouses, suppliers, even product in-transit to match demand. This means more agility and accuracy in deploying inventory and using the most cost-effective source of inventory for customer orders.

Integrated Logistics. For optimal efficiency, organizations also need logistics options across every mode, from international and ocean to domestic and last-mile delivery. Networks enable this because the technology views inbound and outbound orders as two sides of the same coin. What one trading partner considers inbound, another considers outbound. Thus, the only way a last-mile solution can benefit both the consumer as well as the companies providing the goods and services, is to optimize all inbound and outbound across a single network. Providing visibility, control, and math-based or AI-based decision-making at different supply chain touchpoints empowers trading partners to make well-informed decisions about positioning and moving inventory. Telematics and full order visibility enables companies to better anticipate logistics issues, minimize disruptions, predict ETAs and drive customer satisfaction.

Alerts and Analytics. Applying real-time, network-wide data, combined with AI and intelligent autonomous agents, greatly increases visibility to potential problems and expands an organization’s range of options for resolving them. Predictive analytics enable the business to anticipate issues sooner, while prescriptive analytics provide guided resolutions to fix them optimally. In many cases, where the resolution is within predefined “guardrails,” intelligent agents can resolve issues autonomously. This type of AI-assisted and autonomous problem solving is especially important in omnichannel environments, where there are a lot of channels and a high volume of orders and shipments in flux. Applying AI can also help balance complex trade-offs and consider the repercussions of decisions across many variables and at scale, in way that human planners cannot.

The omnichannel challenge of reaching direct to the consumer is winnable. Real-time data, networks, machine learning, and intelligent agents, make it possible for an individual home-based order to trigger a response from the supply network, while also aggregating this demand in real-time across all customers to leverage economies of scale. This allows the supply chain to function as a unified and agile ecosystem to achieve the highest levels of customer service at the lowest possible cost. Yes, even when the orders are home-based for individual items.

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Joe Bellini is COO at One Network Enterprises, provider of an AI-enabled business network platform that enables all trading partners to manage, optimize and automate complex business processes in real-time. To learn more, visit www.onenetwork.com or follow One Network at https://www.linkedin.com/company/one-network-enterprises.

work from home
Archives, Global Trade Daily, Special Reports

The Best Cities to Work From Home

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While the COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating for many businesses and workers, it has led to greater flexibility for workers in some industries. Employees at major tech companies, including Twitter and Google, for example, have been granted extended opportunities to work from home, sometimes permanently. These changes have afforded many people the ability to work and live where they want, rather than being bound to large cities where their employers have offices. Employees at major tech companies, including Twitter and Google, for example, have been granted extended opportunities to work from home, sometimes permanently.

This shift is leading many workers toward “Zoom towns”—cities that are booming as remote work becomes more popular. While much of the U.S. is experiencing rising home values during the pandemic as a result of low inventory, areas experiencing the largest booms are these Zoom towns, which are increasingly attracting well-educated laptop workers with lower living costs, access to outdoor recreation, and strong (albeit less dense) communities. Unfortunately for many workers, the opportunity for remote work and the ability to relocate to these cities are often only available to workers in tech, financial services, sales, and other similar roles that can be performed remotely.

To find the best locations to work from home, researchers at RetailMeNot ranked cities and states based on several metrics related to 1) community and safety, 2) housing and living costs, and 3) health and weather. In general, the researchers wanted to identify the most affordable locations with low crime rates, good weather for outdoor recreation, and well-educated, healthy populations, among other factors. Their researchers sourced data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Centers for Environment Information, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the U.S. Census Bureau to create a composite score for each city.

At the state level, Mountain and Midwest states like Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, and Minnesota offer inviting environments for remote workers, with those states earning some of the highest composite scores for working from home. For example, Wyoming has no income tax, which is appealing for high-income professionals. Idaho, like Utah, offers residents good weather, access to the outdoors, low crime rates, and a large proportion of single-family homes. On the other hand, Southern states like Louisiana, Arkansas, and Alabama provide less appealing settings for at-home work. Despite being affordable, these states tend to have higher poverty and crime rates, more variable weather, and less opportunities for physical activity.

In the city-level analysis, only cities with populations above 100,000 were considered. These areas are typically suburbs of major metropolitan areas, offer easier access to big-city amenities, and appeal to a wider range of workers. Residents in these locations could also theoretically commute to the urban center as needed in the future. For people looking for more rural towns with populations below 100,000 residents, RetailMeNot recommends seeking out locations in the best states for remote workers, especially Mountain states like Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, and Colorado. Like the best states to work from home, the top cities tend to also have lower tax rates, ideal weather for outdoor recreation, healthy citizens, and several other beneficial characteristics for people working from home.

Here are the 15 best cities for remote workers.

City  Rank Overall work-from-home score Community & safety Housing & living costs Health & weather Metro area

 
Gilbert, AZ      1           91.04 95.24 85.14 92.74 Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ
Cary, NC      2           88.55 98.23 77.93 89.49 Raleigh-Cary, NC
Frisco, TX      3           87.73 97.11 76.88 89.19 Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX
Bellevue, WA      4           87.59 93.23 72.18 97.35 Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA
Fremont, CA      5           86.94 94.00 68.97 97.86 San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA
Carmel, IN      6           86.86 94.75 81.00 84.83 Indianapolis-Carmel-Anderson, IN
Thousand Oaks, CA      7           86.71 95.99 71.80 92.34 Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, CA
Centennial, CO      8            86.21 90.13 79.52 88.98 Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, CO
Torrance, CA      9            85.38 92.23 67.10 96.80 Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA
Olathe, KS     10            85.32 94.28 79.22 82.48 Kansas City, MO-KS
Henderson, NV     11            85.11 84.95 87.49 82.90 Las Vegas-Henderson-Paradise, NV
Carlsbad, CA     12           85.04 88.52 68.87 97.73 San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA
Roseville, CA     13            84.99 90.48 72.06 92.41 Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom, CA
League City, TX     14            84.97 93.05 79.81 82.04 Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX
Sandy Springs, GA     15           84.02 95.61 69.17 87.29 Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Alpharetta, GA

 

For more information, a detailed methodology, and complete results, you can find the original report on RetailMeNot’s website: https://www.retailmenot.com/blog/best-cities-to-work-from-home.html

live streaming
Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily

How Will Live Streaming Rule 2021 Business Atmosphere

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Video streaming is surpassing all other media in terms of popularity. Streaming trends show that this technology has reached new heights. Internet penetration, the convergence of new technologies and an increasing number of mobile users are the main driving forces behind this trend.

Video accessibility and improvement in video quality make streaming more and more popular among businesses and other organizations.

Live streaming has made an unprecedented leap in 2020 – with lockdowns leading to live events, functions and gatherings to moving online. A study by 99firms shows that 80 percent of the audience would rather watch a live video than read a blog, and video streaming should account for 82 percent of all Internet traffic by 2022.

Even after the pandemic is over, live streaming will still have a role in marketing strategy. Using platforms like YouTube Live, Facebook Live and Twitch is great for broadcasting live Q&As, interviews, product launches and showcases.

Livestream Supports e-Commerce

Live streaming e-commerce is a new medium for online shopping and a new battleground for retailers. As shopping becomes more digitized, livestream commerce is the main way to create a more entertaining, interactive experience that captures consumers’ interest.

However, those who want to sell and market their products online with live streaming will face some challenges. Firstly, it’s rather expensive to produce engaging, high-quality live videos with charismatic people to make the audience want to buy something and keep coming back for more. The live streaming functions currently offered by Instagram, Twitter and Facebook have limited capabilities for e-commerce. Companies will need to be creative to stay ahead of the curve as it becomes more widespread in the next two years.

With live video streaming, e-commerce will earn new sales by going live with their products and performing live event concepts like see-now-buy-now strategies. Going live with products will improve the online shopping experience for end-users, bringing brands and customers into closer contact.

The key trends in e-commerce and marketing you should be aware of are:

-Consumers are more likely to make a purchase after watching online videos.

-Many brands are introducing premium products through live streaming videos because it allows them to demonstrate how the product works and interact with the audience.

Livestream Increases Retail Sales

Live streaming videos benefit retailers by creating more authentic communication with customers, engaging the audience and attracting consumers. Through proper strategies, retailers can also improve their marketing efforts and increase sales by live streaming on social media platforms with influencers’ help.

Key trends to watch in the retail industry:

-Social media advertising is much more affordable compared to traditional platforms.

-Interactive shoppable videos have proven to be more effective in driving sales, increasing the popularity of live streaming in retail.

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Cordes Owen is the CEO of Bake More Pies. 

If you want to learn more about live streaming and how it can benefit your company, visit www.bakemorepies.com.
retailers
Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily

Retail: The 5 Big Challenges to Overcome in 2021

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New technologies are adapting to consumer aspirations and their new demands, some triggered by the Covid-19 health crisis. In this context, what are the new challenges for retailers? How does one adapt to meeting these challenges and succeed in standing out from the competition? Here’s an overview of the 5 major challenges to overcome in retail.

Playing the proximity card

As travel has become more difficult since the Covid-19 pandemic, purchasing behavior has developed in favor of proximity. Everyone has been re-centered around their “home” and repositioned around their city, region, or country. This strong demand for proximity has, in fact, led to reconsidering points of sale as vectors of reasoned consumption.

With a broader vision, stores with local stock are able to juggle physical and digital commerce thanks to e-booking. This definitely classifies the point of sale as a phygital approach.

Diversify offers and promote quality products

From the supply perspective, the principle of marketplaces is developing more and more. With a greater diversity of products, retailers can respond more broadly to the needs of their customers: either with their own products or through a partner catalog. Be cautious, however, and avoid confusing customers by working with questionable or suspicious sites.

Furthermore, well-being is taken into account, pushing consumers to look for quality and eco-friendly or healthy products. This direction implies a policy of promoting quality offers, both in terms of navigating vendor sites, as well as the in-store experience.

Make the case for societal commitment

The aim here is for companies to:

-show that they favor “made in France” items,

-talk about their donations to works and associations, or their social and environmental commitment, as Nature & Découvertes does through its foundation;

-demonstrate their willingness to act in an eco-responsible manner: for example, by consolidating purchases to promote greener logistics, or by using carriers until the last kilometer capable of recycling old equipment when installing the new.

Caring for customer relationships

While the evolution of the health crisis remains unpredictable, customer loyalty has become a major issue for retailers. What was once simple to implement through almost equivalent systems becomes more complicated when wanting to stand out.

Benefits remain a loyalty tool but must be complemented by a notion of consumer ownership and involvement. To do this, retailers can:

-refine their business actions according to the consumers’ profiles;

-promote sponsorship within the network of retailers;

-allow customers to choose their rewards;

-set up one-on-one, personalized loyalty programs.

When it comes to loyalty today, it is essential to move away from the traditional “earn-and-burn” methods of awarding points to be transformed into benefits in order to move towards a more personalized relationship with customers.

Focus on support and facilitate purchases

At the point of sale, it is essential to help the customer choose their products and to offer them the same flexibility as online sales. Online ordering is a real comfort solution for the customer. It allows them to reserve a product on-site or from a distance, makes it available to the customer in the store or in another point of sale, informs the customer of its availability in real-time, or even have it delivered at home.

It is even possible now to link the order to a meeting with an advisor via appointment. This one-on-one meeting helps support the client in their purchase, and for the brand to work on the upsell and cross-sell axes.

In the same way, offering tutorials or workshops can also be beneficial, as Leroy Merlin does through its DIY tutorials, or Cultura teaches in its creative workshops.

Ultimately, online sales will always be successful in the end. However, a brand that is not a pure e-commerce player can gain notoriety by capitalizing on the synergy between physical and simple digital commerce. In any case, there must be no gap between the two modes of purchase, and access to offers should be totally consistent between the different sales methods.

Retailers that are able to meet customer expectations and awareness are sure to gain a commercial advantage over their competitors. Note that today’s small businesses have the same tools as the big brands to position themselves, such as vendor sites, click & collect, and e-booking. They are therefore likely to play an essential role in these new consumption patterns, demanding product quality, eco-responsibility and traceability.

This article originally appeared on GenerixGroup.com. Republished with permission.

retailers
Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily, Warehousing

The Future of Retail – Is It Touchless?

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Covid has made all of us more aware of what we touch in public spaces. And, as health concerns over Covid have now been with us for many months, new behaviors have become ingrained habits that are probably here to stay.

It’s no use trying to swim against this tide. Every retailer must take a fresh look at how their customers prefer to shop and make it easy for them to do so. Or they will risk losing their customers to competitors who give them what they want.

For most businesses that means an increasingly digital and multi-channel operation.

Pure play digital retailers have had the advantage in our new Covid world. They offer the ultimate touch-free solution and have established fulfillment routes, although some have struggled to cope with huge volume increases. High sales during the pandemic period have helped Amazon double their net profit this year to $5.2 billion and the recent Quarter 2 sales have been higher than the Christmas quarter of 2019.

Most digital-only retailers consider their biggest challenge to be the “final mile”, as it represents the most expensive and complex part of their process. If you turn this view on its head and look from the customer perspective, the biggest issue with online shopping is the first mile of the returns process. Whether you’ve got to go to a parcel office or designated drop off point, it’s just not as easy as ordering your items. Smart retailers are increasingly offering a returns pickup service. Physical retailers have the advantage of stores that create the opportunity for a convenient returns process for their customers and the possibility of an extra sale from the additional footfall for the retailer.

However, retailers that started with physical stores tend to be on the back foot when it comes to touchless and digital customer journeys. Some physical retailers have buried their heads in the sand and hoped the fad for touchless would pass over. These businesses are now struggling to remain viable as online research and purchase is an increasingly attractive customer proposition. Most store-based businesses offer a touchless route, however, yet only the sharpest have a truly integrated operation that allows customers to seamlessly move between multiple channels; whether instore, online, or via a call center.

So where should retailers focus to align themselves with entrenched touchless trends?

1. Payment instore is moving away from the system of customers queuing to pay a colleague at a till. The use of contactless cards, rather than chip and pin or cash, has become customers’ preferred option. It saves operational time instore as the payment itself is quicker and it reduces time spent handling hard cash.

But the real transformation in payment has been because of technology that helps skip the line altogether. Self-checkout tills have been around for years and are now being superseded by customer apps that enable self-scan and payment from your own device or a handset. Retailers are now juggling with a mix of payment methods that require new instore furniture, a revised front-end layout and different colleague cover models. The customer experience you deliver during payment creates a lasting impression that will influence where the customer chooses to shop in the future.

2. Digital fulfillment via stores, whether kerbside collection or picking up a Click and Collect parcel instore, is a moment of truth that really matters to busy customers expecting an efficient experience. It took me 45 minutes to retrieve my grocery order by kerbside collection at one store, and I couldn’t just drive away as I had already paid for my shopping. The store’s errors were not having enough colleagues to match the number of booked pickups and the collection point being a long way from their storage bay, so it took ages to wheel the order over. They sound easy to avoid, yet these seemingly simple to solve problems happen more often than you’d hope. Follow the simple rules of match your resource to the order numbers, keep the storage and collection points close to minimize travel time, and make sure your colleagues are trained on your process and you’ll drive both online and instore sales

3. Map all your customer journeys and make sure there aren’t any missing. For returns, for example, does the customer have multiple options or are you restricting them to just returning to one physical location? Many retailers have realized they need new customer journeys and Covid has spurred them on to make changes in weeks that were previously under consideration for months and even years. Don’t get left behind because there will always be a competitor willing to look after your customers better than you do.

4. Review every stage of every journey and check it is smooth for your customers and as efficient as possible for your operation. It is likely that you will have work to do to integrate your physical and digital routes, which is a driver for digital investment. KPMG’s research over the pandemic period for its Enterprise Reboot report found that 59% of executives say the pandemic has created the impetus to accelerate their digital transformation.

5. If you invest in technology to help your touchless journey, whether that is new kiosk payment or RFID stock systems to reduce counts instore and help you publish accurate stock numbers to customers shopping online, make sure you consider how your operating model needs to flex to accommodate the technology. For example, adding self-checkout tills reduces the cover needed on traditional tills, yet you must decide the model you will use to support customers at self-checkout tills when they need help. Dodgy scales, systems that can’t cope with coupons and difficult to use customer interfaces all drive increased requirement for colleague interventions and annoy customers. Consider too, how you target and incentivize your store teams to make sure they drive the right behaviors. If helping a customer with an online order doesn’t help towards a team’s sales target or returns are netted off the daily sales total, the store team is unlikely to go out of their way to make things easy for the customer.

Touchless retail is already here. How you adapt to it and evolve your operation as customer habits and preferences continue to change will determine how successful you are.

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Article by Simon Hedaux, founder and CEO of Rethink Productivity, a world leading productivity partner which helps businesses to drive efficiency, boost productivity and optimise budgets. For more information see https://rethinkproductivity.co.uk/