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Connecting customers to a business seamlessly, from a smartphone to walking through the door, is the drop-everything quandary retailers face in 2015.
In industry lingo it's called omni-channel retailing, and it involves every potential way a customer can interact with a brand. That includes brick-and-mortar, mobile devices, social media, direct mail and even old-school catalogs. “It's not sexy,” Beall's Chief Information Officer David Massey says, “but omni-channel is the state of where retail is today.”
Massey, also a senior vice president at the Bradenton-based retailer, with $1.29 billion in 2013 sales, was part of a Suncoast Technology Forum luncheon panel on emerging technologies held in January. Paul Hoffman, president of Sarasota-based managed IT services firm SouthTech, and PGT Inc. IT Director Terry Mitchell joined Massey on the panel.
Massey opened the discussion with a jarring nugget: Customers who make their first entry to Beall's through a mobile engagement reached 40% this past Christmas season.
Data like that is why Massey has the tech team at Beall's, which celebrates 100 years in business in 2015, making mobile shopping trends a high priority. The department has hosted innovation days, and Massey might set up something like a hackathon to generate more ideas. “We will have to innovate differently,” says Massey, “and be faster and more agile.”
One mobile focus at Beall's is on so-called personal marketing. That's when a business knows where a customer is in a given store, based on smartphone technology, and can instantly zap coupons or offers. Walking past the shoe racks on your way out the door? Here's a coupon to your phone for 15% off.
But even with an overall tech sense of urgency, Beall's, with strong customer satisfaction rankings, will move with caution on that front. To some, personal marketing is more big brother than big sale.
“Customer creepiness is a core concern,” says Massey. “There are numerous examples of how the data has been misinterpreted.”
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