Well the holiday retail rush is over, but that doesn’t mean that retailers are quite done yet.  There are a number of trends and reports yet to be evaluated, re-evaluated, and improvements that will be tackled all around in preparation for next year.  Add to that the cycle of returns and beginning of the year inventory operations and you can see how many opportunities there are for technical tools to analyze, assess and project business decisions.  That doesn’t quite capture every retail technology advance however.  Many purchases were made from mobile tablets and smartphones, an increasing trend that is becoming simpler and that has been made easier by internet retail giants like Amazon.  There are some problems however that will require more adoption and a bigger technology shift to this very fertile world of mobile retail.  One of those challenges is that most enterprise environments are ill equipped to leverage this switch to mobile.  The infrastructure at large is a call center centric environment, and not mobile-centric.

When you look at what the mobile and tablet changes have introduced, these devices are being used throughout the retail cycle for things like tracking, comparative shopping, communications, social and that list goes on in all kinds of retail situations.  It has absolutely transformed the shopping experience.

[24]7 Inc on retail

We reached out for a discussion on these trends to Kathy Juve, Chief Marketing Officer at [24]7]Inc – A company that works on among other things, cloud, retail, and big data.

“We’re seeing this change in very measurable ways.  For example, where we’re at with on major retailer, we’ve done a whole bunch of integration such as putting chat into their Facebook page.  What happened was that more than 30% of their chat interactions switched to Facebook and were down on their own site.  What that indicates is that fans were actually on the social site more than the retailer’s own site and that also brings in the mobile audience as well.  There is a lot of activity taking place on mobile devices and this is something that can only grow as consumers leverage other channels such as mobile apps and chat.

What we’re enabling the enterprise to do is support customers that have all these channels, that’s because it’s clear that there are multiple devices competing to complete retail tasks.  Today’s connected consumer crosses channels based on their convenience, and they continue that purchase process through multiple channels.  We see that consumers are channel agnostic, and they don’t fit into silos.  So we help the enterprise to be channel agnostic from consumer perspective by setting the infrastructure for web, for speech IDR and for chat.  We help integrate all those together so when a customer comes in on speech or chat, the enterprise knows the context of that engagement so the consumer does not have to start fresh.”

Juve also reflects on how just a year ago, many large companies thought the application of this technology was pushing too far, too fast.   Perhaps that notion was correct for those organizations because this is something that is now being discussed at the C-level throughout the industry.  It is a transformation that is aimed not just on analysis but becoming centered on consumer behavior.  Organizations are realizing that they stand to lose market share if it is not easier to do business with them.  Juve states that there is a new investment cycle going on in technology centered on this customer focus, and that many companies have stated goals to basically eliminate most calls within 5 years.

Big consumer tech shift still lies ahead

It certainly looks like things will be pretty exciting and different just as a consumer in the next 4 to 5 years.  Things like intuitive customer relationships, easy returns, questions, easy support – all of those things tied to mobile, to social, to even gaming will be status quo.  Retailers are getting more and more intelligent with their systems, and that’s especially evident when you look at winners in the game like Amazon.  These retailers are doing more and plan to expand on the way they interact, by leveraging location, smartphone and portable computing into the retail experience.

Juve illustrates how her company is positioned in this giant shift:

“One of the things [24]7 is dedicated to the consumer and how the consumer lives their lives.  We are looking at the way they multi task on devices, the way they shop and take pictures.  The goal is to understand what consumer wants.  We can then take the way that consumer engages in their lifestyle and take it to the enterprise so that enterprise can provide exceptional service and sales.   It just goes to show that Omnichannel is becoming the next generation of customer engagement.  It means the enterprise speaking about the customer and knowing how they want to interact with you.  It’s not just about having multiple channels, it means personalized experiences throughout those channels so the enterprise doesn’t lose track of the consumer and can actually predict what the consumer wants.  That’s where [24]7 uses predictive analytics to predict the actual intent of consumers at any touch point.  That’s important because consumers are coming in and continuing an interaction or starting a new one.  Having knowledge of that interaction means a transaction that is very fast and easy.  This is something that is not only being used in retail, it has many other industries looking at this technology for better, more productive experiences.”

[24]7 is focused on a customer and mobile approach that is really at the cutting edge of what’s going on in our consumer technology world.  There’s always been the enterprise and the user, the enterprise and consumer and all these levels of call centers, email contact and support.  It’s a model that hasn’t exactly worked well.  With today’s app and mobile-centered revolution and more and more purchase relationships taking place through this frontier of technology, it makes sense that a leading strategy would encompass the technology advantage of predictive analytics at scale to better that experience.  That is exactly what is taking place here.  Expect that your holiday shopping experiences will continue to evolve and that pretty shortly the retail experience will almost entirely revolve around your mobile device.

photo credit: urban don via photopinTheeErin via photopin cc