How to accurately predict consumer behaviour? How to guarantee perfect customer service? These questions are a matter of course give many retail professionals sleepless nights, making them more and more likely to use the innovative solutions offered by technology. Key in this respect may be the data collected and detailed statistics, analyses and reports prepared on their basis. Such tools are already successfully used by shop managers in the virtual world. The developers and engineers from Netizens Digital Innovation House also contributed to the digital revolution in the retail industry by creating their original product – MovStat.
“The goals set may be different. Some will want to increase traffic in their shop, while others will focus on converting, improving display or promoting a new product. Whatever the emphasis, each strategy needs to be verified for its effectiveness, as everything ultimately comes down to sales. If you do not analyse the situation on an ongoing basis, you are not sure if what you are doing works,” explains Paweł Herman, International Business Development Manager at Netizens.
explains Paweł Herman, International Business Development Manager at Netizens.
“Every online shop owner bases his strategy on the data he obtains by tracking his customers’ virtual steps. This allows for constant monitoring of important parameters influencing customers’ experience and ultimately their satisfaction. It also provides an opportunity to draw business conclusions in the long term. So it is time to log out to reality, pack your tools and install them in a traditional shop. One such necessary tool is MovStat, which analyzes anonymous traffic and customer behavior data. This system helps in making important business and marketing decisions in the retail sector”Paweł Herman said.
Paweł Herman said.
Cameras and proprietary software
MovStat is a solution based on video streams from cameras that are continuously converted into numbers. The system uses both current CCTV systems and dedicated cameras. Video analysis is supported by other new technologies and uses, among others, machine learning algorithms. The collected data takes the form of statistics, shown in the form of intuitive and pleasing to the eye visualisations. MovStat provides information similar in value to that obtained through Google Analytics and additionally enables sending alerts when the preset KPI values are exceeded. It is software that can be easily integrated with other systems and applications already running in the organization.
Customer journeys under a closer look
Each journey taken by a customer is a source of information. By studying your customers’ behaviour step by step, you will be able to identify trends that are characteristic of their behaviour. MovStat can present to store managers, among other things, the main shopping customer journeys, point out the most popular zones with their products, measure the customer’s interactions with the display and goods, and analyze the queues forming live.
“A quick preview of the conversion is also an added value, both for those in front of and inside the store. The statistics are immediately given on a plate, because they are transferred to the CMS panel available from the browser, without the need to install additional software. All this gives real possibilities to eliminate bottlenecks in the sales process,”
Paweł Herman from Netizens said.
Paweł Herman from Netizens said.
However, this is not the end of the benefits that store managers can derive from this solution. Although the customer is the most important, an employee also plays an important role in the commercial art and this should not be forgotten. It is his commitment to his work that ultimately translates into customer relations. That is why the management of employees’ schedules or employment planning should be carried out using real data. From the analysis of trends in customer behaviour, it can be deduced, for example, what time the rush hours in a given store are. This information should be used as a basis for the scheduling of work, the involvement of more employees on a given day or the opening of additional cash registers at specific times. This last element may not completely eliminate the queues, but it will certainly allow you to prepare for them properly. MovStat will also work in situations that cannot be planned and predicted. The system can send notifications to employees and managers when it detects increased traffic at the cash register.
To sum up, shop managers, having and properly using such precise information, have a chance to better plan shop infrastructure, manage staff, verify the quality of customer service or respond faster and on an ongoing basis to emerging challenges. This is not a retail utopia, but a scenario that can be realised through in-depth analysis. After all, the final evaluation of a visit to the store is primarily composed of the emotions that accompany the customers during their shopping. For customers, the journeys that they make on and the shelves they usually stop at are of particular value and it is always worth keeping this in mind.
Article was created in cooperation with Paweł Herman, International Business Development Manager from Netizens and Bartłomiej Łatka, Sales Director at Euvic IT.
