In a crisis, the traditional ways of doing business don’t always work. As we read in our previous blog, within just few months into the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen its split impact on the retail industry; a negative on sales for some and a boon for others (e-commerce front). While people are on a lock down to survive the pandemic, retailers need different strategies to survive Covid19.

Strategies retailers should adopt to continue to serve their customers

Optimizing Delivery & Pickup

Source: supermarketnews.com
  • Flexibility is the key. Now is the right time to introduce curbside pick-up to help keep customers from congregating in stores. Curbside pickup isn’t just a win from a public health perspective; it also gives stores an additional lifeline as they look for ways to sell products without violating physical distancing guidelines.
  • While customers are helping their neighbors by ordering and picking-up essentials for them, retail neighbors can accommodate joint delivery. This also optimizes their resource usage.

Few examples of retailers who have implemented curb-side pick & delivery

Leveraging Social Media to engage customers

Now with an all-digital customer base, retailers must increase their social media presence and engage customers in unique ways.

 

Adopting Digital for Business Sustainability

  • E-commerce retailers can leverage Chatbots to provide online customer services and handle multiple requests simultaneously.
  • For a service-based business like a restaurant or a salon, retailers may consider offering online sales of gift certificates/cards customers so they can treat themselves and redeem it later.

Going digital in the midst of Covid-19

Crowd & Resource Management

The current situation has made it indispensable to maintain social distancing but that shouldn’t affect retail customer service.

Retailers can make use of Mobile POS systems for instant payment and avoid long queues. In hard-hit businesses, such as restaurants, retailers can actively reallocate employees to new and valuable activities, like recovery planning, or even loan them to other companies instead of furloughs or layoffs.

Proper Supply Chain Management

As there is a surge in demand for essential supplies and the virus protection category of products, challenges such as product shortages can lead to missed sales goals and lost revenues. Retailers can utilize an inventory visibility dashboard to track the end-to-end supply chain for selected shortage items.

With an influx of e-commerce orders, warehouse fulfillment is also impacted due to the 6 ft distance rule. So warehouses can’t run in full capacity and the fulfillment of e-commerce orders is running at a reduced output. One of the ways to overcome is to ship from the store.

How Aspire can help?

If your business is affected and you’re wondering how to move forward, don’t worry, Aspire can help you. We’re IT Services Company serving some of the leading retailers around the globe for over a decade.

Our retail experts have devised Covid Crisis Management Solutions that will help you operate in the maximum possible capability under current situation. Take a look at our Retailers’ Covid Recovery Kit.

  1. Store Management –
    1. A store manager override app that can immediately send a signal to the supervisor to approve/reject price overrides or other such requests and act remotely- sometimes this holds up queues for minutes.
    2. Crowd management through –
      1. An online token system
      2. MPOS implementation for queue busting
  2. Strong performance engineering and scalability enhancements for online consumer apps and portals.
  3. A Chatbot for your e-com portal or CSR to manage multiple requests simultaneously.
  4. A lean managed services team to keep your most essential services running and to provide quick results for your immediate technology needs.

Speak to our experts today!