3 Tools Retailers Need to Create Customer-Centric Stores

Experiential retail has taken the industry by storm as one of the best ways to generate more foot traffic. Retailers can cash in on this trend by designating in-space for their customers to relax, unwind, and enjoy a quick bite or beverage. These customer-centric spaces focus on meeting more of the wants and needs of shoppers that come through your doors, improving the customer experience while increasing average spend.

As valuable as they are, they take a certain amount of technological finesse to implement successfully. Here are three tools you need in order to create a customer-centric space in your store:

Flexible Point-of-Sale System

Arguably the single most important tool in your technology toolbox, a point-of-sale (POS) system is a necessity for any successful business. A flexible POS system will be able to handle both your retail sales, as well as any sales from a café or eatery you decide to have in your retail space.

Flexibility will also be important when it comes to the design and implementation of your customer-centric space. If your POS has both retail and restaurant capabilities, it will be much easier to manage a menu, track inventory, and streamline everyday tasks.

Loyalty and Rewards Programs

Once your space is up and running, you’ll want a solid loyalty and rewards program to entice customers to keep coming back. It’s recommended that you award loyalty points by dollars spent, rather than number of visits. This encourages customers to spend more per visit to rack up their points.

For example, each time a customer reaches a certain spend threshold, they can be rewarded with a $5 coffee from the café or a smoothie from a juice bar. Not only does this encourage them to spend more, but it prolongs the time they spend for each in-store visit, giving them more opportunities to browse your products.

CRM and Marketing Automation

Once you have a loyal customer base, make sure you're able to strengthen the relationships you have with them through CRM and marketing automation. This allows you to create personalized offers based on segmented lists of customers pulled from the customer databases in your CRM system.

Using data you’ve garnered from your POS and loyalty program, you can send targeted promotions to customers based on their purchase history. These offers increase the chance that your customers will return to spend more in your store, while also improving the customer experience by tailoring your offers to their tastes.

It takes a certain degree of flexibility for a retailer to adapt to an ever-changing industry. The focus is shifting from the products a retailer offers to the experience a retailer provides. Make sure your technology is flexible enough to help you meet these new customer demands. Not only will you be able to implement a customer-centric space in your store, but you'll be able to maximize its profitability if you have the right tools at your disposal.

Pascal Nicholas is CEO of SalesVu, a cloud-based POS system.