Retail Is Still Key

By Chris King, Senior Director, Product Marketing, Oracle Communications

As wireless services and devices proliferate and become more complex, more service providers are opening phone stores or expanding their retail arms to capitalize on this strong revenue driver and vital customer service channel. However, many providers are quickly realizing that retail channels bring added operational challenges to the mix. For this reason, technology to support retail operations has become a hot topic in recent months.

Despite the popularity of online shopping, most consumers still want to visit a store to “test drive” a phone. In fact, 75 percent of consumers, according to a recent survey by Accenture, want to visit a retail store when buying communications-related products and services. The problem is that the experience is not always what they hope. In the same survey, 30 percent of consumers said their experience in a wireless retail store was fair or poor, and only 11 percent rated it as excellent. In another survey, JD Power & Associates found that one out of every four customers who enters a mobile phone store intending to make a purchase leaves empty-handed. There is clearly more work to be done.

Let’s look at some of the most common customer complaints:

• Long wait times – Typical in-store wait time for wireless customers is 30 minutes, with an additional 30 minutes to complete the transaction.
• Inaccurate product information – Once they get to talk to a sales person, consumers want a knowledgeable person who can quickly and confidently answer their questions and demonstrate product functionality.
• Products not available – Customers are frustrated when the phone that they want to purchase is not available – and even more frustrated when the sales person can’t tell them when it will be back in stock – or if another nearby store may have it in stock.
• Lack of cross-channel integration – Customers desire a consistent experience no matter the communication channel. If they start a transaction in one channel but decide to continue it in another, they don’t want to go through all the steps again

With that in mind, what can wireless providers do to address these pain points? Here are just a few strategies:

• Deploy mobile point-of-sale (POS) devices with an integrated, user-friendly interface to increase store floor coverage and decrease transaction and wait times.
• Create user-friendly systems with simple work flows to reduce training time and free employees to spend more time becoming knowledgeable about new products.
• Install an inventory system with real-time sales and stock information and company-wide visibility to avoid out-of-stocks or overstocks and enable sales representatives to complete sales even if items are out of stock, by locating them at a nearby store.
• Integrate billing and CRM across channels to deliver a consistent, seamless experience.

This is only a high-level overview, but the point is that there are many things wireless providers can do to improve retail delivery and ultimately drive customer satisfaction and revenue.

My colleague. Rachel Staniland, will address this topic at the B/OSS Expo in Washington, D.C. next month. Check out her panel titled, “The Changing Face of Retail,” where she will join Veenod Kurup from Cox Communications; Jeff Auman, Sprint Prepaid Group Vice President of Sales; Boost Mobile and B/OSS Editor Tim McElligott to discuss best practices for service provider retail delivery. The session will take place Friday, June 11, at 9 a.m. ET.

And feel free to let me know what you think with a comment below. What are you doing to improve retail operations? Do you face other challenges than those I mentioned here?

Chris King is senior director of communications industry marketing for Oracle Communications.   He is responsible for driving Oracle Communications’ marketing and sales demand activities in the industry.  Previously, he was the senior director of worldwide telecommunications markets for BEA Systems.