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Has the retail marketplace ever been so volatile?

We've seen the collapse of familiar names, such as Toys R Us UK and electronics chain Maplin, as well as trading warnings over a host of others. Rising rents, employee costs, import prices and Brexit fears all add to the gloomy picture.

But not everyone is falling on hard times. Digital commerce consultancy Salmon reports that 39% of total UK online spend is now made through Amazon and 57% in the US.[1] Of course, this just makes it worse if you're on the losing side of the online giant's march into new markets.

At times like this, retailers can search for a silver bullet ...

Perhaps the answer is to revamp a website, launch a new app or try to

revitalise stores? What about achieving greater efficiencies and reducing prices, yet again?

Many retailers have realised that their most important goal should be to deliver an Omni-channel experience for their customers. But retailers are struggling to make it happen. In December 2017, Multichannel Merchant reported that 87% of retailers agree omni-channel is a critical business function, yet only 8% believe they have mastered it.

In truth, an Omni-Channel experience is hard to create overnight. But a step-by-step approach can work well. In fact, it's the best way if you want to take your executive team, investors, customers and employees with you. Simply look at the following Five areas for retail to conquer. Address any of these, in any order ... and you'll start to see the benefits coming through.

Case StudyRetail and eTail

Rise of smart shopping

Affording the right tech

Reducing costs

Social media storms

Secure data & payments

Top 5 challenges

How can you thrive as a retailer, when stores are struggling, customer loyalty counts for little and Brexit uncertainty casts a shadow, while Amazon seems to be growing relentlessly?

This guide will help to point the way ...

How retail can fight back, delivering richer experiences and boosting sales

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[1] 'Buying Tomorrow: Online retail in the age of the digitally obsessed consumer' (Salmon, 2017 study)

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The rise in smart shopping

Today's customers expect speed, personalisation, control, useful tools and contact — all on their terms. We're living in an age of micro-tasking. Customers want to solve simple things in a couple of words or a few clicks. If this happens in one area of their lives, they figure it should be just as easy when they interact with you.

As our lives become more connected, so do our expectations of customer service. We expect to be able to engage in more natural and intuitive ways – enabled by technology, which some call 'conversational commerce'. It needs to be 24/7 and seamless across multiple channels. You can't afford to go silent at any point

Affording the right tech

It's fine to say 'the customer comes first' — but what if your technology can't keep up with their rising expectations? What if the IT budget won't stretch?

The drive towards digital transformation is unstoppable in virtually every industry and business strategy. But it's not an easy step for retailers with contact centres. How do you add new technology, integrate easily and maintain legacy systems, so your contact centre operations run like a well-oiled machine without it costing the earth?

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Reducing costs

Rising rents, employee costs, import prices and other expenses are hitting profitability. It can feel impossible to improve the customer experience on one hand and yet reduce spending on the other. So how's it possible?

How we help...With Eckoh, you can do more with less — and redirect your skilled resources to more value-added activities.

On the contact centre systems side, as we've mentioned already, our expert Third Party Support could mean you save up to 40% on vendor prices and get a better service too.

Enabling greater self-service for your shoppers is another major opportunity to save. And it's something that many customers want already because it fits with their desire to be in control easily.

Our Self-Service Automated solutions - using Interactive Voice Response (IVR), speech recognition, Natural Language

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3Call Routing, Caller Identification or Self-Service Chatbots - can be effective and allow you to be open 24x7x365.

Chatbots can save money by taking the repetitive, resource-draining activities away from your agents, saving them for more complex queries. Researchers found that 78% of retail customer queries could be answered by bots, with no drop in customer experience.[1]

[1] 'Why Contact Centers Need to Embrace Social Media in 2018' (ICMI, November 2017)

How we help...

Each of your channels needs to be the best it can be ... and you need all of them in your armoury. Tasks should be quick, simple and secure as well as available 24x7x365.

Enabling your customers to channel shift as much as they want is important, as is being able to communicate with thousands of customers anytime, on any device, no matter where they are.

Eckoh’s Omni-Channel solutions enable a seamless customer journey across channels to suit people's fast-moving lifestyles.

Insights will help you understand customers better, so you can upsell and cross-sell more effectively on their preferred channels.

Omni-Channel solutions means that customers can engage with you in their way, on their device and at their convenience.

Whether it’s Live Chat, SMS, Email or Automated, Self-Service IVR, seamless interactions will keep your customers engaged and reduce any desire to shop elsewhere.

How we help...More retailers are discovering they no longer need to replace their infrastructure if they want to innovate. Instead, hand-picked solutions can breathe new life into older systems and deliver dramatic benefits. Cloud-based Customer Engagement tools add layers of capabilities — and make use of the expensive hardware owned by customers themselves. Meanwhile, a Unified Agent Desktop will ensure your agents have everything at their fingertips.

You can free up funds for new tech by replacing expensive vendor support with ultra responsive, 24x7x365 Third Party Support. You may save up to 40%.

Industry ReviewRetail and eTail

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Social media storms

Today's shoppers research online, consult reviews and social media channels before deciding whether, and where, to buy. Customers can be your friend or your worst enemy – depending on the quality of your service and engagement.

According to research shared by ICMI[1], as many as 31% of people will post online after they have had a bad contact centre experience. Of those who complain, 42% expect a response within an hour, 32% within 30 minutes, and 11% expect the reply to be instant.

Secure data and payments

The past 12 months has seen some leading retailers facing media attention for all the wrong reasons – namely around data breaches, card data theft and customer security. All this damages a company's reputation and makes it harder to hold on to customers. After all, 66% of customers would be unlikely to do business with an organisation responsible for exposing financial or sensitive information.

Avoiding these disasters is important and so you’ll likely be considering how best to achieve your PCI DSS compliance to eliminate the risks.

How we help...

The best response is to reassure customers their data is protected and that your company has minimised the risk of any breach.

Using our PCI DSS compliant secure payments solution - CallGuard - along

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If things are going wrong within your contact centre, it's good to know early. After Sales Surveys — used with your phone, web and mobile channels — can tease out whether customers are happy generally or whether problems are starting to surface.

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[1] The Retail Bulletin, March 2018

with patented Audio Tokenisation or automated EckohPAY solutions - means you can be secure in whatever channel you use.

We can even offer the same payment security via Live Chat Pay as well as Alternative Payment methods such as Apple Pay, Google Pay or PayPal.

So, how can you stay on top of your social channels easily? How we help…You need to spot social media problems quickly and intervene fast. Our Social Media Agent lets you see across your social media profiles like Facebook and Twitter — and act before issues go viral.

If you want to listen more widely, then Social Media Monitoring, provides real-time business intelligence across social media, news sites, blogs and forums in more in 160 languages.

Who we work with...

1.4 minutes reduction - in agent handling time per customer for Ideal World with automated Identification and IVR.

Industry ReviewRetail and eTail

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Calling all retailers...Discover more with our eGuides

Eckoh is a global provider of Secure

Payment and Customer Engagement

solutions via our Customer Experience

Portal as well as Third Party Support.

We’ve an international client base and

offices in the UK and US.

We're experts in transforming contact

centre operations by delivering a better

customer experience across every

channel, boosting agent productivity,

reducing operations costs and maximising

payment security. We’ve over 20 years’

experience in contact centre solutions and

organisations rely on us every second of

every day.

About Eckoh... Eckoh has been a PCI DSS Level One

Service Provider since 2010, processing

over £1.5 billion of card payments

annually.

Make Every Contact Centre Experience Satisfying and Secure

Do you want to delight your retail

customers by giving them a more personal,

satisfying and secure contact centre

experience? If so, Eckoh has the solutions:

Customer Engagement

Multi-Channel Self Service

Live Help

PCI Compliance

Operational Solutions.

CallGuard 2018 & 2017

Winner: Payment Innovation of the Year 2017 - Apple Pay

Security & Anti-Fraud Initiative of the Year