In recent weeks, two major retailers have announced initiatives to expand their use of handheld devices by in-store sales associates:
Apple, perhaps the company best known for roving sales associates who can both help you find what you need and then handle check-out away from the register, is finally replacing its Windows-based POS handhelds with (finally) iPod Touch units.
Home Depot will spend about $60 million on more than 10,000 handheld units that are designed to help associates perform mobile checkouts, process payment cards, stock shelves and make phonecalls, according to BusinessWeek.
In the case of Home Depot, providing customers with the most accurate and up-to-date information is the primary objective for the new units:
By clicking an icon on the screen, Home Depot workers can tell customers when an out-of-stock item will be replenished. Or employees can use the device to call other Home Depot stores and ask them to hold merchandise, said Cara Kinzey, an information technology senior vice president at Home Depot.
According to John Stelzer on his blog Retail Rewired, mobility is on the minds of many retailers this year:
"Mind you, they weren’t just looking to use mobility for mobility’s sake. Rather, they were looking to leverage mobility as a convenient, real-time access vehicle to put the power of holistic inventory, order, and shipment visibility and cross-channel order management at the fingertips of their employees and their customers.
"On the other hand, these retailers were looking to use the mobile device and a retailer-branded mobile application to put very similar capabilities in the consumer’s hands. In this model, the consumer could find nearby stores in the retailer’s chain with available inventory; easily see associated items, alternate items, specials, etc.; place an order for the desired items; and arrange for in-store pickup, shipment to a designated address, or any combination of available fulfillment options."
Retailers are looking for ways to eliminate the barriers that lie between initial customer interest and purchasing the product. By giving sales associates instant access to timely information, they can handle questions that shoppers need answered before they'll whip out the plastic.
For example... Need to know if this item is on sale? Wondering if another store has this item in a different size? Looking for the matching item? These are other questions can be instantly answered by a roving associate equipped with a smart handlheld.
But why stop there? One of the most important questions on the mind of shoppers is: "Can I get this cheaper from a nearby competitor?" Today, using Krillion technology, retailers can easily answer that question, giving the shopper one less reason to leave the store sans product.
We've been piloting this technology with Sears, which has installed in-store kiosks that let associates prove to customers that the Sears price is indeed the best price around. Apparently, it's a very popular customer-service feature because our servers provide local price-check lookups for Sears hundreds of times every day.
Sears is not alone. In fact, a look at our server logs reveals that many of the top retailers are pinging Krillion for instant (and real-time) competitor price checks on particular products. Just this week, we've seen thousands of visits from many of the other national and regional retailers (such as Best Buy, HH Gregg, Home Depot and Walmart), as well as numerous local retailers looking to price-match the big national storefronts.
Perhaps more of them should put this feature in the hands of their increasingly well-equipped sales associates? Using the Krillion API, it's easy to integrate real-time local product availability into a store kiosk, handheld device or website.
Email me if you'd like to learn more.
