In-store shopping remains the most significant source of retail revenues in the United States. While e-commerce grows as a part of overall retail, traditional in-store sales are where the bulk of the action is. This post is intended for those retailers and retail service providers who,
- Want to make their operations more profitable (more sales at reduced expenses)
- Are looking into unattended retail as a possible sales and revenue channel
If you are evaluating approaches to make your self-service business more profitable, our earlier post might be a good place to start. If more information in adding smart lockers to your retail strategy interests you, check out this post.
The Future Of Retail Is Channel-Less
Even as e-commerce is growing, the flag bearers of e-commerce DTC (direct to consumer) businesses are also looking to expand their brick-and-mortar presence. In parallel, we see local stores ensuring they make use of an online presence to compete with retail chains and e-commerce players.
This suggests that the retail industry’s future lies somewhere between online and offline, or in a combination of all channels – an omnichannel presence.
Unattended Retail – How Does This Affect Your Business?
The outcome everyone is gunning for is CLTV – Customer Lifetime Value. Unattended retail helps you add to your CLTV.
If you are looking to maximize value from your customers, you have to maximize value for them. That includes covering all of their preferences. Retailers are required to provide customers with an experience where the advantages and convenience of in-person and online shopping are made available.
Specifically, from an unattended retail perspective, 85.2% of respondents in a study that surveyed recent unattended retail service users polled ‘yes’ when asked about using this channel in the future.
In addition to value, personalization, and convenient access, the current scenario requires retail experiences to reduce person-to-person interactions. These considerations, along with the expanding preference for self-service retail environments, make providing unattended retail points vital for your retail business.
What Is Required To Add Unattended Retail To Your Sales Channels?
The premise of dispensing has always been unattended retail. Secure machines where merchandise could be stored and sold. Your most rugged and reliable salesperson. Now, it is also about the customer experience and the conveniences that are made available to the customer to enrich their experience.
Dispensing, when done contextually with the right combination of technology, machine, and partner, is a success formula. You should consider unattended retail if you are in the self-service domain.
- Health and Fitness: Vending Fit is equipped with credential-based access and intelligent inventory management to provide real-time reports.
- Automated Retail Stores: IDS smart lockers help retailers provide their customers with Buy-Online-Pick-Up-In-Store and Click and Collect options. They focus on bridging the online and offline experiences without a hitch – from ordering on a mobile app to collecting the ordered item in a controlled environment at a convenient time.
- Manufacturing facilities: IDS enhances staff productivity and offers manufacturing facilities real-time analytics to make data-driven executive-level decisions using iQ Technology, a cloud-based technology as well as an intuitive, convenient software platform.
- Office environments: The office IT dispensing machine from IDS is a straightforward and exciting solution for managing office and IT supply assets. You can save money by minimizing shrinkage from unaccounted for office and IT supplies and enhancing staff productivity by providing resources round the clock.
- Automated Retail Stores: IDS smart lockers help retailers provide their customers with Buy-Online-Pay-In-Store and Click and Collect options. They focus on bridging the online and offline experiences without a hitch – from ordering on a mobile app to collecting the ordered item in a controlled environment at a convenient time.
How To Add An Unattended Retail Experience To Your Store
IDS has the first and last step needed for adding unattended retail to your business channels- our click and collect and BOPIS range of smart lockers.
We make your entry into unattended retail easy. More importantly, it helps drive more customers to your store and more revenues from each customer.
- Enhanced Customer Experience: Our easy-to-use smart lockers are filled with features like contactless operations, cashless payments, ergonomic physical access (all our products are ADA certified), and notifications across channels, including email, phone text, or push notifications.
- Reduced Operational Costs: IDS’ offerings are equally about the software, powered by our in-house developed iQ Technology. Our software tools and applications suite offers everything from inventory management and back-end reporting. We help retailers with more data about their merchandise. This helps reduce operational costs by providing hard data on merchandise consumption. Plus, the dispensing solution uses metrics to plan your purchases and price your products.
- Solving Last-Mile Delivery Challenges: The advantage of having an Amazon Prime membership is more about the free delivery, rather than the binge-worthy content. It is difficult, if not impossible, for brick and mortar retailers to scale up enough to make last-mile deliveries less expensive. Our smart lockers solve this challenge.
Set Up Your Unattended Retail Infrastructure Now With IDS
IDS is equipped to take your business into the unattended retail space. We are here to support you and your organization’s needs. To find out more about our BOPIS solution, or other solutions offered by IDS, give us a call at 1-800-771-4446.
