
Today, retail stores aren’t just points of sale where people go to buy products: they are true entertainment experiences, which can be enhanced with new technologies. There are several POS trends that reflect this reality, and they are extremely useful for attracting and surprising customers.
Using these tools will certainly help you win over consumers and boost your business’s sales. On top of that, it will give you a competitive advantage in the market. Shall we take a look at some of them? Keep reading!
1. CRM integration
The main tool used to implement the sophisticated strategies of relationship marketing is customer relationship management software (CRM). Its premise is to collect and use detailed information about every interaction a consumer has with the company.
Broadly speaking, this software is used to collect data from every company touchpoint. These applications make it possible to track profit per customer, detect dissatisfaction before the customer leaves the company, or improve sales of a specific product.
Benefits of integration
Specifically, CRM software integrated with the POS offers the following benefits:
- automation of the entire sales force, allowing salespeople to track customer preferences more accurately;
- call center integration, used to build customer profiles and provide scripts that help salespeople answer customer questions or suggest new purchases;
- marketing automation, helping marketers analyze customers’ purchase history to design campaigns and measure results;
- online sales, to manage product catalogs, shopping carts, and credit card purchases;
- online configurators, to guide customers through the process of ordering custom-built products;
- online analytics and marketing, used to track shoppers’ online activity and offer merchandise based on past behavior, as well as enabling more effective email marketing strategies.
Since knowing your customers enables smart, meaningful interactions, these programs offer a strong value proposition not only for business profits but also for how your audience perceives you.
2. Analysis of in-store interaction data
Technologically speaking, POS trends have reached truly high levels of precision. Have you heard of foot traffic counters? It’s estimated that deploying this technology can increase your store’s conversion rate by 1% right after installation, since the sales team becomes more alert based on the data collected.
In addition, stores build up a history of information that is essential for planning. Measuring the impact of promotional activities becomes easier and, with the power of machine learning, historical data can also be used for predictive analytics.
Smart CRM software, in turn, can map movement inside the store. Having just a foot traffic counter is no longer enough. Where do customers not go in the store? What do they visit? How much time do they spend looking at the items on display? Which products are highly attractive? Does the store’s layout make the most of the space? Do you have too many cold zones in the store?
All of these questions can be answered with this technology. Video analytics can also be combined with other resources, such as Wi-Fi, to obtain unique data. Combining customer behavior with product movement gives retailers tons of information.
The investment required to obtain this valuable data is very low compared to the return. Many SaaS (Software as a Service) providers are available on the market and can get you up and running quickly at minimal cost.
3. Augmented reality
In one of the new POS trends, everything happens in smart interactive spaces. This is the era of augmented reality, in which the shopping experience and shopping behavior are also shaped by holographic features.
Augmented reality makes it possible to overlay digital elements onto physical reality in real time. Digital elements, that is, computer-generated formats — images, text, animations, videos, 3D models — anything we can find on a website, we can associate with a real-world object and thus augment it.
The basic process is simple: we install a mobile app that identifies objects in physical reality through the device’s camera. Once it does, it overlays the digital elements onto physical reality.
One of the most popular examples is the famous game Pokémon Go. It cross-references the geographic locations of all the characters in the game and then overlays them onto the camera image. This overlay creates the illusion of distance and that those digital creatures are actually there.
An example of an application at the POS: a shopper points their phone’s camera at a can of sausages on a supermarket shelf, and a digital panel appears next to it. It might show nutritional information, how much sausage fits into our diet, or even an educational game explaining how sausages are made.
4. E-commerce integration
Retailers have a variety of channel configurations available for selling products. However, in a country like Brazil, it’s quite risky for a manufacturer or brick-and-mortar retailer that already has established processes and points of sale to move 100% of its operations to digital.
This scenario has pushed manufacturers and retailers to adopt a multichannel model, in which multiple sales and distribution channels coexist, seeking to seize the opportunities inherent to each one and/or offset the shortcomings of another.
Looking specifically at e-commerce, adopting it can complement the traditional sales model (with stores and distributors), whether by serving consumers who want the convenience and other advantages of shopping online and aren’t bothered by its limitations (such as having to wait to receive a product), or by helping the company address shortcomings observed in its day-to-day operations.
In short, we are witnessing the emergence of many methods for monitoring customer movement, selling more, and increasing profits. If you don’t want to miss out on these POS trends, subscribe to our newsletter and stay on top of all the latest news!
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