Retail remains primed to deliver a more convenient, fast and impressive checkout customer experience. More seamless payments, self check-out, systems that recognize you and provide digital receipts. In fact, the digital receipt might be your new ticket to interacting with customers. This allows retailers to take one step into unified commerce that relates to customers better digitally.

In this series, professionals at Shoptalk discuss the most pressing issues facing their industries today. Write your own #Shoptalk16 post here.

Email as Inconvenient

What this means is the end of the cashier asking for your Email or phone number. Retailers are starting to realize that this annoys customers and increases churn and most consumers will not give their real Email or phone number.

With the advent of the cloud and IoT, any practice that slows or interferes with the customer experience will be banned as its ineffective for mobile natives and cloud consumers. There is nothing quite like giving a customer a poor checkout experience that they will relate to their impression of your store and your brand. Those valuable random walk in customers, need to be retained. 

Let's face it, as citizens in the information economy, we are bombarded with Emails, our wallets are full of used loyalty cards, and as consumers and especially if you are a Millennial, you want more seamless ways of interacting with brands; no more repetitive and tactless retail marketing bureaucracy and stone-age marketing tactics.

Therefore, for retail to be truly customer centric, it has to adopt customer experience best practices, and that’s really where we come in.

Why Email at Checkout Is Costly

Increasingly, we are going to see new quicker and more mobile ways of catching your interest and the consumer's attention. Retailers need to recognize the inconvenience asking a customer for anything causes a pain point that will be a deal breaker for many new customers. This is not the way to grow your Email list. 

  1. Email does not solve the cost issue. You will need to print a receipt at some point so all email promises  to do is reduce paper usage.
  2. If you want to save paper, there is a better way, why not just use an app such as (AllReceipts).
  3. Email receipts do not guarantee you will actually get the email of the shopper standing in front of you. Many people have and give fake emails.
  4. Forcing emails from shoppers as part of a transaction is reducing your customer centricity and asking them for too much, added time. 
  5. Giving up emails at the POINT of transaction feels artificial and feels like a sales gimmick. It's an outdated loyalty marketing tactic. 
  6. Asking for Email slows down the process, increasing line up wait tmes, irritating customers further down the line.

The Checkout is the Last Impression

Thus for retailers it's becoming imperative to improve the customer experience of the check-out line since this is the relevant and lasting impression a consumer will have of your store. What in 2016, are we short on? It's time.

Retail stores that do not adopt more seamless retail technology run the risk of being left behind in the omnichannel push for customer-centricity. If mobile in retail is the new normal, it's imperative shoppers are not asked for their Email or phone number after they have already given you business with a purchase.

Star Cloud Services has the unique ability to transform shopping receipts into valuable digital transaction data. With that data, retailers gain deeper insights that help them better engage, relate to and retain repeat shoppers.

 

The Solution

Since Email capture at the POS is failing badly and losing retail some customers, as well as often leading to dismal open rates, it’s a practice that is in the process of going extinct. What will take its place?

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Is giving an Email or phone number to a retail brand at checkout inconvenient and annoying for you as a consumer? I’d like to hear your opinions.