Experiencing a surge in your customer base is an excellent turn of events for your retail business. After all, having more foot traffic in your stores will result in higher profits and more opportunities for growth. However, many stores fail to plan appropriately for a boost in retail traffic, which can have negative results for your brand.
Period sales and major holidays can bring in additional traffic to your brick-and-mortar store. But, if you’re not prepared to handle it, you can lose the chance to increase your profits. With a surge in customers, your staff might become overwhelmed and end up delivering a poor customer experience. Your store layout might not be set up to scale for more visitors.
Fortunately, there are several strategies you can implement to manage increased traffic and take advantage of eager buyers. Here’s why you should address managing traffic flow and some things your retail store can do to provide its shoppers with the best possible experience.
Why Retailers Should Manage Their Foot Traffic
Instead of simply letting customers and workers fend for themselves when Black Friday or some other major event arrives, it’s a good idea to consider some strategies for managing your store’s foot traffic. Here are several reasons why this will pay off for your store:
1. Higher Customer Retention Rate
Customers don’t like crowds or having to wait in long queues. If you can make your store, feel less cluttered and bust those queues, they will be more likely to return as repeat customers.
2. More Overall Sales
By managing your foot traffic efficiently, you create an environment that is less frantic. Customers will feel more encouraged to explore your store and make additional purchases since they won’t have to invest time standing in a checkout line.
3. Improved Brand Image
A well-managed retail store won’t be kept a secret for long. People talk in person and online about their shopping experiences, good and bad. As you create a positive customer experience, this will improve your brand’s overall image.
4. Increased Operational Efficiency
When you properly handle foot traffic, this contributes to your store’s operational efficiency. Staff is able to allocate more time to providing quality customer service instead of reacting to crises or dealing with massive queues.
10 Strategies for Managing Increased Retail Traffic
Now that you understand the benefits of focusing on scaling your efforts in your store, here are some strategies for dealing with those crowds when they show up:
1. Enhance Your Inventory Management
During periods of increased store traffic, it’s critical that you have the right products in stock to meet increased demand. To prepare, your business should enhance its inventory management processes. For example, you can use RFID tags and a robust inventory management system to inject real-time visibility to avoid stockouts.
2. Optimize Your Store’s Layout
Having a well-organized store layout can be the difference between creating smooth traffic flow and frustrating your customers with bottlenecks. Be sure to periodically analyze your retail store’s layout so you can identify areas of potential congestion and create clear signage and pathways for your customers.
3. Hire Seasonal or Temporary Staff
During expected increases in customer traffic or peak seasons, your regular staff might have trouble keeping up. By bringing on some extra help, you can offer them some much-needed support and give your customers the prompt service they expect and deserve. You may even establish regular relationships with temporary staff, so you won’t have to re-train them every time they come on board.
4. Provide Additional Staff Training
Speaking of training, ensuring your staff has the technical and customer service skills it needs to handle increased demand can make a world of difference. For example, you can train them to make maximum use of your POS system and handle various customer service challenges.
5. Rely on an Efficient POS System
You can keep your store’s checkout lines moving swiftly and enhance the overall customer experience by using an efficient point-of-sale (POS) system. Such a system will accept and process modern digital payments faster, which include various credit cards, digital wallets, and QR codes.
6. Use Mobile Retail Carts
When your store gets more customers than normal, you need to think outside the box. Offering customers alternative checkout options and product lookups can reduce queues and crowding. For example, mobile retail carts stationed throughout the store allow customer service reps to help customers and complete purchases from anywhere in the store.
7. Implement a Queue Management System
A queue management system for retailers is a cloud-based system that efficiently manages a store’s customer queues. It directs customers to the most appropriate and next available retail counter, reducing wait times and offering a better overall customer experience.
8. Show Digital Signage
While waiting in long queues can be discouraging, one thing people dislike is not knowing how long they will have to wait to complete their checkout. Give your customers the information they desire with digital signage, letting them know approximate wait times from certain points.
9. Engage and Entertain Your Customers
Your customers won’t notice that the crowds have increased or they are experiencing longer wait times if you can distract them. Do so by offering something interesting or engaging to capture their interest. For example, you can play video content in the line queues to reduce the perceived wait time.
10. Consider Self-Serve Kiosks
Some customers love them, and some hate them — self-serve kiosks have become commonplace in big box and grocery stores. While having these in your store doesn’t allow your staff to deliver personalized service, this option can reduce queues during times of heavy traffic and free up your staff for other matters.
The retail business is highly competitive, so your store needs to capitalize on every opportunity to serve willing customers and make a sale. When you get increased traffic to your store due to holiday seasons, periodic sales, or product trends, you need to be ready. Having the right strategies and technology solutions in place will keep your store running like a well-oiled machine, boosting your brand’s reputation and your bottom-line results.
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