Retail isn’t the first industry that springs to mind when you think of hybrid working. However, it was one of the industries, along with hospitality, that was so seriously impacted by the pandemic, with likely long-term effects in terms of shifting customer expectations and behaviors.
While we are no longer required to keep indoors, there are significant lessons that can be learned from this experience to promote sustained growth. It has been more than two years since non-essential retailers were forced to move their entire operations online.
The first step is to make long-term plans for decreased high street foot traffic. Even before the pandemic, the high street was in decline, but lockdowns and other factors have prevented the expected resurgence. In fact, according to research from retail experts Springboard, total UK high street foot traffic was down 17% at the halfway point of the year (compared with pre-pandemic levels in 2019).
Although the customer experience is no longer just limited to brick-and-mortar establishments, COVID-19 exponentially increased that trend with a persistent rise in e-commerce. According to a KPMG survey, nearly four in five consumer and retail leaders (78%) expected to increase their investments in e-commerce or digital sales platforms in 2022, and a similar percentage (77%) was considering customer-centric technology, like chatbots and dedicated websites.
However, not only customer-facing technology is undergoing significant updates. Retailers may rethink their entire hiring strategy with the appropriate technologies. Why should staff be centralized in a small number of sites if customers can interact with the brand, access customer services, and purchase goods from anywhere?
One big box retailer we work with is internationally recognized this early on. Previously focusing its head office in a small number of cities, it is now essentially location-agnostic to draw in a larger talent pool. Retailers may create collective workforces anywhere in the world by utilizing technologies like desktops as a service (DaaS) and supporting collaboration tools.
The way that customers’ expectations of retailers have altered also reflects this. According to a global study by AI company Nuance, most customers (58%) think they’ll continue to engage in more digital contacts than they did before the pandemic, with ease and speed being two of the biggest advantages.
Retailers can gain by providing needed customer services through the most popular channels at a lower cost because workers usually work from home and hybrid working becomes the standard across industries.
This is particularly important in the context of the rising expense of living in today’s society. Retailers are likely to feel the effects of this as energy, food, and raw material prices continue to rise. Retailers must make sure they’re set up to deliver the best margins by minimizing their overheads since consumers are being forced to think about how they prioritize spending their income as inflation rises.
Change in the stories is being pushed by more than just retail employees who work in a hybrid position. Tesco even created a flexible workspace for customers to use while they are in the store using extra space in one of its stores. This is a particularly rare instance of a traditional grocery store investing in partnerships to develop new business models to suit changing customer behavior. This is a creative move on Tesco’s part and may mark the beginning of retail spaces that are altered to enable more than just the shopping experience, incorporating the “new normal” of hybrid working into customer visits to stores.
The retailers who succeed in the race for innovation will be the ones who succeed in the race for growth, regardless of whether that means discovering new ways to engage customers or developing new revenue sources. Retailers may achieve both goals by embracing hybrid working, attracting the finest personnel, and cutting operating expenses to retain profitability. Consumer confidence has been severely impacted by the retail industry’s uphill battle and headwinds in the shape of inflation and cost-of-living increases following a pandemic. But it can weather this unpredictable storm by making the correct technological and, more importantly, creative investments.
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