The importance of Retail Analytics in enhancing customer experience

What is Retail Analytics?More than ever, customers have become very demanding and the Retail industry is very competitive. Customers ask for comfort, customisation, adaptability, cooperation and flexibility from retailers. Retailers are very keen to keep their customers happy and coming back. They employ Retail Analytics to gain the necessary insights in their customer’s shopping experiences. These insights include information about store traffic, staff planning, conversion ratios and more. This gives retailers a better understanding of their target audience and everything that is happening in their retail location. This allows them to improve decision making and makes their business run more efficiently.

Examples of Retail Analytics

Improving operational performance and customer experience are some of the motives for Retail Analytics. A few examples of how to use Retail Analytics:

• Enhancing customer experience Retail Analytics can help you measure user engagement and better interact and connect with your customers.
• Build streamlined relationships between data, customers and employees Streamlining these relationships will help you react to customer behaviour as it happens.
• Understanding customer’s wants and needs Retail Analytics offers a full view of customer’s wants and needs to create better customer considerate products, marketing and customer service.
• Real-time data Retail Analytics provides a clear view of real-time data in a transparent dashboard that is the base of strategic and operational decision making.

There are many benefits of Retail Analytics including insights into customer behaviour and the customer journey. These insights help you enhance customer experience. On top of this, it provides insights into anticipating demand and other important trends. You will be able to improve and optimise in-store operations. 

Case: How PFM Footfall Intelligence helped retailer ‘De Bijenkorf’

De Bijenkorf is the best-known department store in the Netherlands. They have been a household name for 150 years. The main focus is on a premium shopping experience in the middle, higher and luxury segment.

PFM Footfall Intelligence, a company specialised in people counting and related data science, offers a counting technology for conversion calculation, insight into the number of visitors per floor and an analysis of data trends. This way De Bijenkorf has real-time insights into the total number of visitors and the total number of visitors per floor. The website of De Bijenkorf displays a ‘crowded’ meter that customers can have a look at and see how busy it currently is. They can use this information to decide what time is best to visit the store is.

Currently, during the corona crisis, the counting systems provided by PFM also closely monitors the maximum number of visitors to ensure safety at all times.