Effective communication plays a crucial role in the success formula for businesses of all shapes and sizes. Brick-and-mortar retailers are no exception.
In the brick-and-mortar retail industry, communication between headquarters (HQ) and those at the store level is especially critical. Retail communication influences everything: compliance levels, employee engagement, the in-store customer experience, and overall store performance. It also allows the big ideas from the top to make their way to store teams, ensuring directives are effectively communicated, executed, and followed.
On the other hand, lacking organizational communication can have significant negative implications for retailers, from frustrated store employees to missed or misinterpreted planograms. Compliance becomes difficult to achieve and stores fail to reach their potential. Revenue is directly impacted, and both merchandising and marketing execution run the risk of not resonating with local customers.
Fortunately, the right tools and processes can help brick-and-mortar retailers strengthen team communication and, in turn, maximize retail performance.
5 Ways to Enhance Brick-and-Mortar Retail Communication
Brick-and-mortar retailers looking for ways to ensure effective communication between corporate management and frontline employees should:
1. Plan with intelligence.
Management teams that have full visibility into their stores can take an informed approach to strategizing, planning, and executing at the local level. Having accurate, store-specific information, local data, and a dedicated communication platform allows retail leaders to understand why and how each store is unique—including everything from layout and fixtures to inventory and customer behavior. With those insights, brand leaders can rest assured their messaging will resonate locally while generating and communicating detailed plans as efficiently as possible.
2. Execute with precision.
Strategic use of physical retail space is critical for gaining and maintaining a competitive edge, and retail leaders rely on stores to bring that vision to life. Using an in-store experience management solution like Optimum Retailing (OR), brand leaders can take that vision and provide clear direction to stores for execution to ensure compliance. What’s more, features like Automated Photo Compliance make achieving compliance easier than ever for both management and employees on the floor.
3. Foster a culture of brand ambassadors.
Optimizing retail operations begins with optimizing employee engagement. Employees who have clear direction from management and understand what is expected of them tend to be more engaged than those who don’t—and engaged employees are significantly more likely to prioritize meaningful customer engagement, which can lead to increased brand loyalty. Empowering the frontline begins with promoting open communication and creating an environment of trust, transparency, and clarity of expectations.
4. Increase productivity.
Relying on multiple platforms to communicate with stores can be inefficient and time-consuming for store employees, who are tasked with sorting through messages, prioritizing direction, and communicating back to management when tasks have been completed. With the right retail technology, messages and direction are clear, streamlined, and timely—ultimately leading to greater productivity, a reduction in non-sellable hours, and stronger store performance.
5. Maximize the customer experience.
Consumer habits have changed in recent years, with many customers favoring online shopping and spending less time in brick-and-mortar stores. However, physical stores add a personal element to the customer experience that can’t be matched online. As retailers and store employees continue to navigate changes in consumer behavior—and evolve to provide a personalized and impactful customer experience—ensuring employees are armed with up-to-date messaging and information is essential to delivering an impactful experience that keeps customers coming back.
Improving Retail Communication with the Right Technology
Having the right tools for retail communication can propel an organization forward, helping align teams in locally executing a brand vision. Strengthened organizational communication is therefore becoming a cornerstone of retail strategy, particularly as the localization of visual merchandising and strong compliance rates are becoming table stakes for competitive brick-and-mortar retailers.
OR offers retailers a powerful platform that drives visibility, engagement, and compliance, all while integrating with internal employee management systems and third-party apps such as SAP and Oracle. System integration enables retailers to streamline data and insights, capturing them in one place along with planograms, store audit information, and behavior insights on shopper traffic patterns and customer engagement.
By prioritizing local communication, management teams and those at the store level are empowered with critical information that allows them to be nimble, agile, and able to deliver a superior and localized customer experience. Schedule a demo for a firsthand look at how OR helps leading brick-and-mortar retailers improve planning, communication, and compliance—and maximize retail performance as a result.
