Touchless Experience: A New Era Of Retail
Since the outbreak began, consumers started supporting social distancing. Their shopping behaviour along with spending pattern has also taken a jump overnight. They now intend to buy as much online or may be from a distance.
And with all this coming around, it is observed that post-lockdown, shoppers will seek a fully digitized shopping experience, and brands will need to speed up to meet this demand. The good news is that some brands have already tapped into it and we see more brands embracing the omnichannel experience for their consumers.
As people return to stores, many will be fearful of pushing shopping carts, picking up something that has come in contact with others, and punching the buttons on card readers.
Therefore, moving forward consumers will only engage with brands that explicitly show they care — putting safety and good hygiene practices at the centre.
This is the reason store owners have started bringing safety measures into their experiences, such as social distancing (restrictions in the number of people entering in and shopping) hoardings emphasizing the need to maintain space between each other, reduced store hours and regular sanitisation points, etc.
Temperature checks are made mandatory. It doesn’t matter whether you are a staff, customer or delivery agent, if you walk through the doors, you will be screened to pass the checkpoint. The measures are meant to look for abnormal symptoms of shoppers.
Cleanliness, hygiene along with hand sanitizers will be the new norm in shopping places. There will be sanitizers made available everywhere you go. Regular self-sanitization, use of mask and gloves is important. Cleaning has pick up the pace in shopping centres that remain open with keen attention paid to shopper’s and staff touch points such as door handles and faucets along with intense leaning of high trafficked areas.
The upgraded safety and hygiene measures are in place and stores are once again ready to offer you safe shopping experience. Contactless shopping is vital to slow the spread of the disease — to enable this, brands are leveraging the best of best technologies like Virtual Queuing System, Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence , to name a few.
This new age approach will transform how consumers will shop in the future and how businesses will match with it to deliver a personalized buyer journey.
Brands like Walmart has rolled out how data can be used to offer a personalised payment experience by tweaking its app and payment system to connect customers’ reward points to personal payments. Payment options that do not involve touchscreen or cash will be the new standard.
What’s important is to know that retailers are getting ready for the new generation shoppers with a different frame of mind. And the only solution to this would be touchless shopping.
