Forrester Consulting research commissioned by Radar finds that location is essential for building world-class customer experiences
Radar announced that they are excited about their newest commissioned study, “Deliver world-class customer experiences with location infrastructure.” This study, conducted by Forrester Consulting, presents new data on the impact of location on customer experience and found that investing in location is essential for businesses that want to improve customer experiences and remain successful in competitive industries. Yet, despite the impact of location on business outcomes, many teams either don’t know where to get started, or they struggle to fully capitalize on their existing location solution.
It's clear that location is the solution to many of the challenges that brick-and-mortar businesses face today. This post will explore three of these challenges and the ways in which digital leaders are addressing them with location.
Takeaway #1: Retailers with brick-and-mortar stores must make their physical locations an asset instead of a liability
Even before pandemic shutdowns, retailers with large brick-and-mortar footprints were at a disadvantage against digital-only businesses. Despite a return to in-store shopping, consumer habits continue to heavily favor digital interactions. To compete against digital-only brands, retailers with brick-and-mortar stores must make their physical locations an asset instead of a liability. The best way to do this? By doubling down on the consumer experience, both digitally and in-store.
According to the study with Forrester, over the next 12 months, improving the customer experience is the most important priority for brands, with nine out of ten respondents reporting it as a critical or high priority for their company.
Location is essential for improving customer experiences and it powers the initiatives that are top of mind for digital leaders. We see this reflected in the data, with CX leaders reporting that their top priority over the next 12 months include both creating or improving personalized customer experiences (83%) and creating or improving in-store experiences that span both digital and physical channels (75%).
To make stores revenue drivers, retailers must invest in creating the retail experiences of the future, which span both physical and digital channels. For retail brands who are looking for concrete ideas on how to do this, one instructive example comes from Home Depot, which has an in-store app mode that augments the customer’s shopping experience with information, recommendations, and wayfinding. JOANN provides another example of how hybrid in-store experiences can also be used to drive digital orders. By displaying a free shipping coupon for shoppers who are in-store, JOANN was able to generate 25K incremental orders.
