Though shoppers might be preoccupied with picking the perfect Halloween costume and trussing the Thanksgiving turkey, the changing seasons mean it’s time for retailers to plot their holiday plan of attack. Mapping out a strategy to manage the peak-season crush shouldn’t be last on your to-do list. With customers expected to do brisk business in your physical and digital stores in the coming weeks, it’s never too early to start drafting a roadmap that gets your retail store operations ready to make your customers’ shopping trip merry and bright.
Discover what you can do right now to invest for holiday success.
Arm Associates With The Right Technology
Tackling the gift gatherers starts with teeing up top-notch technology. For 10 months out of the year, your current setup might do the trick, but you might as well rip up that script when the Black Friday bargain hunters storm your store.
Take time to do a tech check and figure out what holes you need to patch up or risk leaving customers out in the cold. Does your online store have the bandwidth to handle the hordes of keyboard warriors? Do store employees have what they need to bring their A game all holiday long?
Inventory Management
You’ve seen the headlines: the supply chain is swimming with weak links wreaking all kinds of havoc on retailers just like you. Don’t let a logistics logjam catch you off guard. Get out ahead of damaging disruption by running the numbers on the stock you’ll need to survive the season. Give yourself plenty of breathing room to get inventory through your doors with time to spare. No one wants to be staring at empty shelves and disgruntled customers with weeks left to go in the all-important season.
But once the pallets and parcels reach your brick and mortar, are your retail store operations equipped to keep track of every last SKU? Bring some law and order to your process by finding an inventory management platform that makes you look good. If you’re fed up with losing sales when top products routinely run out, there’s a lot that the right solution can do for you. A purpose-built retail POS puts inventory intel at your fingertips with easy-to-use, easy-to-read touchscreens.
Extra Mobile POS
The more, the merrier—that’s the name of the game when it comes to your holiday POS. Let’s face it: your retail store operations are designed for regular footfall and the year-end season is anything but. Adding mobile POS into the mix lets you seamlessly flex up and down as demand ebbs and flows. And their go-anywhere form factor means you’re free to break out of your four walls.
Hurried holiday shoppers don’t want the hassle of hanging around in long lines just to pay for their haul. Be their checkout champion, inside and out—outside the store, that is. If you offer curbside pickup, mobile POS gives your staff innovative tech to take payment and hand off purchases in one fell swoop.
The same applies for BOPIS, or buy online pickup in store—the omnichannel service 33% of holiday shoppers say they’ll use this season. Make their experience magical by stationing tablet-wielding workers at the pickup area so crowds aren’t clamoring for one single cashier. Get customers in, out and on their way—they’ll thank you later with repeat business.
Set Up Additional Return Station
Preparing to sell piles of products to people making their lists and checking them twice is one thing. Getting ready to manage the inevitable onslaught of post-holiday returns is another. Retailers braced themselves to take back $158 billion worth of merchandise last holiday and this season is sure to serve up more of the same.
From wrong sizes to wrong colors to just plain wrong taste, there’s no end to the reasons why holiday shoppers resort to returning the gifts the giver picked out with care. Get your retail store operations ready to meet the challenge head on by carving out more space to manage the madness. By containing the chaos, you’re helping ensure returners won’t encroach on paying customers putting money into—not out of—your pocket.
Even though the peak season is still weeks away, you can start laying the groundwork now for healthy holiday sales. It’s better to be over prepared than woefully lacking during the two months that will put your business in the black. Train your associates on tablet POS, set up your shop to serve a steady stream of shoppers and map out where customers can look to check out their overstuffed carts. Your holiday boils down to well-executed retail store operations. A little hard work now will pay off in spades come New Year’s.
