Department stores, supermarkets, restaurants, and others in the retail industry are among the most aggressive XCaaS adopters partially due to the urgent need to increase efficiencies with the way in-store employees and call center workers work together to serve customers. XCaaS, or eXperience Communications-as-a-Service, is a cloud communications deployment model that erases the boundary between Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) and Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS).

Frail loyalty amid growing online options, labor shortages, and continuing public health crises are among the reasons that retailers are pushing the envelope to innovate around customer experience, including enhanced omnichannel experiences, increased self-service options, and faster problem resolution. A big goal is to optimize communications and collaboration between contact center and in-store employees.

There are also evolving consumer attitudes. According to a 2021 McKinsey & Company report, about 75 percent of U.S. consumers are changing their shopping behavior, including 40 percent that say they are switching brands.

Here are some of the communications challenges facing retailers today.

Retail overview

Many retailers are transitioning from using on-premises communications to cloud-based systems. Like with other industries, that process has accelerated for well-known reasons. But change can be tough when, for example, you have department stores that have had their existing phone system in place for decades or longer.

We’re finding that the most successful 8x8 customer engagements include customers that have achieved executive buy-in and a plan to manage the fact that bridging contact center, back-office, and in-store communications can lead to internal conflict. Different buyers have different needs. Organizations with franchisees can be further complicated because they are owned separately.

As a result, cloud communications providers and trusted IT advisors need to place a lot of care about solution design to solve the right problems reflecting a variety of needs. This is one of the reasons that many retailers interested in XCaaS prefer a phased approach where they deploy UCaaS or CCaaS first then gradually add more components over time.

Acquisitions, employee turnover, emphasize ease-of-use, simple deployment

In the retail world:

  • Acquisitions are common
  • Employee turnover is a prevalent challenge
  • IT staff typically are not evenly distributed across geographies, meaning in-store support may not always be available

These facts put a lot of pressure on administrators who do not want to spend inordinate amounts of time continuously training new employees or constantly traveling to disparate locations to provide support.

This is why retail buyers insist on systems that are simple to install and easy to use. They want new users to be up and running with little effort. In addition, they want designs to be repeatable. When new stores come online, for example, they do not want to start from scratch. Standardization is huge when it comes to this market.

8x8 works with its distribution partners to pre-activate phones so that all a user needs to do is plug them in, and they are ready to go. Removing activation headaches gives administrators one less thing to worry about.

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Retailers aim to use automation, bots and self-service tools to accelerate service

Even when basic information like store hours and directions are available on a company website, customers continue to place phone calls to stores to receive this kind of information. It can be expensive to maintain, so retailers utilize various technologies to automate those kinds of queries saving more time and staff resources to devote to revenue or critical support conversations.

When we speak with retailers about their needs, services like intelligent voice response (IVR), chatbots, even text messaging/SMS come up all the time because they want to understand how they can be integrated within their business and contact center services. Chatbots, for example, can now handle more tasks like answering inventory questions. SMS can now be used as part of a multi-factor authentication program to help secure e-commerce accounts. Those discs that lit up when your table was ready at a restaurant are going away in favor of a system that automatically texts you when it is your turn.

Retailers are also adapting to societal trends where many people prefer one-on-one communication via chat rather than via a phone call.

All these innovations are arriving quickly, and retailers are very interested in using them to complement phone conversations to cut costs, drive operational efficiencies, and generally keep customers happier.

Final thoughts

Retailers have numerous challenges and opportunities in the coming years as they navigate economic and technological changes and new threats from competitors, large and small. Communications will play a significant role in how a retail organization adapts and thrives.

When evaluating potential providers, go beyond price and call quality. Vet their professional services experience on a global scale. Assess their distribution relationships, support resources, and process methodologies.

This post would not have been possible without the support of 8x8 experts Tatiana Sebby, Joshua Hoffman, and Charlie Day.