July - Sep 2020retailtechinsights.com8Courtney Graybill devises customer experience roadmaps and executes on those strategies to drive shopper engagements for David's Bridal. She has been focusing on customer satisfaction and business value for various organizations by leveraging technology. In an interview with Retail CIO Outlook, speaking on the importance of shopper experience in the retail landscape, Courtney mentions the significance of integrating point-of-sales (POS) information with shoppers' behavioral data to enhance customer engagement.1. What are some of the latest technological trends in the retail landscape, particularly as they pertain to POS?I see two major trends as related to POS in the retail industry: making the purchase process extremely easy by putting more power in the customer's hands, and using data from all aspects of the customer journey to personalize the shopping experience. A prominent trend in retail space is the adoption of mobile and customer enabled POS. Customer self-checkout was the first step in that journey, allowing customers to scan his/her own items and pay, most prominently at grocery stores and pharmacies. Then retailers like Apple started arming store associates with mobile POS to check a customer out on the INCREASING CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT THROUGH DATA AND TECHNOLOGYfloor without having to stand in line. Now organizations are taking the concept of easy checkout to the next level. Case in point, Amazon Go has introduced a mobile application that guides shoppers in stores, right from finding products to automatic checkout upon walking out of the store with no customer or store associate actions needed. The Nike Innovation store allows customers to use the mobile app to reserve items to try on as well as self-checkout, enabling customers to complete the shopping journey without even talking to a store associate. The idea of easy checkout has also been powered by new payment options such as Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, and other one-touch payment options. The second major trend is using customer data to personalize the shopping experience. The ability to personalize the online shopping experience by leveraging data collected online has gotten much easier as software companies have invested in solutions that can be implemented easily into a retailer's ecosystem. This is important because many retailers have struggled with data being housed in many, disconnected locations. Thus, being able to add a pixel and some lightweight code to your website, and then provide shoppers with personalized product recommendations has become an attractive business solution. The bigger challenge is truly connecting online and offline data such as POS purchase and offline data to then personalize customer experiences in-store and online. This is a focal point for us at David's Bridal and we are investing in our technology to connect customer behaviors and transactions across all touchpoints to create a more personalized experience. Today, buyers can receive relevant product suggestions on websites based upon their browse behavior and online transactions, but making those even more robust by incorporating in-store behaviors has been a harder lift for companies. That is because most POS systems don't talk to e-commerce platforms, creating data siloes that are difficult and expensive to break down.In my opInIonBy Courtney Graybill, Vice President, Customer Experience & Product Management, David's Bridal
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