Access the 2023 Total Retail Tech Report here.
Sally Holtgrieve, Senior Editor at Women in Retail sat down with our own Head of Product and Customer Experience, Rob Le Piane to discuss the trends, challenges and technology that are changing the face of retail. Here’s an abridged version of their conversation.
Sally:
It’s really great to have you here. Rob, thank you for joining us. To kick off our chat, could you tell us a bit about yourself and KWI?
Rob:
I’ve been in enterprise technology in various capacities for approximately twenty years. I’m currently Head of Product and Customer Experience at KWI. So I spend a great deal of my time working with our product and engineering teams, but also talking to customers about their challenges and opportunities on a regular basis. KWI is a retail technology partner that focuses on helping brands and retailers enable modern digital and retail experiences. So one of the things that makes us different as a company is not only that we offer a true, modern omnichannel platform, but we also offer a great deal of expertise.
We’ve got many folks on our team that have spent many years working in retail, and now they’re kind of on the tech side, helping retailers be successful themselves. We’ve had the pleasure of working with some great brands in our industry, including Pandora jewelry, Coca Cola, David Yurman, and Bluemercury just to name a few. And we continue to work with more and more brands every day. So it’s been a great and exciting journey for me personally.
“Inventory management has always been a super important part of successful retail businesses. It’s what drives revenue. But it also can be a burden if it’s not managed correctly.”
Sally:
KWI recently partnered with Total Retail to produce the 2023 Retail Technology Report, which featured data from a survey of Total Retail’s audience. Tell us what were some of the key findings to emerge that you’d like to call out?
Rob:
There were definitely some great findings across the report. I think the report was incredible. I think it wasn’t surprising that inventory management and order management systems were at the top of the list in terms of the technologies and areas that retailers are investing in. Inventory management has always been a super important part of successful retail businesses. It’s what drives revenue. But it also can be a burden if it’s not managed correctly.
And certainly, order management solutions and their place in the ecosystem today is really geared towards helping retailers put that inventory to work and make that inventory available across all their omnichannel experiences. So, it’s not a surprise to see those two at the top – and to see them together.
The second thing I would call out is more of a macro point. I think there are a few different data points that start to point towards a story, which is that investment in general seems to be either the same or down for some of the respondents in technology. Training budgets seem to be a bit of a challenge. And there seems to be some dissatisfaction out there with the support that retailers are getting from their partners.
And so a lot of that points to the need to have a truly service-oriented technology partner that can help you with adoption of software and really give you a high-touch experience, because the solutions for the next 12 months of problems are likely not going to come from new technology investments, but technologies that are already being invested in.
Sally:
What are you hearing from your own clients about the importance of tech systems that enable retailers to be more omnichannel and natural?
Rob:
Integrations are a big topic, it always has been and certainly is today. It was cited in the report as one of the challenges to adopting new software, but certainly we hear it from our clients as well. The need to have a very well-integrated platform in general, but certainly as it relates to omnichannel experiences, without a well-integrated platform. Omnichannel experiences become clunky and riddled with friction. They’re not fast. And when that happens, it really has a negative impact on the end customer experience, and it will likely lead to a lost sale or even worse a lost customer in the long run.
Sally:
Were there any data points included in the report that surprised you, and why?
Rob:
There were certainly a few data points that were surprising as I looked through the report, one that stood out to me was that, as it relates to implementing new technologies, training is still a very big challenge. It was cited by 51% of the respondents as still a challenge with new technology implementations. I think we’d like to believe that over the years technology has become more intuitive and that training would become less of a problem. But 51% is still a significant number. This may be pointing to the lack of services and support being offered by many vendors in the industry today. And it certainly calls out the fact that retailers still need quite a bit of hand holding and help from the partners that they’re working with when they’re implementing new software.
The other thing that stood out to me was that it seems there might be a bit of a dichotomy brewing as it relates to customer experience. In the context of challenges implementing new technology, one of the open-ended questions pointed to some feedback around the automation of the customer experience process in a post COVID world. So online chats, forums, email responses, and some of the respondents noted that sometimes it’s better to just talk to a human being to get a problem resolved or something addressed. At the same time, we see that there is a big investment being made and continuing to be made in AI. And certainly, one of the growing areas of application for AI is customer service.
And so, you have retailers who maybe as they work with their vendor partners, are looking for the human experience working with people. At the same time, they’re making investments in the use of AI for servicing their own customers. So, it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out over the next 12 months.
Sally:
Related to that survey, respondents cited rather uninspiring satisfaction levels when it comes to the support they receive from current tech service providers. How is KWI taking steps to be a true partner to its retail clients, including ongoing support?
Rob:
At KWI, the focus on customer experience starts in the implementation process with our new clients. And it never really ends. Whether it’s our customer success team, our training teams, our 24/7 support teams – we really put an emphasis on adoption of the technology.
We have many customers that have been with us for 10,15, 20 years. And as our technology evolves, and their businesses evolve, continuous adoption becomes incredibly important. The needs of yesterday are not necessarily the needs of tomorrow. And so, staying close to our customers with our teams to help them be successful through adoption of the software has really been a great tool for us in helping our customers be successful.
“The needs of yesterday are not necessarily the needs of tomorrow. And so, staying close to our customers with our teams to help them be successful through adoption of the software has really been a great tool for us in helping our customers be successful.”
Sally:
If you were to forecast the technology trends that were going to be the most prominent for the end of the year, and perhaps even into the 2024 Retail Technology Report, what would those trends be?
Rob:
I think it would be crazy not to mention AI. I think given what we know today, we certainly can expect that to be towards the top. I think one of the things that will be interesting, is as retailers gain more experience with the technology, where are they seeing successes? We can talk at length about the various applications of AI in retail, but which are the ones that are really going to stick, which are the ones that are going to provide the ROI?
The other area where I would expect continued investment is around automated checkout. It certainly shows up in the report today. And I think each retailer needs to find its sweet spot in terms of how much is automated from a checkout and cashier standpoint, and how much is high-touch, but I expect us to see more adoption of that in the 12 months to come for sure.