From The Shelf To The Customer: How To Optimize The BOPIS Experience
Bagrat Safaryan Forbes Technology Council
While the pandemic has forced grocers to rethink their store setups, ongoing labor shortages and rising prices for transportation and deliveries definitely made 2021 a year of record challenges — and more disruption is in store for 2022.
The biggest concern for 74% of grocery retailers is the tight labor market affecting their investment and operational decisions this year as well as increasing competition from online-only retail services that target shoppers' convenience.
However, grocers committed to change are increasing their spending on tech investments to advance their capabilities. Their priority is to invest in "buy online, pick up in-store" (BOPIS) to enable a faster and more seamless hybrid shopping experience. Still, while adjusting to BOPIS, grocers are progressively facing miscommunication, missing inventory and other issues impacting the customer experience.
Before supermarkets lose even more efficiency or jeopardize customer satisfaction, they need to take action. Here's how.
The Essence Of BOPIS
Whereas innovation in the grocery space traditionally focuses on home delivery, click and collect is actually the preferred channel for 75% of customers, and its implementation is less costly than home delivery.
The goal of BOPIS is to provide affordable convenience that saves customers and staff valuable time. It makes people's lives easier with an easy-to-use app and website, fast turnaround times, and an efficient pickup experience. Still, three areas are ripe for optimization at most stores: inventory, fresh produce quality, and in-store logistics for click and collect.
Prioritize A Reliable Inventory Management
According to Oracle's supply chain survey, 63% of people are seeking better transparency on inventory, and quite frankly, can you blame them? It's not very pleasant to put products in a digital shopping cart and then find out they're all gone.
Better inventory management requires an integrated point-of-sale (POS) system — both online and in-store — that enables real-time inventory updates. However, this is already a major challenge for stores facing time and labor shortages. Grocers shouldn't look to put their entire inventory online; instead, start with a medium percentage of the most popular goods. This can make it easier and less time-consuming for in-house staff to check inventory and update manual inventory changes online. The point is to have a bit fewer products online but with greater accuracy.
Moreover, stores should consider acquiring phone-based apps or off-the-shelf technology that have the appropriate programs to create an electronic pick list and QR/barcode scan for each item. If staff collects the orders and scans the products in real-time with the barcode, the likelihood of an order mismatch sinks. Packers should also have a handheld device to mark nearly out-of-stock immediately and inform the store to reorder the item.
Finally, grocers can also optimize their inventory management by leveraging the power of marketing. After evaluating products with plenty of inventory and smaller demand, stores can offer promotions and discounts on those items to influence their customers' purchase decisions.
When The Customer Is King, Fresh Products Need To Be The Crown
Digital data isn't always accurate, especially with foods that have a short shelf life (like food weighted by the pound or fresh produce). With fresh produce, customers might not be as forgiving if they encounter bad quality such as expired yogurt or moldy blueberries. Food waste and the difficulty of predicting the life cycle of fresh products make human input in inventory management necessary.
