Top reasons why customers visit your store and how you’re not benefiting from it.

Traffic into your retail stores has always been problematic, however, throw in a Pandemic and there are even more complications to consider. There’s the safety of customers to start with, not to forget the safety of your team members. Yet, with all things examined, a retail store still has your margins as a priority.

Historically, understanding the types of people going into your stores and their purpose has always been troublesome. It’s not knowing where they interacted with your brand. Did they visit you online? Did they see a Billboard or TV advert? Ultimately, was the media spend for last month’s campaign worth the money?

This is where KNOWTHM comes in. Thanks to our SmartQueue system, driving traffic to stores has become a lot easier. We can also know the purpose for visits and how they interacted with you, without the lengthy exit surveys… but more on that later.

Thanks to our research, we already know 87% of customers much prefer to purchase their device in-store than buying from remote channels. We decided to find out if customers are truly making it to your establishments.

In this article, we wanted to list the top reasons why customers are visiting your stores. We conducted surveys in both Canada and Europe on walk-in data (customers walking into your store) and we found that, interestingly, the percentages turned out to be very similar regardless of their location. We combined these scores to give us the list below.

Reasons why customers come into your store, ascending order… Starting with…

7. Billing Problems — Support query.

In our recent surveys, 8.06% of customers coming into your store wanted to discuss billing problems making it 7th place on the list. Customers are either adapting to self-serve account systems such as apps or using live chat options. Interestingly though, these customers visiting your store tended to be those with more specific and complicated issues, needing to be in store for a considerable time.

6. Device Advice — Purchase query.

8.84% of customers walking into your store have questions about a device they’re considering purchasing or upgrading to. These customers are typically undecided and are choosing between multiple phone options. When we asked them, things they noted why they came into store was:

• To experience the phone’s features before purchase.
• To hold the device / To see how big the phone was before the purchase.
• To feel the phone before making their commitment.

5. Needing support with their device — Support query.

These are people who need a little more time and support setting up their device, something has gone wrong with the setting and they can’t fix it themselves, or they’ve seen something and want it on their phone.

10.77% of the people who walk into your store are needing this kind of support. Although a little time-consuming, this strengthens the customer’s love for your brand.

4. To get advice — Support query.

Walk-in customers are typically those that happen to see your store while walking down the high street, By seeing you they’re spurred to see advice on their phone or account. These types of walk-in customers make up 14.51% of the total.

So in the Top Three we have…

3. Negotiate my Contract — Purchase query.

Our survey showed that people who wanted to find out more about their existing contract or usage made up 16.02% of walk-in traffic. These customers are not always ready to commit to purchasing then and there but will sit with a team member to discuss the options of their contract. These customers are strong leads, but we noticed many of these customers are not ready to close a deal then and there.

2. Buy a New Phone — Purchase query.

The number of people who are interested in buying today. They walked past or had every intention of visiting your store to buy their device (either upgrade or new contract). These customers represented 20.71% of all the Walk-in traffic to your store. These are the most valuable customers to your base, yet they don’t make it to the number one spot.

In Number one we have…

1. To Fix or Repair my phone — Support query.

That’s right. The number one reason people walk into your store is to get their existing phone fixed or repaired, making up 21.07%. However, many telecom companies are no longer able to conduct manufacturer repairs or issues, meaning that the customer experience is typically poor and having to redirect the query to customer services or the manufacturer of the device.

So what’s going wrong?

Unfortunately, many businesses assume that customers will naturally just come to their store when they’re ready to purchase a device, however, the journey is a little more muddled than that now. Based on our survey results, 54.42% of Walk-in customers are those with support queries, meaning that 45.68% are in the purchase journey.

The issue continues when we know that most support queries in-store can take anything between 10 minutes or up to 2 hours depending on the complexity of the issue. Many stores are unable to remedy the support queries themselves in-store, directing customers to customer service lines. This can mean a store environment of people receiving a negative experience of your brand sat right next to the same people who are within the onboarding process.

How can KNOWTHM help?

KNOWTHM’s SmartQueue helps by integrating into your online purchase journey, and also manages the flow of customers into your stores.

In short, KNOWTHM can:

• Send ready-to-convert traffic to your store.
• Send the right traffic to your store for the right time.
• Reduce queues outside your store.
• Limit the number of people within your store during COVID-19.
• Provide data on what type of customers are visiting your store and when.
• Help with team management, ensuring you have adequate staff members to meet the demand of your customers.
• Improve Net Promoter Score for your store.

With a simple embedding code, you can offer your customers to collect their device within 1 hour, meaning they don’t have to wait for their device to arrive by post. Choosing this option is so much better than Click to Collect as it guarantees interaction with a sales associate. This offers additional options, products, and services which the customer may not have considered. It also in turn reduces the number of returns and increases basket value.

SmartQueue can also manage the flow of traffic into your store, ensuring your customers and staff stay safe during the pandemic. It can also prioritize support queries to specific times of the day or encourage live chat options. This then reduces the flow of support queries into your store. This also means sales associates are free to process transactions rather than potentially lengthy support queries.

To find out more, reach out to us to see how we can help optimize your retail traffic.