Raising standards in bricks and mortar retail is key to building trust

This blog has been developed in collaboration with Nick Hilton, Partner, Retail and Leisure, Property Management at Workman LLP

After 18 months of lockdown, it comes as no surprise that in May non-food bricks and mortar retail sales rose significantly. Though online shopping has more than plugged a gap for consumers, there is pent up demand for physical shopping. The key is how does bricks and mortar now engage this captive audience and maintain momentum for the long-term?

Prior to the pandemic, big brands were already dominating the headlines with offers of in-store experiences that entertained customers while they browsed. However, not all retailers have the resource or capacity to develop grandiose experiential-strategies and partner collaborations.

What they do have is the opportunity to use human and one-on-one engagement to build relationships, trust and loyalty through delivery of personal experience. They also enable customers to experience products through touch. These may appear to be the more mundane end of the ‘experiential’ scale but this building of product and personal trust through small yet significant interactions create positive emotional links to an in-store experience. It also shows that the store is putting the customer first. This level of in-store engagement has never been more important.

Over the past 18 months, online brands (and of course Amazon) have set new standards in customer care and communication. Orders are made and delivered on the same day; people can try before they buy; online assistants are ‘available to help’ and enthusiastic, refunds are true refunds not credit notes.

The combination of data capture and an increasingly higher-quality digital workforce means the dialogue between brand and customer is now more regular and nuanced. While online will never be able to offer the face-to-face and personal experience that in-store can, the intuition, enthusiasm and assistance that many brands deliver online is strengthening the relationship between brand and customer and increasingly building trust.

We are seeing more bricks and mortar retailers starting to harness positive online dialogue and convenience and replicating it in-store. This omni-channel approach was once used to describe a store’s need to engage online as well as on the shop floor.  For many the new world will be a balance between online engagement and in-store experience.

It is crucial for retailers to capitalise on the current public wave of enthusiasm for shopping and they can do this by offering higher standards of service in the form of product knowledge, assistance, availability, a full stock room and an engaged workforce.

During lockdown, Currys PCWorld adapted to respond to customer needs. It combined digital and human engagement to offer ‘product walk through’ slots for customers. Using Zoom-like-tech, the store’s employees were able to show and talk customers though specific products during an arranged appointment. This activity responds directly to customers’ needs and preferences for ease, convenience and a knowledgeable human being to talk to.

Combining positive human engagement with a lively, vibrant environment provides customers with an enjoyable experience that surpasses that of clicking buttons. This ‘holistic positive experience’ will only be achieved through investment into estates, people, stock and training. It is no longer enough to fill X sq m of space of products and let the customer get on with it. People demand more. 

There will always be bricks and mortar retail because there will always be people that want to physically shop but it will be on a smaller scale than we have seen over the past few decades. The homogeneity of so many shops has led to their demise but perhaps rather than mourning UK retail we should regard these changes as a rightsizing of the sector. Those shops – large or small – that engage with their customers, offline and online, stay relevant, build trust and create a personal experience for their customers, will be amongst those that survive and thrive.