Ensuring consistent customer delight: RapL’s impact on the Indian retail sector
Executive Summary: In a fast-paced world of retail, delivering a consistent and exceptional customer experience can make or break a business. In the Indian retail sector, providing a consistent experience can be challenging. However, RapL has proved to be an ideal solution to these challenges. This blog highlights the importance of consistent customer experience in retail growth, and the challenges faced by the Indian retail sector. It also discusses how RapL’s learning solution equips employees with the skills needed to deliver a world-class customer experience. This blog also highlights real-life examples of how Indian retail brands have successfully used RapL to deliver consistent customer experiences across the nation. This showcases the impact of our solution on customer satisfaction and sales growth. Overall, the blog demonstrates how RapL’s solution revolutionizes the Indian retail sector and helps businesses stay ahead of the competition.
At RapL Research Labs, I continuously (sometimes border on obsessively) ascertain insights on what results in great retail experiences for customers. For context, RapL is a people productivity app used by the biggest names in Indian retail for two major outcomes:
- Generating higher revenue per employee at the retail floor
- Efficient brand + product recall among distributors responsible for representing these brands across the length and breadth of the country
In this running rabbit hole, I stumbled upon a McKinsey article that reinforces the 3Cs of retail success – consistency, consistency and consistency.
Now, before you think it’s a cliché reference, let me explain that it’s cliché for a reason: Consistency in retail customer service will always be paramount, even as the industry evolves. With an average customer journey now involving 20-500+ touch-points, any inconsistency can easily lead to customer dissatisfaction and loss of loyalty. Additionally, consistent customer service helps establish a strong brand image and reputation, which can lead to increased customer trust and advocacy.
With so many active customer touch-points, it is difficult to determine which customer one will interact with next. In such an environment, how can one build a consistent code-of-conduct effectively?
People forget nearly 90% of what they have learnt within just 7 days, unless the concepts are reinforced. That’s why employees swamped with documents, presentations, and classroom sessions are not likely to learn much.
However, time constraints make it difficult to reinforce vast concepts.
What can you do instead? Arm your employees with one concept at a time. Studies show the human attention span is only 8.25 seconds, so keep your training concise.
RapL is your software for that.
Why is consistent customer experience crucial for retail growth?
- Builds customer loyalty and trust: When a retail brand delivers a consistent experience every time, customers know what to expect. This makes them feel more confident in their purchasing decisions. This trust leads to repeat business and positive reviews, which further strengthen customer loyalty.
- Increases sales and revenue potential: A consistent customer experience can have a significant impact on retail sales and revenue potential. When customers have a positive experience every time they shop, they are more likely to spend more money and make additional purchases. This results in increased revenue and a higher average order value for the brand.
- Enhances brand reputation and recognition: A consistent customer experience can help enhance brand reputation and recognition. When customers know what to expect from a brand, they are also more likely to recommend it to their friends and family.
- Improves customer satisfaction and retention: A consistent customer experience can improve customer satisfaction and retention. When customers have a good experience in every interaction with the brand, they are more likely to be satisfied with their overall experience. They are also more likely to return to the brand in the future. This can help improve customer retention and reduce customer churn rates.
- Encourages positive word-of-mouth: A consistent customer experience can encourage positive word-of-mouth marketing, which can have a significant impact on the growth of a retail brand. When customers have a positive experience, they are more likely to share their experience with others. This can lead to increased brand awareness, new customer acquisition, and ultimately, increased revenue and growth for the company.
In addition to market challenges, such as intense competition and dynamism, Indian retail companies also face workforce challenges. High turnover rates and a shortage of skilled employees are just two of many. A targeted and streamlined training can help mitigate these challenges by improving employee morale, reducing turnover, and attracting and retaining skilled talent who can deliver a high-quality customer experience. Let’s understand the challenges faced by Indian retail companies.
Challenges faced by the Indian retail sector
- Blue/gray-collar workforce: The Indian retail sector relies heavily on blue/gray-collar workers. They perform various operational and customer-facing roles. However, training these employees is often challenging due to their limited educational background and varying levels of experience. An efficient, mobile-based learning solution can deliver bite-sized and interactive training content. These solutions use rich multimedia and deliver one concept at a time. This makes it easy to understand concepts, and helps these employees learn faster.
- Geographic distribution of this workforce: The dispersed nature of the retail workforce makes it difficult to conduct centralized training programs that can be attended by all employees. With a powerful mobile-based learning solution, employees in different geographies can easily access training content. This makes training more accessible and cost-effective.
- Language barriers of the workforce: India is a country of diverse cultures and languages. This makes it challenging to deliver training content in a language understood by all employees. A robust mobile-based learning solution can offer the same training content in multiple languages, making it easy for employees to understand and engage with the training.
- High employee turnover: The retail sector in India is plagued by high employee turnover rates. This can be costly for retailers. An efficient mobile-based learning solution can provide retailers with the tools and resources to train new employees quickly and efficiently. This will reduce the time and cost associated with onboarding new employees.
- Tracking training completion for a distributed workforce: Tracking the completion of training can be challenging in a dispersed retail workforce. A comprehensive mobile-based learning solution can provide real-time tracking of employee progress and completion rates. These solutions offer strong analytics coverage. This makes it easy for managers to monitor the effectiveness of the training program and identify areas that require improvement.
RapL provides a powerful platform that solves all these issues. With an exciting blend of features, RapL is purpose-built to foster consistency in retail operations.
RapL platform fosters consistency in retail operations
Consistency is the result of shared, equivalent and standardized responses to customer stimuli. These stimuli could be
- frequently asked questions
- intelligent product recommendations
- pacifying irate customers
- a robust understanding of the customer’s motivations
- being able to predict what brings joy to a customer, with surgical precision.
Customer delight exponentiates when everybody in the retail sales value chain, from distributors to retail floor employees, has absorbed and retained answers to all the above points. An expert who has been working with the company for 10+ years and a newbie who joined the company 2 months ago must have a consistent knowledge base.
How does RapL work?
Easy-to-use mobile platform: RapL offers a user-friendly mobile learning app with an intuitive interface. This makes learning accessible and easy.
Rich multimedia content: RapL offers customized learning materials, made in interactive multimedia formats. This makes learning fun and engaging for employees.
One-concept-a-day: Complex topics are broken down into easily digestible, bite-sized modules. A one-concept-a-day approach boosts knowledge absorption and retention for learners. It promotes concept mastery by enabling continuous reinforcement of knowledge.
Strong analytics coverage and comprehensive dashboard: RapL provides real-time data tracking. Employee progress and performance can be viewed on a comprehensive dashboard. This provides administrators with actionable insights into the effectiveness of their training programs.
Gamified model: RapL offers an engaging learning experience through game-like features, such as leaderboards and badges.
Enterprise admin for talent management: RapL’s platform offers a centralized management system. Admin can track employee progress, create assignments, and generate reports.
Flipped learning model: RapL uses this approach of asking questions before providing the answers and explanations. This effectively identifies and instantly corrects individual knowledge gaps.
AI-based spaced repetition: RapL uses spaced repetition learning. This provides personalized learning based on employees’ ability to retain information over time.
Many leading retail brands have leveraged RapL’s solution in India. Let’s take a look at some examples where RapL has had a positive impact on the customer experience delivered by these brands.
The RapL impact: Real-world examples from customers
- A Leading Jewelry Brand in India
A leading Indian jewelry brand recognized the importance of providing a consistent customer experience. However, the brand faced several challenges in terms of training their retail salespeople across their stores. The brand had a large workforce, spread across different locations, and they lacked a standardized training program to ensure consistent delivery of customer service. Additionally, the brand struggled with a high employee turnover rate, which made it difficult to maintain consistent training standards. These challenges hindered the brand’s ability to provide a seamless customer experience, which led them to seek the help of RapL.
With RapL’s expert assistance, they implemented a training module called “Way of Life”. This module focused on topics such as product knowledge, process knowledge, company policies, etiquette in sales interactions, and more. The objective of this training was to ensure that all retail salespeople have the knowledge and skills to deliver a consistent and high-quality sales experience to customers across all retail outlets.
RapL’s learning solution played a crucial role in helping the retailer train its salespeople. RapL’s solution offered an entire overview of each user’s performance through strong analytics coverage and a comprehensive dashboard. This allowed the retailer to monitor the progress of each salesperson and identify areas where they needed additional support or training.
RapL also created different classifications of learners. These were based on their knowledge and complexity-level of the training content. This allowed the retailer to tailor the training program to the needs of each learner, ensuring they receive the support they need to succeed.
RapL’s learning solution helped this jewelry brand deliver a consistent sales experience to all its customers. The retailer’s focus on providing comprehensive training and support to its salespeople highlights its commitment to offering high-quality products and an excellent experience to all its customers.
Saleswoman and customer in a jewelry store
This international cosmetic brand offers a premium range of makeup and skincare products. They are renowned for their high quality. With a workforce of over 1600 employees and a revenue of $37.5 million in India, this company’s products are widely available in 1500 cosmetic stores across 140 cities in the country.
Despite their extensive reach, the company faced a significant challenge in training their frontline workers. Due to their widespread presence, it was difficult to coordinate and ensure consistent training for all employees. Moreover, there was no clear visibility into the knowledge levels of frontline workers, making it challenging to maintain a consistent customer experience across all outlets.
As frontline beauty associates are the first point of contact for customers, it is a demanding role. These associates need superior customer service skills. They also need to have intensive knowledge of a wide range of products, evolving beauty trends, and techniques. Additionally, they must be adept at using soft skills to deliver a consistent and exceptional customer experience. Achieving a high level of customer satisfaction requires the best use of soft skills, such as communication, empathy, and problem-solving. Up-selling and cross-selling techniques also play a crucial role in enhancing the customer experience.
However, these skills require ongoing training and development, particularly in today’s dynamic working conditions. Without proper training and support, businesses risk falling behind and hindering their growth potential.
RapL was brought in to address these challenges and bridge the gap. Our innovative, mobile-based training solutions eliminated the barriers of distance. This enabled every retail outlet to deliver an exceptional customer experience. By building the capabilities and skill sets of all individuals simultaneously, we ensured high standards were met consistently, irrespective of the outlet.
Challenges & Solutions for Training Retail Workforce
With RapL,
- 495+ retail scenarios were mastered
- 70-80% app usage was maintained
- 33+ topics were launched
- 23,000+ hours was invested in training
- Efficiency was enhanced with minimal time and resources
Training success with RapL for an international cosmetics brand
One of India’s largest clothing brands implemented RapL’s solution to train their retail salespeople. The objective of this training program was to ensure knowledge consistency and deliver exceptional customer experience across all stores. This training program was rolled out to 2000+ employees pan-India.
The training program covered various topics related to the brand’s products, including product knowledge, fabrics, and embellishments. The employees were also trained on how to greet a customer, company SOPs, and employee grooming. This training program provided employees the skills and knowledge to ensure that customers enjoyed an unparalleled shopping experience.
In addition to product-related training, employees were also trained on the company’s offers and promotions. This training ensured that employees could effectively communicate the brand’s offers to customers and increase sales. Employees were also trained to manage defective products, ensuring that customers received prompt and satisfactory resolution to any issues they faced.
Furthermore, COVID-related topics were also included in the training program. The training program provided guidelines on maintaining hygiene and safety measures, including sanitization procedures and social distancing guidelines. Employees were trained to handle customer concerns related to COVID-19 and provide a safe shopping environment.
The training program was designed to ensure that employees across all stores were trained consistently and effectively. The training modules were interactive and engaging, making the learning experience enjoyable for employees. Employees had access to online training modules, enabling them to complete the training program at their own pace.
Inference
RapL’s solution for training salespeople in the above retail companies has been a success. These brands saw an improvement in customer satisfaction scores and an increase in sales. The training programs ensured that employees across the stores had the necessary skills and knowledge to provide customers with an exceptional shopping experience. Additionally, the training programs provided a standardized approach to training, ensuring consistency across all stores in India.
For companies seeking to enhance their training procedures and optimize productivity, RapL offers a flexible and interactive platform that can be customized to meet their unique requirements. By personalizing the platform to align with your organization’s needs and integrating it with your current systems, you can enhance employee engagement, knowledge retention, and ultimately, business growth. Get in touch with us to learn more about how we can help your company achieve its goals.
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