How BOPIS Model Can Help Retailers Optimize Customer Experience and Sales

By: Retail CIO Outlook | Thursday, January 09, 2020

BOPIS is emerging as a popular approach to optimize customer experience and sales. How is it possible?

FREMONT, CA: Customer experience holds a lot of value for a brand. Therefore, retailers keep coming up with new techniques to improve customer experience and increase the value of their brand. These days, retailers are optimizing the customer experience and sales by offering the option of picking up purchases in their stores to the shoppers.

According to the retailers, the last mile of their fulfillment operation is most crucial to get the right for keeping the customers satisfied and loyal.

Filling the gap between the transportation hub and the final destination of delivery is very expensive and trickiest for retailers. No wonder, the option to buy online and pick up in-store (BOPIS) is becoming popular among impatient shoppers who anticipate for a faster and more convenient option than home delivery.

The BOPIS model makes good ecological and commercial sense. It reduces the shipping costs and carbon emissions for retailers and also helps the retailers in tempting online shoppers to make additional purchases when they visit the physical stores.

Lessons to be learned by retailers

Retailers can learn from the errors made by experienced enterprises. Though BOPIS consumers make many additional purchases while being in the store, they still anticipate their shopping journey to quick and convenient. Experienced retailers build a devoted, staffed collection desk, especially for BOPIS consumers, which are equipped to process extra purchases straightforward from the store and minimize the amount of time shoppers spend waiting in line.

Enterprises, like Zara and Walmart, have invested in automated terminals for processing pickups and returns. BOPIS customers get a code, which has to be entered at the terminal to prompt a robot in the store stockroom for tracing and retrieving the order and delivering it to the collection point on the sales floor.

Many retail stores might not possess enough sales floor or stock room space for installing those types of systems, but those that do provide an eminent level of customer experience over the collection desk model.

Buoy up positive engagement with BOPIS clients

In the initial stages, apart from unavailing pickups, BOPIS revenue was generally assigned to the e-commerce account instead of the store. Therefore, there is no surprise element that pickup clients were considered a low priority for the staff. It is important for the store associates to engage with BOPIS customers in a positive way. They will specifically do that in the situations when their store is completely credited with the BOPIS sale’s value and that the sale has a massive contribution to their overall and personal goals. The main purpose of the crediting program is to build an ambiance in which the store associates are as unperturbed with the customer’s usage of shopping channels as the customers themselves.

Upgrading the inventory

For even being considered, the lead time between the BOPIS options and the order should be less than the standard shipping. Retailers who possess an advanced BOPIS model are already offering same-day pickup. Further, when the required product gets added in the inventory of the store, it is ready for pickup in a couple of hours.

Traditionally, store inventory is tailored by the retailers in order to meet the performance targets and space constraints. However, when it comes to ordering items, retailers generally concentrate on the demand from walk-in shoppers. This also represents the only inventory of the store, which will be available to BOPIS shoppers. If the store falls short of trending items or doesn’t carry famous BOPIS items, a considerable amount of inventory has to be shipped to the store every day in order to meet the demands.

The diversity of items in an ideal store appeals to the shopper community holistically and presents the requirements of walk-in and BOPIS customers equally. After achieving the goal, the retailers can optimize profits from all the consumer groups and simultaneously enhance the customer experience.

Check out: Top Customer Experience Solution Companies