Dig­i­tal in Store – En­hanc­ing Cus­tomer Ex­pe­ri­ence

Sure you’ve heard about the “Staff digitalization” process that Dufry has embarked on. But what’s the reach of the project and how is it taking shape?

By Jonas Rensfelt, Francisco Gomez-Martin and Paloma Torres

The dig­i­tal­iza­tion of our staff is part of the over­ar­ch­ing E-mo­tion strat­e­gy. E-mo­tion is about the ecosys­tem that cre­ates a mul­ti­chan­nel 360° ex­pe­ri­ence for our cus­tomers and as­sures that our cus­tomers come first. The dif­fer­ent el­e­ments of this 360° view are: cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence in store, im­mer­sive dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Re­serve & Col­lect, RED loy­al­ty pro­gram, so­cial me­dia and fi­nal­ly, staff dig­i­tal­iza­tion. Hav­ing this holis­tic view gives Dufry the plat­form for part­ner­ships and in­no­va­tion lead­ing to glob­al im­pact.

The sales tablet is part of staff dig­i­tal­iza­tion and pro­vides a hub where staff mem­bers can find in­for­ma­tion to as­sist them in their role. It is also a tool that can be used by our staff to bet­ter sell to and in­ter­act with cus­tomers. The sales tablet en­ables our staff to pro­vide cus­tomers with more de­tailed and per­son­al­ized in­for­ma­tion and ex­pe­ri­ence. While in its ear­ly phase, we are con­stant­ly work­ing on im­prov­ing the sales tablet and de­vel­op­ing it to bet­ter meet the needs of our staff and cus­tomers.

The ul­ti­mate ob­jec­tive is twofold: on the one hand, im­prov­ing the cus­tomer jour­ney from be­gin­ning to end, by giv­ing per­son­al­ized ser­vice and en­sur­ing that we con­vert pas­sen­gers into loy­al cus­tomers. On the oth­er hand, pro­vid­ing tools for sales staff to work more ef­fec­tive­ly and with more in­for­ma­tion, re­sult­ing in in­creas­ing the av­er­age tick­et and to­tal sales. This ini­tia­tive is a per­fect ex­am­ple of the ONE­DUFRY phi­los­o­phy: Bet­ter em­ploy­ee ex­pe­ri­ences that dri­ve im­proved cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ences that dri­ve busi­ness re­sults.

Content is king

The ques­tion then is: what’s on these tablets that can help our staff do their job bet­ter? The most im­por­tant el­e­ment in­side the tablet is the store as­sort­ment. The tablet is a di­rect re­flec­tion of what is sold in store. A sig­nif­i­cant el­e­ment is the “en­riched” as­sort­ment, mean­ing prod­uct im­ages, de­scrip­tions, and videos. The in­for­ma­tion is avail­able in six lan­guages, there­by over­com­ing the lan­guage bar­ri­er.

Ak­e­neo, our prod­uct in­for­ma­tion man­age­ment soft­ware, feeds the in­for­ma­tion into our sales tablet, in­te­grat­ing the dif­fer­ent plat­forms and ex­pand­ing our data­base. The fo­cus is on Dufry’s four core cat­e­gories: P&C, li-quor, food and to­bac­co. A se­lect num­ber of coun­tries also in­clude sun­glass­es.

Rather than sta­t­ic prod­uct in­for­ma­tion, the tablet of­fers staff a func­tion­al­i­ty for up­selling and cross-sell­ing by giv­ing sug­ges­tions with­in a prod­uct page and hence in­creas­ing the op­tion of get­ting a high­er val­ue tick­et. This fea­ture prompts staff, giv­ing sug­ges­tions on how to get a high­er val­ue tick­et by show­ing the same prod­uct with a high­er vol­ume, com­pa­ra­ble prod­ucts that might trig­ger cus­tomer in­ter­est, or show­ing staff the prod­ucts that com­ple­ment that which the cus­tomer has se­lect­ed. The tablet also in­cludes easy ac­cess to all nov­el­ties, ex­clu­sives and pro­mo­tions in store. Glob­al and lo­cal cam­paigns that are live in store at any giv­en mo­ment can be ac­cessed quick­ly and eas­i­ly. In se­lect­ed lo­ca­tions these de­vices now in­clude Mo­bile Point of Sale (MPOS), a fea­ture that turns the sales tablet into a cashier and per­mits the cus­tomer to com­plete the trans­ac­tion on the tablet. This fea­ture gives our staff ad­di­tion­al flex­i­bil­i­ty to move around the store and help more cus­tomers – as the sell­ing process starts and ends with them. The goal is to roll out the MPOS fea­ture glob­al­ly. In the event the cus­tomer prefers to post­pone the pur­chase, an ad­di­tion­al tablet fea­ture per­mits send­ing the se­lect­ed bas­ket to the cus­tomer’s email ad­dress with a link to our Re­serve & Col­lect ser­vice.

More than product information

Train­ing is an­oth­er cor­ner­stone of the dig­i­tal­iza­tion project. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with the HR team, the tablet in­cludes a num­ber of train­ing mod­ules, eas­ing the ac­cess to non-desk­top staff (staff with lit­tle or no ac­cess to com­put­ers in the work en­vi­ron­ment). To en­sure quick and easy adap­ta­tion to the tech­nol­o­gy, train­ing videos on the tablet ex­plain the dif­fer­ent el­e­ments with­in the tablet and how it works. This sec­tion in­cludes a link to Dufry TV, fa­cil­i­tat­ing staff ac­cess to the lat­est de­vel­op­ments and re­leas­es with­in our com­pa­ny.

One of the lat­est re­leas­es on the sales tablet is a func­tion­al­i­ty called Task Man­ag­er, an ap­pli­ca­tion that maps all the du­ties per­formed in a store each day and each shift, per­mit­ting the store man­ag­er sim­pler and more vis­i­ble track­ing of the store op­er­a­tion. Con­stant­ly de­vel­op­ing this tool means it will evolve from be­ing just a sales as­sis­tant to a HUB where any need can be ad­dressed to make our store teams more ef­fi­cient. An ex­am­ple of this is the up­com­ing fea­tures of the sales tablet. Re­spond­ing to feed­back, the di­vi­sion and sales staff worked to­geth­er to in­clude the sales in­cen­tive pro­gram. It is used so staff mem­bers can track their sales, which are linked to their in­come scheme. The tablet will track the sales made by an em­ploy­ee and link it to the sales in­cen­tive pro­gram. The RED fea­ture makes it pos­si­ble to tai­lor the ex­pe­ri­ence of the loy­al­ty mem­ber by us­ing their pre­vi­ous pur­chase his­to­ry to help the staff mem­ber guide their next pur­chase. It also al­lows for new mem­bers to be signed up to the loy­al­ty pro­gram.

Where is this available?

Tablets are al­ready avail­able in 75 stores in 30 coun­tries, main­ly in Duty Free and larg­er de­par­ture walk­through stores, with plans to ex­tend the avail­abil­i­ty of tablets to more coun­tries and stores. In the first three months of 2019, over 100,000 cus­tomers were sup­port­ed by tablet-equipped staff. The di­vi­sions are cur­rent­ly in the midst of train­ing pro­grams to help staff un­der­stand sales tablet func­tion­al­i­ty. Mex­i­co has been one of the first coun­tries to ful­ly em­brace this new tool to im­prove cus­tomer in­ter­ac­tions. Fin­land, which con­duct­ed a train­ing in Feb­ru­ary, is gain­ing speed and giv­ing very pos­i­tive feed­back. Spain is an­oth­er ex­am­ple of an ear­ly adopter of the new tech­nol­o­gy and has seen good re­sults.

“It is an ex­tra­or­di­nary tool for our sales staff be­cause of the ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion. We like it be­cause it is a very com­plete tool. It fa­cil­i­tates the staff’s work by giv­ing them ex­tra knowl­edge about Dufry’s prod­ucts. It helps sub­scribe more cus­tomers to RED by Dufry. In ad­di­tion, the tablet makes train­ings ac­ces­si­ble. In oth­er words, it helps us to pro­vide ex­cel­lent ser­vice to our cus­tomers by ap­ply­ing the poli­cies and pro­ce­dures of the com­pa­ny.” Pao­la Vil­lela - Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing Man­ag­er, Mex­i­co. Con­sid­er­ing we are still in the ear­ly stages of de­ploy­ing this tool, it is pre­ma­ture to quan­ti­fy tan­gi­ble re­sults. How­ev­er, pre­lim­i­nary ob­ser­va­tions are that it in­sti­gates vast­ly im­proved cus­tomer ser­vice and en­gage­ment. Every mem­ber of our staff now has the po­ten­tial of be­ing a brand am­bas­sador and a prod­uct spe­cial­ist at the same time. We make our cus­tomers feel spe­cial by pro­vid­ing a unique shop­ping ex­pe­ri­ence. The lan­guage fea­ture on the tablet makes it pos­si­ble to show prod­uct de­scrip­tions and in­for­ma­tion in the cus­tomer­s’ pre­ferred lan­guage. The cus­toms al­lowance but­ton helps staff in­form cus­tomers ex­act­ly what the cus­toms lim­its are at their fi­nal des­ti­na­tion, there­by help­ing them avoid sur­pris­es on ar­rival.

Insights

A ma­jor im­pact on our busi­ness that comes with the dig­i­tal­iza­tion of staff is our abil­i­ty to pre­cise­ly mea­sure many fac­tors im­pact­ing sales in store. These in­sights on the be­hav­ior of Dufry cus­tomers can lead us to in­sights on many oth­er as­pects of the busi­ness in gen­er­al. The plat­form now pro­vides us with an­a­lyt­ics on what items are se­lect­ed. For ex­am­ple, know­ing that the most pop­u­lar item that was clicked vs the item that is pur­chased the most. We will have mea­sur­able data on what cross-sell­ing and up­selling sug­ges­tions are more pop­u­lar by ge­og­ra­phy and by lan­guage. It will also pro­vide us with in­sights on what fea­tures our em­ploy­ees find most use­ful. With this new tool we will have vis­i­bil­i­ty on what train­ings are most pop­u­lar as well as a store-by-store com­par­i­son of how dai­ly tasks im­pact store per­for­mance. The tool will pro­vide data on which stores use fea­tures such as vi­su­al mer­chan­dis­ing and if that cor­re­lates with store per­for­mance. These in­sights and many more will be mea­sur­able rather than based on per­cep­tion and gen­er­al­iza­tions.

The broader picture

The in­tro­duc­tion of sales tablets can­not be seen as an iso­lat­ed ini­tia­tive, but as part of a larg­er mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy fo­cused on serv­ing our cus­tomers bet­ter. This is an­oth­er piece of the mar­ket­ing puz­zle that we now have and which en­ables us to im­prove cus­tomer ser­vice by bet­ter en­gag­ing with our cus­tomers.

The the New Gen­er­a­tion Stores (NGS) and ini­tia­tives such as RED by Dufry, Fo­rum and Re­serve & Col­lect are in­ter­linked and com­ple­ment one an­oth­er. The tablets are a bold ini­tia­tive that fa­cil­i­tates our staff’s work. As with the oth­er ini­tia­tives in­clud­ed in the dig­i­tal­iza­tion of Dufry that start­ed a cou­ple of years ago, it has trans­formed and will con­tin­ue to trans­form Dufry into a more ag­ile com­pa­ny by speed­ing up re­sponse times and putting the com­pa­ny in a stronger po­si­tion to cope with fu­ture chal­lenges. Our vi­sion is to cre­ate a base for a tru­ly con­nect­ed em­ploy­ee who on the sales tablet has ac­cess not only to a com­mer­cial tool, but to their dai­ly per­for­mance vs ob­jec­tives, tasks and shifts. It is a place where they can find train­ings. Dufry staff can also ben­e­fit from the RED loy­al­ty pro­gram while un­der­stand­ing the con­sumer bet­ter and adding the ad­van­tage of giv­ing bet­ter ser­vice. There are many more ad­van­tages to the tablet and it will keep grow­ing and im­prov­ing.