The year 2022 has been full of opportunities and challenges. The retail industry had to face supply chain concerns, the prediction of an upcoming recession, and a shrink in consumer budget, retailers had to achieve more with limited resources. The year also suffered high inflation and the cost of living along with the cost of doing business also saw a steep rise in values. These reasons stopped stores from implementing modern technologies like Facial Recognition in Retail.
But despite these challenges, the ‘return to normalcy’ opened up a new opportunity for the retail sector. Mass-level vaccinations along with the lifting of lockdowns brought back a sense of normalcy among consumers, and they have come out to shop in brick-and-mortar stores once again. There is no denying the fact that no matter what, there is no replacement for traditional brick-and-mortar stores for shopping compared to e-commerce.
E-commerce during the time of pandemic and lockdowns has gained an added advantage of gaining a massive amount of consumer insights through the shoppers’ behavior on their websites. With brick-and-mortar stores remaining closed during the lockdown, a large number of customers resorted to online buying either for the first time or regularly to shop. Even items for daily needs, usually procured from grocery stores earlier, were being ordered online. The quick commerce apps too gained prominence by ensuring time-bound delivery to customer doorsteps.
These accumulations of data by the e-commerce sites have empowered them to retarget the customers with additional discounts and suggested add-on items based on their previous purchases. Here the brick-and-mortar stores have to face a challenge in respect of gaining an understanding of the buying behavior of consumers within the store. Technologies like Facial Recognition in retail are a major breakthrough in this arena.
A large amount of the personal preferences of customers in a store are retained by the staff of the store. Loyal customers or regular customers regularly interact with the store staff, giving the latter an added advantage of understanding what exactly a customer is been looking for. But simultaneously it is also impossible for store staff and management to remember every single customer’s billing details to assist them by default the moment they enter the store. The retail customer analytics with AI will give a leading edge in serving loyal and regular customers.
Storefronts and support staff must be full of well-trained, longer-term associates. These are the kinds of employees who will help keep pace with the higher-quality, omnichannel customer experiences that are now in demand for brick-and-mortar stores to keep pace.
Facial recognition in retail will help the store manager as well as the store staff to address this pressing situation immediately.
Personalized Customer Service
As the customer enters the store, with the help of facial recognition, store management and the staff will be able to get an alert, that a regular or loyal customer has stepped in. Along with that, a brief description of the purchasing history of the customer will also be flashed. This will help the store staff to understand how to deal with the customer with much more personalized service. Either the staff can show the visiting customer, new collections and arrivals compared to what he or she has already purchased previously. Staff could also suggest any add-ons which suit well what the customer has already purchased previously. Both in this way, the basket size of customers could be increased manifolds.
Staff training
Many a time it could be observed, despite a good footfall the conversion of the store is not upto the mark. Customers are not purchasing while visiting the store, especially for a new launch. This mostly happens due to a lack of understanding of the products, their attributes and their benefits for a customer. The absence of proper product knowledge will lead to low confidence among staff to face a customer. Facial recognition can understand which sections or products are getting regularly visited by customers but are not being purchased and identify the need accordingly. Imparting quality training to these section staff will improve into better conversion.
Inventory & Warehouse Management
Inventory management and warehouse management are one of the most vital parts of any retail store management. A major part of store turnover could be eaten up by stock shrinkage due to poor management of inventory and warehouse management. Facial recognition in this scenario could be at the rescue. Firstly, any store warehouse is considered a sensitive place and every staff does not have the authority to access the area. Any unauthorized entry into the warehouse will be alerted by facial recognition-enabled technology like TORK in real-time, which in turn will help reduce shrinkage-related issues to a large extent. Through product identification, it can also analyze what products are entering or being taken out from the warehouse keeping a track of on-hand inventory.
HR & Payroll Services
Facial recognition implementation can also help smoothen and streamline the HR payroll and attendance process. Rather than engaging too much of paperwork or a single touch device for all employees in registering staff’s attendance, installing one single camera to capture and register the attendance of all the staff will be enough. Moreover, the facial recognition software could be seamlessly configured with the payroll software of the firm making all sorts of payout smart and hassle-free.
Facial recognition is indeed the inescapable future, and no way any business can stay away from it. Now the priority lies how in various ways the new technology could be seamlessly integrated into the existing system in order to benefit every stakeholder of it. Facial recognition technology like TORK developed by Softweb Technologies is indeed making a huge difference in this sector as TORK does not need a complete system overhaul rather it gets seamlessly integrated with any running system with data security in place.
