Retail Companies Must Use Tech to Enable Employee Communication
Hasenzahl spoke about his experiences working with retail companies to help managers give associates the devices and skills to handle task management. Sometimes that involves finding an interface users will find familiar.
“Whatever we can do to facilitate the adoption of these tools and make them second nature to people in our workforces is going to be a big deal. Now of course, this implies that you're investing in devices, that you're investing in a network, because fancy devices without a network to back them up are frustrating, not fun,” Hasenzahl explained.
He acknowledged that new systems of communication can’t be deployed quickly, and they frequently include stakeholders who haven’t traditionally been involved in IT decision-making, including human resources departments. “Associate attraction and retention is such a big problem, not just in retail but across the board. And we’re talking about severe impact to the bottom line with hours of lost productivity — 250 million hours of productivity lost a year as a result of turnover.”
More from BizTech: Learn about the technology being deployed at stores.
Devices Are a Big Part of the Answer for Retailers
Hasenzahl claimed some of that loss could be eased by technology, through providing employees with the right equipment. “We’re seeing ruggedized enterprise devices mirroring consumer devices. That’s what we’re seeing and that’s what we like. We’re not talking about single-use, multipurpose clunky devices with lots of programmable buttons. That’s not what we’re seeing.”
At Samsung, Hasenzahl said, “We have people issuing devices to attract and retain associates, and they can take these devices home. This is your own personal device, and so this is something that’s going to solve a problem with a customer in a store, let you watch Netflix on a subway or play a trivia game in a bar.”
The capability of devices has advanced greatly in recent years. “All of a sudden, cameras that are used for video chats and for taking pictures are used for barcode scanning and for AR overlays. We’re starting to see the repurposing of this hardware to fit use cases within retail. Near-field communication for mobile payments can now take a mobile payment. Gyroscopes that start counting steps are really relevant within retail, because now we understand where the friction points are. How many steps associates are taking a day is important to us because they may indicate that there’s a problem with the process.”
Hasenzahl also pointed out the ways Bluetooth proximity can help companies understand when devices are all together, or help pinpoint a device’s location so the associate can be pointed in the right direction for picking a product. “This smashing together of consumer and enterprise is going to be a big deal, and it’s going to get closer and closer together as we progress,” he said.