The Retailer Summer Edition 2022

THE RE TA I L ER

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CREATING BETTER CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE WITH LOW-CODE

Erika Arena Principal Industry Lead, Retail Mendix

C an low-code software development tools really help retail enterprises to enhance their operational efficiency and deliver exceptional customer experience at a lower cost?

Leveraging low-code to optimise operational efficiency

While there are many tech solutions available in the market to help retail enterprises to upgrade their operational efficiency and improve their customer experience, in recent times low-code tools have emerged to become more popular among businesses that are looking to innovate their business processes by building customised applications. With the help of low-code tools, organisations can nowbuild applications to manage their business operations and better serve their customers, without having to hire a large number of software applications developers. Most low-code platforms also allowbusiness users or tech savvy people within the organisation to collaboratewith the IT teams to build solutions or applications that the business needs, at a lower cost and at a faster pace. Some of theways inwhich retail enterprises can use low-code to enhance their business processes and improve their customer experience, includes – Building hyper-personalised apps to remain competitive – Developing applications to enhance customer experiencewithin retail involves taking into consideration the various personas that will be ultimately using these apps, including employees belonging to different departments and the customers themselves. This involves creating hyper-personalised applications that cater to the needs of multiple personas, numerous business processes, custom functionalities and authenticated levels of access to different types of information. With the help of rapid app development tools such as low-code, busi nesses can nowutilise real-time data, AI, machine learning and predictive analytics, to gain better access to insights from their audience or cus tomers and can act on that information at a faster rate. These tools can essentially help you understand howusers interact with your application through feedback loops. Basically, low-code platforms allow you to release more iterations of apps to create more feedback cycles, which in turn leads to more information which can be used to inform AI and machine learning of various business processes. In the long run, this helps retailers to scale up their operations via automation while continuously improving the user experience of their apps. Designing better mobile apps to improve customer experience –Mobile apps are now a pre-requisite for retailers to compete with others in a digital landscape. With its ability to gather data, grow sales and smoothen out business processes, these apps remain a key touchstone to drive business value via digitization. Businesses can now leverage low-code development platforms tomanage their mobile stack as they provide a more cost-effective solution to build, implement and maintain the mobile application development strategy. However, when it comes to choosing the right low-code platform to manage the business’s mobile stack, it’s important to first get your mobile application infrastructure right.

As the ongoing cost-of-living crisis in the UK continues to impact businesses belonging to various industries, the retail sector has been particularly hit by the repercussions of the crisis due to dramatic shifts in consumer behaviour. In fact, according to the Office for National Statistics, retail sales across the country have been steadily dipping since the past few months – a fall of 0.1% in sales volume was recorded in June 2022. Pressured by rising wages, reduced consumer spending and global supply chain issues, retailers are now turning to tech solutions to reduce their operational costs and increase efficiency to make the most out of their existing resources to deliver better customer experience and retain their customers. As consumer preferences continue to evolve as they become more price sensitive, retailers now need to adopt a customer-centric strategy that focuses on better understanding changing consumer needs to deliver quality customer experience. Whether it’s discovering new products on a desktop or making a pur chase on a mobile app and scheduling it for an instore pick-up, today’s customer experience needs to take all the various customer touchpoints into consideration, which exists within both the physical and digital realms, to create a truly seamless customer experience. Hence providing exceptional customer experience is not just about training your employees to be nice to your customers. To remain competitive and relevant during these challenging times, retailers need to embrace a digital customer experience strategy that focuses on empowering their employees to deliver exceptional customer service by leveraging the latest tech tools available in the market. However, adapting to these changes is easier said than done as devel oping a unique customer experience involves continuous understanding of your user and investing in the right technology to keep up with their changing needs. Developing a successful customer experience