EFFECTIVE CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT STARTS HERE- PERKS OF INVESTING IN A RETAIL CRM PLATFORM
May 19 2023
A crucial aspect of any retail business, customer engagementnot only helps build brand loyalty but also drives sales and revenue. Today’s retail landscape requires businesses to use all the tools at their disposal to keep customers coming back. That’s where a retail Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system comes in.
A retail CRM system helps businesses manage their interactions with customers, from their first contact to their last purchase and beyond. It provides a centralized platform to store customer information, such as contact details, purchase history, and preferences. This information can then be used to personalize the customer experience, tailor marketing messages, and improve customer service.
Customer engagement done right
One of the key benefits of this system is that it enables businesses to engage with customers on a more personal level. By analyzing customer data, businesses can gain insights into their behavior, preferences, and needs. This information can be used to create personalized marketing messages that resonate with customers and make them feel valued.
Create proactive marketing strategies
With the rise of social media and other digital channels, customers now have more ways to interact with businesses than ever before. A retail CRM system helps businesses track customer interactions across multiple channels. This can help retail businesses respond and deploy strategies in a timely and effective manner.
Foster customer loyalty
Most importantly, these platforms help businesses build customer loyalty. By providing personalized experiences and excellent customer service, businesses can create a loyal customer base that will return time and time again. Loyal customers are also more likely to recommend a business to others, helping drive new business and revenue.
By providing a centralized platform for managing customer interactions, analyzing customer data, and personalizing the customer experience, these systems can help with customer engagement, cultivate customer loyalty, and drive sales and revenue.
With products uniquely focused on perfecting the customer-retailer connection, our mobile-first tools are easy to implement and can help you effectively implement all your retail strategies. Trusted by 50+ retailers globally, connect with us today to smoothly streamline your operations.
Never lose a sale: Explore endless aisle for your retail business
April 21 2023
In today’s highly competitive retail environment, it’s essential for retailers to have a comprehensive omnichannel strategy and endless aisle has emerged as one of the popular solutions for making that happen in-store.
Sarah is a top associate at a higher-end fashion chain. While Sarah loves curating the latest trends for her customers, she often finds herself frustrated by the limitations of her physical stores. The chain can’t carry every size or color of every item in every store, and sometimes customers leave empty-handed because she doesn’t have exactly what they’re looking for.
One day, a customer came into Sarah’s store looking for a specific style and size of shoes that they had seen but couldn’t find in-store. The customer was disappointed and ready to leave when Sarah remembered that the store had recently implemented omnichannel inventory and endless aisle capabilities.
Sarah quickly pulled out her tablet and used the store’s inventory system to check if any of the other locations had the shoes in stock. Sure enough, there was a pair available at a different store. Sarah informed the customer that they could purchase the shoes and have them shipped directly to their home or to the store for pickup.
But Sarah didn’t stop there. She also checked the store’s endless aisle capabilities and found that they had an even wider selection of shoes available online. She showed the customer some similar styles and sizes that were available and offered to place an order for them right then and there. The customer could browse through a virtual catalog of products, complete with images, descriptions, and even customer reviews. From there, they could place an order for any item they wanted, which would then be shipped directly to their homes.
Better shopping experiences for customers
Her customers appreciated this integration too! Thanks to the store’s cross-store inventory and endless aisle capabilities, Sarah was able to save the sale and provide the customer with a great shopping experience. The customer left happy and satisfied, and Sarah felt proud of her ability to leverage the store’s technology to provide excellent customer service. They could now browse through a wider selection of products while conveniently ordering items directly at the store.
Endless aisle helps fulfill every order
The real benefit of using an endless aisle solution became apparent to Sarah when she noticed that she was never losing a sale. Even if a customer came into one of her stores looking for a specific item that she didn’t have in stock, she could still fulfill the order using this tool. This meant that customers were always able to find what they were looking for, which kept them coming back to the store again and again.
Cross-selling and upselling made easy
Sarah also noticed that the endless aisle was helping her boost sales in other ways. Because customers were able to browse through a wider selection of products, they were also discovering new items that they may not have otherwise seen. This meant that she was able to upsell and cross-sell more effectively, which led to higher average order values and increased revenue for the store.
This implementation not only helped Sarah never lose a sale but also improve the overall shopping experience for her customers while driving more revenue.
Sarah’s experience is not unique. Endless aisles have become increasingly popular among retailers of all sizes and industries and for good reason. By offering a wider selection of products to customers, retailers can improve the shopping experience, increase customer loyalty, and boost sales. Plus, with the rise of e-commerce and online shopping, it’s becoming more important than ever for retailers to offer customers a seamless omnichannel experience that combines the convenience of online shopping with the personal touch of in-store interactions.
Check out Veras Extend to explore the endless possibilities an endless aisle can offer. Ensure its smooth integration with features that further power your retail strategy- Search your entire global catalog, and even include vendor catalogs to expand availability, present relevant promotions, and recommend similar items to the customer in the aisle.
Remote Selling delivers immersive customer experiences: Here’s how
April 18 2023
Retailers across the world have started using remote selling to cater to their customers’ increasing demand for personalized online shopping experiences. Combining the world of digital with human engagement, selling remotely breaks physical barriers while delivering quality customer experiences.
With more than three-quarters of buyers and sellers preferring digital self-serve and remote interactions over face-to-face engagement, these services have now become an important part of any retail strategy.
Let’s take a journey through the story of Steve who wants to buy furniture online and how a brand that sells remotely has a competitive advantage over others.
Steve is a new homeowner looking to furnish his space online. He knows of a store that offers virtual sales consultations and schedules an appointment for the same. Over the video call, Sally introduces herself as the sales representative and asks Steve about his requirements for the furniture along with a virtual tour of his house to get an idea of the space.
She now recommends items based on not just this conversation but also the Remote Selling software used for the session. The software has extensive data on Steve based on his previous interactions with the retailer, from which she can make personalized recommendations. She can also offer him a discount if it’s his birthday month and can run him through other promotions applicable to his account! After Steve finalizes the products he wants to buy, he can securely pay in the same session and the product will be delivered to him.
This story shows how retailers can use Remote Selling to create immersive experiences for their customers, even from a distance. From interaction with a sales associate to personalized recommendations, this virtual sales session made it all happen with ease.
This story points to all the ways retailers can use Remote Selling to create immersive experiences for their customers, even from a distance. Other than making a customer shopping journey more seamless, effortless, and personalized, it also provides retailers with a competitive advantage with-
An Expanded customer base- Selling remotely breaks geographical barriers. Retailers can use this tool to cater to customers that cannot visit their physical stores while offering them a personalized shopping experience.
Increased brand loyalty- Steve is more likely to shop with this furniture brand again. The in-store-like experience at home paired with tailored recommendations delivers a quality shopping experience, increasing loyalty towards a brand in the long run.
Increased sales- An expanded customer base along with increased brand loyalty translates into increased sales. This retail strategy can also reduce operational costs, resulting in more profits.
Veras Remote Selling
We created the Veras Remote Selling tool to perfect these virtual brand-to-customer interactions. Purpose-built for retail, this software automates and can dramatically improve Remote Selling experiences. It makes each session trackable and personalized, with features to view full product details, add and remove items from the cart, save to their wish list, and complete purchases on their own. It also allows for easy capturing of customer likes/dislikes and other personal feedback along with access to data crucial for marketing and loyalty to make selling remotely a simpler feat for your retail associates as well. To know more, get in touch with our team today.
Everything seems to be moving faster these days in retail. It’s not only impacted how we shop, but also how we approach product development—all while embracing the necessity for constant innovation. You can easily stay in-the-know with Release Notes, our biannual update that highlights recent product improvements, what’s new, and exciting things to come.
Made available on March 11, 2022, here are some notable highlights in Veras CheckOut 11.3 that include additional omnichannel capabilities, scale interface, flexible database options, and Veras OmniView Integration (beta).
New Omnichannel Capabilities
CheckOut 11.3 adds a dedicated Buy Online, Pick Up in Store order processing flow, as well as a flow for Buy Online, Ship to Store order receiving and customer pickup. Additionally, the order management screens for all order types have been refined to bring focus to the data elements that are most important to store users.
Scale Interface
With Veras’ continued growth in grocery and hypermarkets in Asia Pacific, CheckOut 11.3 provides the ability to integrate to a weighing scale and collect the product quantity from the scale. Tare weight calculation and recording is included in this enhancement as well.
Greater Flexibility with Veras Replication
Veras Replication allows greater flexibility in database licensing choices. A new mechanism enables server-to-client database replication in cloud and on-premises deployments managed by Veras utilities rather than the RDBMS engine. Not to worry, the traditional RDBMS-managed replication process is still supported. For Veras customers interested in learning more about this great cost-saving option, please contact your account representative.
Veras OmniView Integration (beta)
CheckOut 11.3 adds an integration to the new Veras order management application, Veras OmniView. Veras OmniView will provide a richer, cloud-native omnichannel engine for order sourcing, orchestration, and fulfillment. The new CheckOut omnichannel process flows integrate to both the traditional order management logic and tables hosted on the CheckOut central server, as well as to Veras OmniView.
Omnichannel Inventory Visibility, Order Orchestration & Mobility
Omnichannel ordering and fulfillment, and the connected customer experiences tied to these capabilities, are no longer optional for stores. Today’s shoppers are exerting and demanding more control over how, when, and where their orders are fulfilled.
In fact, the number of orders placed online and picked up at brick-and-mortar stores by customers grew 208% during the pandemic and show no signs of waning. Retailers quickly jumped into offering these services to meet consumer demand, but without the luxury of having a full omnichannel strategy. As a result, many retailers are navigating their way around a multi-channel maze wrought with manual processes, siloed purchasing channels, and disconnected inventory views.
Introducing Veras OmniView
Veras OmniView supports an omnichannel fulfillment strategy where retailers use multiple selling channels to fulfill and distribute orders, regardless of which channel the customer places an order through to streamline the fulfillment and delivery process.
When it comes to any good omnichannel strategy, you’ll find real-time inventory visibility centered around the customer at its core. Shoppers couldn’t agree more as:
71% of shoppers say that it is important or very important to be able to view inventory information for in-store products. (Forrester)
69% of consumers expect that store associates be armed with a mobile device, in order to perform simple and immediate tasks such as looking up product information and checking inventory.
56% of consumers have used their mobile device to research products at home with 38% having used their mobile device to check inventory availability while on their way to a store. (Forrester)
Veras OmniView enables order fulfillment execution paired with inventory features on mobile in a single UX to support the following capabilities:
Order Picking (consolidated/team picking, substitutions, prep for curbside/locker/courier)
Receiving & Putaway
Transfers & RTV
Cycle Count & Adjustments
Product Inquiry
What’s more, task-based workflows across functions help keep store associates focused on the most urgent priorities. Veras OmniView also goes beyond order execution capabilities to deliver intelligent decisioning and order orchestration coupled with configurable rules-based processes.
Delivered through a microservices-based architecture and standard workflow platform, Veras OmniView helps retailers center their experiences around the customer to ensure that shoppers can easily navigate across various touchpoints to make their purchase.
Stay Tuned!
More to come on our next product advancement Veras OmniView, as we continue deliver next-generation solutions for today’s evolving retail processes through a unified commerce strategy.
If you’re a retailer and Win/DSS is your point-of-sale system, your IT, operations, and customer-facing associates are struggling with a rigid, outdated system that has some serious limitations.
Designed before the age of mobile and digital commerce, Win/DSS falls incredibly short when it comes to empowering today’s retailers to deliver omnichannel experiences. We understand that getting your enterprise on a new platform may seem challenging. However, when you consider the time and resources wasted to stay afloat on a legacy platform – while falling further behind on modern retail experiences – it makes sense to upgrade.
We know the limitations you face when it comes to the many obstacles and workarounds in Win/DSS. They can include daily corrupt files and lost transactions, serious disruptions to sales and customer experience, and the most convoluted manual processes to complete transactions and keep the system running. The following infographic underscores some of the of the top Win/DSS burdens alongside the immediate benefits that could be gained with an upgrade to Veras CheckOut.
Win/DSS Infographic
Immediate Benefits Upgrading to Veras CheckOut
(click image below to expand)
BIG Omnichannel Platform Gains
Let’s face it, most of the elements called out in the Win/DSS infographic are table stakes. With all that retailers need to achieve to deliver on customer demands, a modern omnichannel platform should offer far more. Through Veras CheckOut’s future-proof platform architecture, omnichannel capabilities, flexible modes of selling, and AI-driven customer experiences – CheckOut provides a path forward for retailers to execute on their omnichannel vision.
Using real-time enterprise inventory data and centralized order visibility and alerting, Veras CheckOut creates the ultimate omnichannel experience on a single, unified platform through:
Enterprise-grade technology
Services-based architecture
Hardware-agnostic integrations
Real-time data and inventory management
Frictionless omnichannel and cross-store selling
Integrated modules for mPOS, clienteling, remote selling, and more
Retail Experiences Built Around the Customer
Whether it’s in-store or digitally, the Veras Extend Customer Experience platform supports modern mobile and cross-channel capabilities on iOS, Android and Windows platforms. Extend offers a lightweight native client that integrates to Veras CheckOut transparently to power a variety of associate- and customer-facing experience on mobile and fixed devices, including the capabilities below.
Additionally, with real-time connectivity and enterprise-wide inventory availability, the Veras platform delivers a comprehensive inventory solution to optimally locate, pick, ship and restock merchandise to meet the needs of the cross-channel shopper so you never lose a sale.
Ship from Store or Warehouse
Endless Aisle / Save-the-Sale
Cross-Store Pickup
Ship-to-Store
Bulk Item Pickup
Buy Online Pickup in Store
Cater to Your Customer’s Shopping Styles
Consumer behavior and shopping preferences can vary greatly, which impacts how a customer may want to shop in the store. There are many variables at play. Does the customer already know the item they want? Perhaps the customer has a question but can’t seem to find a store associate to help. Or maybe your customer is in a rush and needs to get checked out quickly.
Whatever the scenario, Veras’ in-store solutions including Product Kiosk, mPOS, and Self-Checkout allow shoppers to get what they need and in the way they like to shop.
Product Kiosk. In addition to obtaining pricing details, Veras Product Kiosk’s interactive touchscreens empower shoppers to explore on their own. Shoppers gain a full 360-product view through rich product descriptions, images, and customer reviews.
Mobile Point-of-Sale. With Veras Mobile Point-of-Sale, perform full point-of-sale transactions with secure payments or suspend the transaction and complete it on a standard register. And operate mPOS at any offsite event or easily add an in-store register by docking the tablet as a fixed POS terminal.
Self-Checkout. In addition to giving happy customers choice and speed with Veras Self-Checkout, retailers can experience big benefits as well. Maximize personnel productivity with labor costs during off-peak hours and seasonal surges. And never lose a sale to long wait times by making the most of your floor space to drive more transactions.
Personalized Shopping & New Digital Channels
The shift and appetite for digital commerce has made it possible for retailers to reach and personalize shopping experiences like never before. Omnichannel and new digital capabilities like Veras Remote Selling are putting customers entirely in control to shop as they desire. And smart and connected technologies such as Veras Affinity Clienteling create opportunities for store associates to reach more customers and in more meaningful ways.
Affinity In-Store Clienteling. Veras Affinity Clienteling mobilizes frontline workers with next-level customer insights and personalization the moment shoppers walk into the store. The ultra-responsive, intelligent engine helps anticipate and deliver on the customer’s wants, allowing store associates to provide the high-touch, consultative service many shoppers desire. And customer interest can be quickly converted into purchases with checkout in-aisle.
Remote Selling. Veras Remote Selling adds a powerful revenue channel for the store. Browser-based and purpose-built for retail, remote selling combines the ease of ecommerce with the high-level service and personal touch of a knowledgeable sales associate. The associate can share products live in the store and digitally through the platform where customers may browse, save to their wish list, and complete purchases.
Black Book Customer Outreach. With Veras Black Book, retail staff working in-store or remotely can provide personalized services to better track and engage with the customer on an on-going basis. Black Book drives proactive and personalized outreach using customer data, timely alerts and reminders, and convenient templates for store associates to always be in touch with your best customers.
All of this is enabled by Veras’ services-oriented, future-proof platform. Highly adaptable to support a variety of deployment models, the platform’s microservices API layer shares business logic across an array of endpoints. From traditional POS to mobile selling to clienteling, our proven enterprise architecture allows retailers to not only innovate faster, but at lower TCO.
Our Win/DSS Knowledge & Expertise
Lastly, the experts at Veras, several of whom once implemented, trained and supported Win/DSS, acquired the technology in 2016. The team has since shed the legacy software to deliver a leading omnichannel solution.
Additional Migration Benefits:
Thoughtful design transition across UI, terminology, and process flows
Veras CheckOut’s integration to JDA MMS
Transparency to finance, sales audit, and inventory control
Easy customizations
Upgrades without impacting the standard software
Now that we’ve taken you through the daily burdens of Win/DSS and big-picture gains of omnichannel POS through the Veras unified platform – isn’t it time to take the next step forward?
There’s no better time to upgrade. Contact us to learn how you can make smart technology investments through a modern POS platform while leveling up your entire retail operations.
Purchase any cart-based application on our omnichannel platform & receive free* digital receipts with flexEngage
This special offer is included with Veras CheckOut 11.1 (and subsequent versions),mPOS, Self-Checkout, Endless Aisle and Remote Selling.
Nearly every stage of a shopper’s end-to-end experience, from the moment they search for a product or step into a store, has the opportunity to be personalized. Given the ability to intelligently mine and collect shopper data, AI and ML-driven retail technologies such as Veras Affinity Clienteling, Remote Selling and Black Book, offer enormous potential for retailers to build effective, context-aware processes to deliver compelling experiences, and empower frontline workers to facilitate that journey.
Post-Purchase Communications
An important and often overlooked portion of that journey is post-purchase communications. Revenue generated from initial sales is certainly a building block for any retailer, but retention is what helps foster sales growth and really set a business apart from other merchants. Did you know that acquiring new customers costs five times as much as it costs to retain existing customers? What’s more, new customers are 5%–20% likely to make a purchase, while existing customers are 60%–70%.
Effective post-purchase communications contribute to higher customer retention rates. The flexEngage digital marketing platform combined with Veras’ omnichannel retail technology promotes just that. Digital receipts help keep the conversation going with customers after they leave the store or make a digital purchase to strengthen the relationship with your brand inspire brand loyalty through ongoing, personalized engagement.
More Ways to Personalize. More Opportunities to Convert.
Static and basic transactional messages can be easily ignored, unlike flexEngage’s digital receipts that can help retailers deepen and extend customer loyalty after each transaction by:
• Turning receipts into repeat purchases
• Creating loyalty through convenience
• Engaging beyond the purchase
FREE* Essential Tier Benefits with Veras Solutions
When you purchase or upgrade to Veras CheckOut 11.1 (or subsequent version), mPOS, Self-Checkout, Endless Aisle and Remote Selling, you’ll receive flexEngage’s Essential digital receipt bundle at no additional cost.
Complementary front-end features in the Essential tier include barcode, clickable logo sent to your domain, PDF attachment, and the added benefits of:
• Contactless experiences
• Increased email adoption
• Reduced paper costs
* Available to customers in North America. Some add-on services may incur additional costs, such as third-party survey integration.
Digital innovation in omnichannel, mobile and remote selling, real-time inventory visibility, and customer experience is on everyone’s wish lists with big plans to execute in 2022. Are you ready to perfect the customer connection and engage with shoppers post-purchase? We’re here to partner and help support leading retailers to achieve these goals.
There’s no time to delay as data is dramatically disrupting the way retailers do business. Data intelligence and the right retail technologies will drive it even further—and those who can optimally leverage their data will gain a competitive edge.
CONTACT US
Learn how Veras’ cart-based applications integrated with flexEngage digital receipts offer more ways to personalize and engage with shoppers post-purchase.
To better manage and sell regulated products, cannabis dispensaries must take a more holistic view of their retail IT systems and overall business operations.
For the budding cannabis industry, traditional POS systems are likely to fall short of its specific needs. While any dependable system has a nice interface, some form of compliance reporting, and integrated inventory management — there are some core capabilities that can set your retail experience apart.
When a new dispensary opens its doors, it usually brings with it lines of expectant shoppers ready to browse a diverse range of products or snap up some limited inventory before it’s gone. Managing omnichannel inventory for any retailer can be a challenge. But for cannabis dispensaries, knowing precisely how much product is available and where it’s located is just the beginning.
In addition to real-time inventory management, add in several more layers of complexity like managing varying compliance regulations, consumption limits, customer privacy, and security. There’s also the all-important customer experience. To better manage and sell regulated products, cannabis dispensaries must take a more holistic view of their retail IT systems and overall business operations.
Must-Have Dispensary Functionality
MANAGING COMPLIANCE & PURCHASE LIMITS
Ever-changing regulatory and legislative policies make it challenging for cannabis-related companies to operate within the latest standards. Even states and provinces where cannabis is fully legal have different polices regarding accessibility and sale. Veras CheckOut POS has built-in flexibility to quickly address these updates while tracking and flagging purchasing limits. To ensure compliance, purchasing limits are tracked automatically at the point of sale for each customer. Veras CheckOut can track the amount of active ingredients across a variety of cannabis products such as edibles, loose leaf, flower and liquid to make sure the total purchase never surpasses the customer’s limit.
Veras CheckOut additionally manages lot and expiry dates to provide visibility into when items are packaged and flag products that are set to expire.
IDENTIFICATION CHECKS & SCANNING
Most dispensaries check the customer’s ID at multiple points along the purchase path to verify that they are of legal age and eligible to buy cannabis. While most budtenders physically check the customer’s ID, Veras CheckOut is able to speed this verification through a quick scan. The scan lets the budtender know if the customer is 21 or older and track how much the customer has purchased that day. In addition to not having to worry about invalid IDs, the budtender can also see if they’re a new or returning customer to provide the best experience.
MULTI-LOCATION INVENTORY MANAGEMENT
When dealing with high volumes, numerous product types and store locations, multi-location inventory management is essential to sustain seamless inventory to get the product to the customer. The dispensary retail floor serves as a polished showroom where a single product is on display. Most of the product is typically kept fresh and secure in the back room.
Given this set up and with Veras solutions, store associates can easily scan product to move it from the backroom to the front for sale. Budtenders may even transfer inventory to another store location through the software instead of having to reupload the product manually. Whether at the corporate or store-level, Veras solutions provide dispensaries clear visibility into product availability at each location, transferred between locations, and sold at each store.
CUSTOMER PREFERENCES & CONSULTATIVE EXPERIENCE
In addition to accelerating checkout times and maintaining continuous compliance, the Veras platform comes with a host of customer-focused modules to deliver a personalized and improved overall experience. Take for instance its device-agnostic clienteling module Veras Affinity. The solution provides a simple way of leveraging mobility via iPad (or any other device) to meet customers on the sales floor. Budtenders can see past purchases, make notes on customer preferences, and save items to wish lists to dramatically improve customer interactions and service.
So, the next time the customer’s ID, loyalty number or phone number is recognized, the budtender can see in the profile that this particular shopper only purchases edibles. Another budtender may have added notes that this customer does not like flower or concentrates. Now any budtender in the store (and across the chain) knows to only discuss and introduce new edible products when helping this customer.
OMNICHANNEL VISIBILITY
From tasting rooms to high-end displays, dispensaries are breaking down any preconceived notions of what a cannabis store is like. And leading dispensaries are leveraging omnichannel capabilities and digital technology to set a new precedent for how customers purchase products. Spurred by high-volume and high-demand products, cannabis retailers are adopting omnichannel strategies to support customers in new ways.
Veras’ unified platform makes it possible to support omnichannel distribution strategies tied to the store. Customers can start a transaction online or via mobile phone to reserve, pickup, and pay for products at the store. Real-time inventory availability helps to ensure what the customer is viewing online is consistent with what’s available in store. For any out-of-stock items, budtenders can use the Veras ‘global search’ function that looks across enterprise inventory where items can be scheduled for remote pick up at a nearby store or shipped to the customer.
DIGITAL DISPLAYS & SELF-SERVICE KIOSK
While super dispensaries boast large retail footprints, that’s certainly not the norm. Most cannabis retailers have smaller retail footprints and are looking for ways to maximize that space, including digital displays and self-service kiosks. Digital displays are often used to show inventory counts of product at the store. When tied to the point of sale, the customer can see in real-time if the product they want is available. If not, they can decide to select another product or place an order before ever needing to wait in line.
Another efficient way to cut wait times, improve service, and maximize space is through self-service kiosks. Upon scanning their ID, customers can create and complete an order to have it fulfilled from behind the checkout counter. Through Veras Extend, shoppers can view rich product descriptions, images, and customer reviews. With a couple of kiosks, these retail screens can act as its own store — splitting medicinal vs. recreational or other product types — to create different stores in one physical location.
Enterprise Omnichannel Solutions
There are many factors to consider when shopping for dispensary POS. In addition to selecting features and capabilities that work best for your operations, it’s essential to consider the customer experience and consistency across channels. And while compliance measures are of upmost importance, cannabis retailers are still retailers.
As a proven dispensary POS provider, Veras Retail also provides a win-win strategy by bringing innovations and best practices from across a wide variety of retailers while addressing the core needs specific to this industry. Our API-driven platform and services-enabled infrastructure allows retailers to rapidly implement new solutions and capabilities to move as fast as the business needs to:
All things considered, be sure you’re working with a flexible provider that understands your business to properly address your current requirements and can scale up as your needs evolve in the future.
Veras CheckOut can be a powerful business enabler, allowing shoppers to move between digital and physical experiences.Learn how our unified platform helps in areas that matter most.
Retailers are embedding technology like Veras Black Book to reach shoppers at every step along the purchase path to deliver a whole new level of service. Veras Black Book drives proactive and personalized outreach using customer data, timely alerts and reminders, and convenient templates for store associates.
If there’s anything we’ve learned in retail over the last year, it’s that how consumers shop has forever changed. Consumer behavior will likely continue to evolve and come with greater service-level expectations. Coming out of the pandemic, mall developments came to a standstill and we saw historic store closings for retailers that were unable to respond. But there is a silver lining in this all.
The shift and appetite for digital commerce has made it possible for retailers to reach and personalize shopping experiences like never before. Omnichannel and new digital capabilities are putting customers entirely in control to shop as they desire. And smart and connected technologies open up opportunities for store associates to reach more customers and in more meaningful ways.
Cut Through the Digital Noise
Consumers spent a staggering $861.12 billion online with U.S. merchants in 2020, up an incredible 44 percent year over year, according to Digital Commerce 360 estimates. That’s the highest annual U.S. ecommerce growth in at least two decades. It’s also nearly triple the 15.1 percent jump in 2019.
As a result, retailers are bombarding consumers with online ads, digital retargeting, endless email offers, and other mass marketing campaigns. Veras Black Book helps cut through that noise with proactive and highly personalized outreach. Proactive outreach with Black Book enables retail staff to set alerts, send emails and texts using pre-defined templates, and schedule appointments and follow-up calls based on customer insights and events.
While many marketing emails do ultimately reach the consumer’s inbox, most get ignored. In fact, 72 percent of consumers say that they only engage with personalized messaging. Whether it’s email, text or a phone call, people want to be treated like individuals. So, when a customer receives a personalized message, especially from someone they’ve interacted with previously, they are far more likely to respond.
With Black Book, retail staff working in-store or remotely can provide personalized services to better track and engage with the customer on an on-going basis. The system makes it easy for the associate by providing ready-to-use templates and data points reflecting the customer’s preferences.
Furthermore, store associates can add customer-specific notes or create a task. Black Book tasks have their own lifecycle and can be accepted or rejected. Tasks can be set at different priority levels, associated with deadlines, or automatically expire after an event such as a birthday or promotion. Black Book tasks also provide visibility by generating reports on tasks for associates across the retail chain.
Veras Black Book’s dashboard and tools allow retail staff to:
Review their top customers, latest activities, and helpful notes
View, create, and act on assigned tasks
See important store events, campaigns, and activities
Use customer insights to drive proactive outreach
Call or send emails and texts using pre-defined templates
Set alerts and schedule appointments and calls based on the customer’s specific needs or upcoming events
Flexible communication templates provide store associates an easy starting point that can be adjusted to tailor customer follow ups and future scheduling. With 80 percent of customers more likely to buy from a company that offers personalized experiences, Veras Black Book can be an effective tool to build real connections with shoppers.
3 Types of Black Book Tasks
Black Book may not be meant for every customer. Some shoppers know exactly what they want and prefer to explore and purchase items on their own. But for design professionals, personal shoppers, business customers, and your frequent and most loyal customers, Veras Black Book goes beyond transactions. It helps retailers personalize, inform, and connect with the customer through the following task types:
STORE EVENTS. Local events set by store managers or global events organized by corporate may include author signings, trunk shows, product launches, pop-up events, etc. Once set up, associates can engage with their core clients to send out a special invitation or schedule additional time for them at the store. Additionally, the store associate will know the best mode of communication based on the customer’s preferences.
QUICK TIPS. System-generated alerts provide a variety of reminders to send personalized outreach to customers regarding birthdays, promotions related to their likes, or just a simple touchpoint. ‘Your wish list item just went on sale and is available in your size. Would you like me to set it aside for you?’ ‘I saw returned your last purchase. I’d love to know what you didn’t like about it so we can improve in the future. Is there anything I can help you find?’ In addition to system-generated alerts, associates can create their own self-generated tasks based on the shopper’s last actions or their interactions with the customer.
DIRECT COMMUNICATION. When it comes to communicating with customers, each person has different needs and expectations. Two components in Black Book that make its communications so effective is that it provides associates a starting point through well-defined templates while also allowing for personalization. Customized templates can also be saved and used as a base for future outreach.
Expand on Personalized Services
As Veras Black Book is built on our Extend mobile platform, retailers can easily add complementary modules including Veras Affinity Clienteling, Style Builder, and Remote Selling to amplify personalized services in-store or remotely. Veras Affinity helps retailers connect omnichannel data with store initiatives and empower associates with a 360-degree view of the customer. Additionally, Veras Style Builder’s curated collections allow sales associates to build and sell styles through complete looks, complementary collections, and similar products.
When shoppers aren’t physically in the store, Veras Remote Selling combines the immediacy and ease of ecommerce with the high-level service and personal touch of a knowledgeable sales associate. Whether shoppers need help finding specific products, want assurances on product compatibility, or seek new product recommendations, Veras Remote Selling is purpose-built for retail to deliver an immersive experience, anywhere. The sales person can share products live in the store and digitally through the platform where customers may browse, save to their wish list, and complete purchases.
It’s clear that store formats and the roles of associates are evolving. Every aspect of retail operations has the potential to make or break the customer experience. It’s now up to retailers to incorporate flexible technologies to create a new retail model that centers around personalized customer experiences. And with 91 percent of consumers more likely to shop with brands that provide offers and recommendations that are relevant to them, companies that don’t prioritize creating tailored experiences may run the risk of getting left behind.
Learn more about Veras Black Book and other AI-driven solutions that use personalization to deliver proactive and highly tailored customer outreach.
With the convergence of omni-commerce, real-time inventory visibility, fast fulfillment, and any number of ways to get products to the customer—endless aisle brings the best of these capabilities together to deliver an unbeatable customer experience.
If you’ve ever been in a store to browse through the merchandise or locate a particular product, chances are you’ve been approached by a retail associate. They probably asked, “Are you finding everything you need? Is there anything I can help you find?”… or something to that effect to help get what you want and deliver a great in-store experience.
Finding items in the store, depending on the retailer, is a much different experience today. What once was limited to inventory on the store shelves, in the back room, or available at a nearby store is now open to a sea of endless product options with endless aisle.
Endless aisle gives retail associates and shoppers in the store the ability to virtually browse and purchase a wide range of products. And for any out-of-stock items or products not sold in-store, the customer can have them shipped to the store or directly to their home.
Out-of-Stocks Add Up
While it’s hard to beat the convenience of online shopping, there are many reasons why consumers still go the store. They may want or need something immediately, enjoy seeing or trying on things in person, want to avoid delivery charges, or have questions on the products they’re about to purchase. But even with these drivers, physical retailers are still losing sales to out-of-stock items, which come with hefty losses.
According to 600 households surveyed by IHL Group, retailers are missing out on roughly $1 trillion in sales because they don’t have on hand what customers want to buy in their stores. Shoppers worldwide experience $984 billion worth of out-of-stocks and $144.9 billion in North America alone. And if the shopper happens to be an Amazon Prime member, they’re 52 percent more likely than other consumers to take out their phones and buy what they need online when faced with out-of-stocks.
Let’s take a closer look at the out-of-stock shopper breakdown:
32 percent faced empty shelves
16 percent failed to find staff to help
17 percent found staff, but not merchandise
18 percent noted the price in-store didn’t match an ad
17 percent didn’t get the product for other reasons
Endless aisle paired with real-time inventory visibility can help retailers avoid many of these missed-opportunity scenarios.
Advantages of Endless Aisle
With Veras Extend unified product search, associates can provide an endless aisle to customers by searching an endless number of SKUs across the entire retail chain. It consolidates the physical and virtual catalogs into a single friendly interface to show what’s available in-store or globally. Whether items are fulfilled through direct vendor ship, ecommerce, warehouse ship or sourced from another store, Veras Extend unified product search helps retailers create the ultimate merchandising and fulfillment strategy.
Endless aisle experiences increase conversions by allowing shoppers to review all available products without being limited to on-site selections through the global search icon.
Available on mobile devices, store associates can support customers anywhere in the store to:
Present an interactive digital experience often superior to what they can achieve by physically browsing items in-store
Easily toggle between products available in-store vs. products available globally
Search the entire retail catalog to present product availability, more product options, or similar items
Ship-to-store, reserve at another store for fast pickup, or ship any out-of-stock items directly to the customer
And all of this rich product data isn’t limited to endless aisle. It’s leveraged across all retail applications on the Veras Extend platform to support clienteling, remote selling, mPOS, self-checkout and in-store kiosks.
Expanded Product Search
Veras Extend unified product search is unique in that it allows associates to search products in a more comprehensive manner. Traditional product searches are narrowly executed by color, type, SKU, price or key words. However, the engine behind our unified product search is broader, allowing for more complex requests that you would typically find in real-world scenarios to yield better results.
Take for instance a customer searching for a red sweater. Is it cardinal red, candy apple red, dark red, maroon, burgundy, or other variation? So many possibilities exist, which is why our endless aisle search makes ‘red’ an attribute that can be tied to a broader family of reds. The same logic applies to sizing or price—to search for a range of medium-sized items or price range—or any other attribute of a product.
The way people shop is evolving, and leading retailers are evolving to meet their needs. The good news is that retailers and consumers alike benefit from having a complete picture through real-time data and connected systems to deliver the best outcomes. So next time you step into a store, don’t be surprised when you’re approached by an associate, tablet in hand, ready to help you find something in the store (or elsewhere).
Make smart technology investments through Veras Extend’s mobile and kiosk applications like endless aisle without overhauling your entire retail operations.
Get Digital Receipts at No Cost with Veras CheckOut 11.1
January 19, 2021
The recent release of Veras CheckOut 11.1 includes exciting new enhancements, along with the integration with our trusted partner flexEngage. Upgrade to our modern POS platform and you’ll receive free* contactless receipts.
Veras CheckOut 11.1, as well as the Veras Extend mPOS and self-checkout modules, now integrate to the flexEngage digital receipt platform. The flexEngage integration uniquely supports real-time personalized offers at the point-of-sale. Seamless digital receipt process flows allow for known customer preferences to be more quickly and consistently applied in the transaction. Now when you implement Veras CheckOut 11.1, you’ll receive free* digital receipts through flexEngage’s Essential plan.
Turn Purchasing Data into Meaningful Contact
flexEngage is a POS marketing service that delivers custom-made transactional messages, which reduce customer churn for brand-driven retailers.
Offering several levels – Essential, Pro, and Enterprise – find the right tier for your customer outreach and loyalty goals to best fit your needs.
FREE* ESSENTIAL TIER BENEFITS
Front-end features that are complementary in flexEngage’s Essential tier include barcode, clickable logo sent to your domain, PDF attachment, and the added benefits of:
Contactless Experiences
Increased Email Adoption
Reduced Paper Costs
Services-Oriented, Future-Proof Platform
With the flexEngage integration on CheckOut’s omnichannel platform, retailers can continue to drive innovation, offer better customer experiences, and unlock additional responsive technologies and capabilities.
From enhancements to a complete upgrade, Veras provides a clear migration path to modernize your POS platform with Veras CheckOut. Highly adaptable to support a variety of deployment models including on-prem, cloud or hybrid deployments, the platform’s microservices API layer shares business logic across an array of endpoints. From traditional POS to mobile selling to retail kiosks, our proven enterprise architecture allows retailers to innovate faster, and at lower TCO.
Veras CheckOut also helps the store become an extension of your omnichannel strategy to provide a suite of cross-channel and cross-store selling capabilities.
VERAS EXTEND PLATFORM. Extend brings the point-of-sale and mobile selling to customers in-aisle or offsite. Extend goes beyond checkout to enable mobile for inventory, clienteling, unified product search, price checker and self-checkout.
VERAS AFFINITY CLIENTELING. Affinity help retailers connect online and offline data with store initiatives and empower their associates with a 360-degree view of the customer. Unlike any other clienteling solution, direct associate input strengthens the data and trains the AI to make smarter recommendations to drive sales.
VERAS REMOTE SELLING.Remote Selling allows retailers to personalize and connect with shoppers virtually. Unlike Facebook or Zoom, our end-to-end experience is trackable, integrated, and consistent. From initiating the virtual appointment, to sharing rich product details, and building the basket all the way through purchase—Veras Remote Selling helps retailers stay connected even at a distance.
Plus, additional features referred to as “FIGI” (“Find It, Get It”), encompass all of the following business scenarios through Veras CheckOut:
Send Sale. Collect and track shipping information for items sold in-store and shipped to the customer.
Charge Send. Save the sale using “endless aisle” of enterprise inventory. Sell merchandise at POS and ship to the customer from any store or warehouse in a single POS transaction.
Remote Pickup. Locate inventory in any location from any point of sale (including ecommerce or call center) and pickup in store.
Ship-to-Store. Buy online from warehouse inventory and pickup at store.
Storage Buy. Buy bulk/heavy items and collect them later from storage location in the same store.
Buy Online, Pickup In Store. Buy items online or in a different retail location and collect them later.
With the right strategy, point-of-sale systems can be a powerful business enabler. At Veras, we recognized a market need for a flexible, cost-effective, and lightweight platform that can rapidly scale and shift to meet the shopper—how and where they want to shop. That’s what you’ll find in our unified retail platform, which looks at every point of interaction as an opportunity to connect, understand, and sell to the customer.
Take advantage of flexEngage’s exciting digital receipts offer! Contact us to see how upgrading to Veras CheckOut can help simplify operations and deliver the ultimate shopping experience.
* Available to customers in North America. Some add-on services may incur additional costs, such as third-party survey integration.
Additionally, with real-time connectivity and enterprise-wide inventory availability, the
