Each of us is a retail customer. Rapidly growing online retail market definitely makes our lives easier, freeing us from our pain points: we do not have to stand in queues, we do not have to walk overloaded with bags and it is easy to find the product we are looking for. Still, we need an empirical experience, physical contact with the goods we are considering to buy. This is why we are coming back to brick & mortar stores. However, taught by the online shopping experience, we want more: we want the stores to combine the friction free navigation through available options experienced in online shopping with the possibility of touching or testing the product before the final purchase decision. Retail trade is perhaps the most striking example that end-customer’s pain points are very closely related to the ones of the seller. Customers who leave the store because they see the queue, or who do not enter the store because they already have heavy bags, are customers temporarily or completely lost to the seller. Part of the explanation to this problem lies in the outdated ICT sales tools. The majority of stores, both large and small ones, operate on older, slower and stationary systems, usually self-contained desktop software. If they use some cloud-based data, they access it via a web browser installed on stationary computers. Examples of
such systems include stationery help/sales desks at IKEA or MediaMarkt. As a result, the employees are often too occupied with the unnecessary routines instead of focusing on the customer. Retailers are in urgent need to implement modern mPOS tools in order to catch-up with the latest trends in mobile and digital customer service. They need to free their sales force from the service desk to the floors of the shops. The goal of Kaching is to change this state of play.
