All-Channel Customer Experience Top Priority for Holidays: Study

Nearly 60 percent of retailers say delivering a consistent customer experience across all touch points is their number one priority this holiday season, and to help them meet this goal, 29 percent plan to hire more seasonal workers this year than last, according to a survey conducted by RedPrairie Corp.

These findings were a part of RedPrairie’s Holiday Hiring Snapshot, a survey of 250 executives from big box, specialty, grocery, convenience store and food service retailers based in the United States. The survey sought to better understand how retailers will leverage seasonal staff to serve today’s all-channel shopper during a time of year that is often the busiest, and most crucial, for a majority of retailers.

“Today’s hyper-connected consumers give retailers little margin for error when it comes to delivering a superior, consistent customer experience across all shopping channels; and this is amplified during the holidays,” said Dave Bruno, director of marketing at RedPrairie. “To achieve this, retailers will rely on the union of people and products to make customers feel good about their shopping experiences no matter which channel is utilized for the transaction. There is a lot of pressure on retailers to get things right. The Holiday Hiring Snapshot indicates that retailers are willing to invest in their most important asset — employees — to ensure that customers are satisfied and not leaving their channels empty-handed.”

Additional survey findings include:

• Fifty-six percent of retailers will hire seasonal employees.
• Nearly 40 percent of retailers will have the greatest number of seasonal employees on the clock in December.
• Big increases in staff levels do not come without challenges. In addition to training, retailers will be focused on scheduling, time and attendance, and task management to get their seasonal staff ramped up and ready to serve customers.

RedPrairie's supply chain, workforce, and all-channel retail solutions are installed in over 60,000 customer sites across more than 50 countries, and were developed to ensure visibility and collaboration between manufacturers, distributors, retailers, and consumers.