You’ve hired extra staff, you’ve decorated your store, and you’ve updated your playlist. The holidays are just around the corner.
And while you try to make the shopping experience as normal as possible, this holiday season will be slightly different than the past.
But you don’t need to rewrite the rules for a great customer experience. Read on for four tips to help you retailers during the holidays this year.
Holiday retail tip #1: Minimize unnecessary contact
Flu and cold season might look a little different this year, but extra sanitizing and hand washing never goes out of style. And even with increased efforts for sanitizing protocols, retailers should do their best to minimize unnecessary contact.
Employees and customers can interact seamlessly with minimal contact and still achieve best-in-class customer service. Here are three ways retailers can prepare for the holidays and minimize contact.
Use a touchless clock in system with facial recognition. Employees simply need to approach the facial recognition clock-in system from a safe distance to have their faces scanned and clocked. Adopt a touchless clock-in system with voice commands and you can avoid those touch screens or buttons of other systems.
Allow staff to clock in on their own mobile devices. Mobile phone clock-in systems track their location and can only clock within the workplace. Allow your staff to use mobile clock-in systems before starting shifts.
Set up a special pick-up station for pre-orders. Designate pick-up locations for pre-ordered goods to reduce the number of customers in the store. Not only will it help your customers get in and out quickly, but those stations can also help reduce the risk of exposure to germs.
Holiday retail tip #2: Broadcast your holiday rules
Staying connected to your team is always important, but during the holidays you can’t communicate enough. This year, remind both staff and customers of your guidelines and precautions while at the store.
Need a few ideas of how to broadcast your rules?
Share explainer videos of new protocols for your staff. Explainer videos simplify communication within your business. Share training and how-to videos as well as company updates and announcements. Through the videos, inform them how to comply with protocols.
Pin important documents to keep your staff up-to-date on the latest rules. Keep your staff updated by providing key documents showing the latest rules. Pin these documents on your app notice boards or in strategic positions.
Use confirmation features, like read receipts, to ensure your staff read or watch your communications. It’s crucial to ensure everyone reads your messages. If your employee management tool has a built-in confirmation feature, enable delivery reports and read receipts that confirm everyone has the latest news and information.
Holiday retail tip #3: Use alternative schedule patterns
When one of your cashiers comes to work with a sore throat or a fever, that person could potentially expose all of your staff and customers to the illness. And if your scheduling is erratic, it might be hard to pin-down exactly who was expose and when. Instead, create a scheduling pattern that minimizes this risk.
Break your team into squads who only work with members within that squad. This can help contain any illness outbreak as it’s contained within the squad.
Build scheduling templates to help keep track and automate your scheduling for a safe working environment. Automating scheduling improves efficiency in the workplace. And those templates ensure you have scheduled your shifts correctly without intermixing groups of employees.
Buddy up. In addition to splitting your team into squads, within that squad assign your employee a buddy to minimize additional risk even more.
Holiday retail tip #4: Enhance safety measures
Your holiday decorations are up, your store smells like pumpkin spice, and there’s merriment in the air. And although you’re trying to balance getting people in and out of your store with keeping them there long enough to boost your sales, you also need to boost your safety measures. Use these three suggestions to make your holiday safety measures stress-free.
Help protect both your customers and your staff by requiring face masks while in your store. For anyone using disposable masks, make sure you have proper sanitized receptacles in place.
Use a streamlined, simple, free tool to help prevent sick staff from turning up to work. No need to close up shop if someone is sick. This tool allows you to monitor employee health before they arrive at work. It helps in real-time health monitoring, preventing the sick or susceptible employees from checking in to work.
When employees do come to work, use questions at clock in to double-check their status. Perform quick health checks for all employees at the clock-in system. Ask custom questions such as if anyone is experiencing coughing, difficultly breathing, or other symptoms to identify any sick employees before the shift starts.
Make your holiday season merry and
While you might not be able to prepare for every scenario this holiday season, you can build a workforce that’s flexible so you can meet varying demand. To comply with social distancing rules and to keep your staff safe, you need to recalibrate your operation — from staffing to customer service.
Download New Ways of Working for a few more tips to keep you, your team, and your customers safe throughout the holiday season. And keep your sales flowing too.
