I wanted to rip my hair out shopping from this store! 😡
Over lunch, I went to the mall near my office to search for a new Bluetooth speaker because my old one went kaput.
Before entering the mall I went through the standard SOPs of taking my temperature 🌡, making sure I had my mask on 😷, and scanning the QR code to check-in my details 📲.
As I entered the mall, I could see that most shops to my front left and right were shuttered, one after another. This was once a vibrant digital mall with plenty of gadgets and electronic stores. But now it’s mostly deserted.
I walked around and then finally came across one that had its lights on and was not shuttered. I peeked in and it had the speakers I was looking for. Once again I had to go through the SOPs, took my temperature, made sure I had my mask on, and checked in.
I walked in with rows of other speakers, electronics, and gadgets surrounding me. I’ve previously researched the speakers online and knew exactly which one I wanted, the Sony XB12. I zoomed right into it, picked it up, and tested it out.
It was exactly what I wanted, then I checked the price, it was RM199, and after discount RM169. Online it was selling for RM159, but I decided to get it there and then because I could just get it and use it immediately.
So I started queuing up at the cashier and there was an elderly gentleman in front of me that was taking some time to get his questions answered. After some time, it was finally my turn to be served. Now, this is where the problem starts.
I asked the salesperson if I could pay by e-wallet. He replied to me by saying “Huh? E-wallet?” with a confused look. Then he thought about it for a while and then finally pointed to the QR code on the desk.
But the problem is, it wasn’t an e-wallet, it was an e-banking payment QR code that I did not want to use. So I said no, this is not what I meant, he then looked even more confused, and finally resigned to asking his supervisor to tend to me and he walked away to tend to someone else.
The supervisor was not much help either, she ruffled through the cupboards of the cashier’s desk, and picked out a card reader-like machine. She said “Maybe this will work”, by now I was getting more and more annoyed 🤦♂️ as the time went by eating into my lunch hour.
She fiddled with the buttons pressing one button at a time and saying “aiya, oops, nope…” each time resetting the transaction over and over again 🤯 I felt like just storming out of the store.
Then she finally said “Sir, can we use a credit card instead?” 😅
I reluctantly took my card out, grumbled under my breath, and swiped it. 😒
What a waste of my time! This is why a lot of traditional retailers are suffering in the online era.
There are a lot of them who have bad sales and SOP training for the frontline staff tending to customers. They can’t even answer questions that they should be able to answer, and they are not even familiar with the modern-day e-wallet transaction process! At the very least, if they should know whether they had an e-wallet payment processor or not!
There are three key advantages that traditional retailers still have:
1. The biggest advantage is being able to get the products immediately, but this advantage is only applicable if the price jump is not too far and if online purchasing has a long delivery time.
2. Trust, being able to have a physical store to go to and a specific person to find if something goes wrong with a human touch.
3. The overall experience of the physical store, and being able to see, feel, touch, and try the product in person.
When retailers only have these three key advantages left, the margin for error and friction in the customer’s experience is slim and is getting slimmer by the day especially in an environment of Covid-19 with burdensome SOPs creating more barriers for customers, all while online competitors getting better and more efficient.
So traditional retailers can’t afford to squander the little advantages that they have, even more importantly, if they want to survive in the long-run, they have to make sure that the business is future-proofed and online too.
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