Hello, everyone. And welcome to another episode of Herb's hot takes. I am Tyler Kern. Joint as always by Herb Billings himself. Herb, welcome to another episode of the show. I'm glad to be here. I'm glad to be here as well. This is the fourth of five episodes where we talk about RFID and what this technology is. We've covered a lot of ground on it. And today, we're talking about cool uses to improve the shopper experience. So how can RFID be used to improve the experience for shoppers in the store. But before we get to that, Herb, catch us up. How do we get to this point in the in these Oh, my gosh, that's a lot to remember. We started with the history of RFID. It's not necessarily a new technology, but it is definitely an exciting and more affordable technology now for retailers, then we went into some of the primary use cases for why retailers want to implement RFID cheap chief among them is inventory record accuracy. It just smooths over your supply chain and omnichannel experience. And then in our last episode, I believe we did talk about the supply chain. It's a topic that everybody's now familiar with. And thanks to the pandemic, and how RFID can help with all of that? So that brings us up to today where we're talking about how RFID can be used to improve a shopper experience. Now, one of the things that retailers I'm sure would like to know is why shoppers will come to a store but leave without buying any That's never been a problem for me or my wife, but it is a problem for that retailers would like to know. Right? And so let's start there? Absolutely. Yes. Well, they've done a lot of studies on that for sure. And some of the main reasons for why shoppers leave without shopping would be the item is out of stock that they're looking for. There's no help to be had, so you're just waiting around, no help, might as well go somewhere else. It takes too much time for the shopping experience to get to the final product you need or to to the checkout line and through that. Right. You know, maybe you're doing this on an errand and you during the workday and you need to get back to a certain meeting or whatever. And then there's the impersonal experience. So just walking in buying something, sometimes you you really want a more personal experience. Those are the four main reasons. If we dig deeper into them, the out of stock we've talked about extensively can be helped by RFID significantly because you know your real time inventory record levels. A typical retailer with barcoded inventory counts once or twice a year, and right before they count the average number of SKU records that have the right quantities on them, is about thirty five percent That's all. So the rest of them are not very accurate, and the retailers don't trust them as much. This makes for a lot of opportunity for out of stock conditions, but the retailer doesn't even know they don't have it. Another one is unknown in stock condition. Where the items exist, but the retailer doesn't know it, therefore, they aren't available for digital sales, and omnichannel has become so much more important to retailers and to their bottom lines, that that's an important way to sell items through your digital channel, to know your stock The no help situation where you walk in, you're just not getting the assistance you need, and so you walk out without items, Well, RFID helps by reducing the amount of time your staff takes around inventory tasks. So all of your inventory management stuff, receiving items, finding items for a shopper, replenishing your sales floor, every bit of that gets faster, significantly faster with RFID. And the other thing is that shoppers want to know more information these days, So instead of having them pull out their phones and trying to find some reviews or try to find this item on your website, you can have information kiosks throughout your store, which give complete information, reviews, videos showing how to use the product, a bunch of assistance for the for a shopper to find exactly what they want. Let's see. The third thing we talked about is it takes too much time for the shopper to complete their purchase, to get what they want. And so they just leave frustrated either planning to come back another time and might not do that, or go to another retailer where it's easier. To combat that, smart fitting rooms are a thing. I did not understand smart fitting rooms when I first looked. I thought that's a bunch of technology for no good reason. But then I thought about it a little bit more, and what happens is you walk into the fitting room, and let's say that the item doesn't fit. And it's something that you have to, like a shirt. You have to take it off, put your other shirt on, go out, ask for a new size, or get a new size yourself, go back to fitting room. All of that is eliminated with a smart fitting room. When you have these smart mirrors in the in the room, it can show you what sizes are available out on the floor, so you know whether your size is available or not. You can click a button and have sales associate grab that size for you. You don't have to exit. And then that's an article bring service, which is really cool. You can also get complete product information. It can also suggest and show you what it looks like on you in a different color and suggest accessories and and other items to put with that article so that, you know, from the retailer's perspective, it increases their basket size, so it increases the amount they sell. But from the user's perspective, from the shopper's perspective, it also makes you a happier customer. So that's one thing right there. Those smart fitting rooms are awesome. It can improve your checkout experience. We've seen cases where the Q for the checkout can be reduced by ninety percent the amount of time spent there. And then, you know, now no touch seems to be pretty important to consumers, you can implement a self checkout solution and be, you know, real confident in the accuracy and speed that it provides the shoppers and that items won't be missed. There's another really cool one I've seen displayed at a test store for one of the major retailers in the country. And that's connected hangers. It can display all of the sizes that are available. You can ask for a size that's not on the floor, and somebody will bring it to you from the backroom. And it can also you can also you know, get more information as well through there. This connected hangar has an RFID reader in it, and it can read the tag on the item and know what's what's hanging on that hanger. What the benefit is for the retailer is you're able to display a larger variety of items in a smaller space. So you don't have to have every every size and color of every item that you're selling in that style. I think we also talked about impersonal experience. And that's one of the things that you might expect when you go to some retailers, but you're hoping to have a more personal experience when you go to higher end retailers. Sure. One thing that can be done is an RFID embedded loyalty card. So when you walk in the door, they know you're there. They have your information, and the salesperson you typically work with can come up greet you by name, ask you how your last purchase was, know what that purchase was. Now some of this might sound scary, but a lot of us do appreciate that. That's really, really interesting. And I'm guessing if they know what I've bought in the past, then they might know my size and be able to help me kind of work through Okay. What are you looking for today? Okay. We have this in your size and that sort of thing which is is really, really interesting. What what are some other maybe new ideas that are that are coming down the pipeline for RFID. Is there anything that that people need to keep an eye out for that that might be coming is? Well, one that's very similar to that RFID loyalty card is a temporary card to identify you for a specific trip to the retailer. Mhmm. So one that I've heard about that I really like is when you have alterations made. You you always have to come back for them. Sure. It would be great if you walked in the door. They knew that those alterations were about to be picked up, and they went and grabbed them from the room where they're stored and put them on a hanger available for you right when you walk up to that desk. That'd be pretty cool. I like that a lot So I'm looking forward to seeing a lot of this new technology, this new way to kind of interact with retailers as a result of RFID in action and see it in in stores coming soon. So does DataScan kinda fit into the overall picture of what RFID is doing in stores? Well, through our new partnership with Froquential, Europe's leading provider of RFID software. We have access to all of this cool technology, and we have the experience through our partnership to implement it properly for your stores. We are very excited about that and looking forward to working with retailers on their RFID journey. Her another excellent episode here today, breaking down some really cool uses for RFID within retail locations. Appreciate you joining Thanks, Tyler. Absolutely. And everyone, again, this is the fourth out of a five episode series on RFID here on Herb's Hot Takes. You don't wanna miss the final episode where we get to deployment. So we've talked about all of the really great ideas and all of the different things that make RFID so powerful and so great for retailers. Coming up in the final episode, we're gonna talk about how to successfully deploy this in your location. So you wanna make sure to catch the fifth and final episode here in this series from Herb Satakes on RFID. So stay tuned for that, but for this one for her billings, I'm Tyler Kern. We'll talk to you again soon.
