WHAT LIVE BEACON MEANS FOR RETAIL & VENUE STAFF

That's not just for buying stuff, by the way. They’re using their devices throughout the entire customer journey; researching products, looking up store locations, checking prices, reading reviews.

Why should companies selling and marketing their products care about this stuff? Well it’s clear that the shopping experience has fundamentally changed in the last decade that smart devices have come to play a significant part in our lives.

But most retailers and venues haven’t changed… yet. They still have a physical offering (stores, restaurants, places of interest), and an entirely separate digital offering (websites and apps). But now we’re starting to see these worlds collide.

Retailers and venues are starting to take advantage of the mobile phenomenon by digitally enabling their physical stores with solutions like Live Beacon (which can send push notifications to customers as they walk past the store or browse different items).

And new technology often brings concerns about job loss with it. Could beacons actually replace retail staff?

Well, beacons can encourage and welcome people into venues and stores.
They can provide customers and visitors with additional information on products.
In-Store They can make recommendations on what goes well with a purchase (like outfit ideas in fashion stores or food and wine accompaniments in supermarkets).
In-Venue They can provide interesting and relevant information about a feature, product or attraction.

In fact, there are a large number of jobs that beacons can perform that would otherwise be done by staff.

But it is unlikely that any iBeacon solutions will ever replace staff. They will, however, give staff more power to help customers and possibly free up some of their time so that they may spend it furthering the customer experience in other areas.

Equipped with immediate access to rich content, your staff can offer customers more than ever. For example, they can help customers justify the purchase with brand imagery, videos and stories.

Furthermore, beacons could be used to give staff instant access to information like stock levels and colour options, so they don’t have to leave the customer waiting around on the shop floor to go find out.

iBeacon solutions like Live Beacon have tremendous power to take advantage of mobile trends and completely change the way we shop. We’ll likely see that more and more they will be used to enable retail staff to add value and improve the customer experience.