Fitting rooms can be an area of delight or misery, depending on a person’s state of mind, body image, finances, and whether they’re shopping alone or with company. While a retailer can’t do much about some of these factors, there are a few things retailers can enhance to encourage shoppers to stay put and try on. One recent article from Retail Customer Experience suggests that a positively engaged sales associate can make all the difference in a person’s willingness to try on clothes in the store and to stay there until they find what they want. Virtual queuing for the fitting rooms can enhance this customer touch point even more. What does virtual queuing have to do with the fitting room experience? Plenty. We’ve all seen retail stores that have fitting room lines snaking through racks, and those lines are made up of people who might have been wishy-washy about their potential purchase to begin with. All they need is one excuse – a way-too-long line – to bail. Virtual queuing eliminates the daunting physical line and engages a customer sooner rather than later so that they’re more inclined to spend time in a store knowing that their fitting room will be waiting for them. Even if a store is busy, even if plenty of people are trying on clothes, the virtual queue can help ensure that customers get personal attention, and guaranteed access to a fitting room, without feeling stuck in a long line or rushed to shop to try to avoid a long fitting room queue.
The Appeal of the Reserved Fitting Room
Through virtual queuing, retailers can set aside a shopper’s place in line for the fitting rooms while they continue to shop so they’re not “turned off” by a queue when they’re ready to try on. A reserved spot in line can make the fitting room experience more enticing.
The Shopper-to-Sales-Associate Ratio
Virtual queuing also enables retailers to ensure a proper shopper-to-associate ratio so each customer has the right level of service to keep them happy. The virtual queuing system can automatically call back only the number of shoppers who can be adequately served by the number of available sales associates. That means no one is waiting, no one is feeling neglected or overlooked, and sales associates aren’t overwhelmed by more customers than they can handle.
Powerful Historical Data
Stores can better anticipate traffic patterns by using historical data gathered from the virtual queuing system. It’s possible to know what hours of the day, days of the week, or times of the year will be the busiest or slowest, making it possible to have the right number of sales associates at the ready.
A Positive Shopper Experience
An engaged sales staff and the technology of virtual queuing can make for a successful fitting room experience. Here’s how it can work for your store:
- The shopper enters a store and begins looking around.
- A sales associate greets the shopper and offers help. Once the shopper has an item or two in hand, the associate can offer to reserve a fitting room for them. Alternatively, shoppers can self-register for a spot in the dressing room via a kiosk or tablet.
- Once in the virtual queue, shoppers can be notified via text message when their dressing room is ready. If they need more time to shop, they can reply to the text and be automatically re-queued.
The checkout queue isn’t the only queue for a clothing retailer. Good service and a positive customer experience in the fitting room can make the difference between a customer making their way to the checkout queue or not. Talk with a Lavi expert about implementing a virtual queue for your fitting room environment.
