Promote wellness and convenience while controlling costs with Nuance

The ubiquity of mobile and e-commerce combined with increased consumer expectations and decreased loyalty make it hard to compete in today’s retail industry. Now that many products and services have become commodities, retailers are turning to customer service as a means of differentiation.

The contact center, at the heart of customer service, is a critical touchpoint with the customer. Retailers are increasingly aware of the importance of delivering a consistent – and positive – brand experience across all points of contact with the customer, particularly through the contact center. Retailers also recognize that the advent of the internet does not herald the end of the contact center. If anything, it increases the need as customers still call to ask questions, to order, to chase orders and deliveries, to check on returns and much more.

Looking at customer service in a traditional bricks and mortar environment, retail is at the mercy of its workforce. Shoppers’ biggest complaints revolve around workforce issues: the inability to find help, being ignored and long check-out lines. In fact, half of shoppers encounter an average of 2.7 problems while shopping.* Unfortunately, shoppers often don’t tell the retailers about the problems – they tell their friends instead. Combine these challenges with a management team often stuck in the back-office running reports, maintaining schedules and reading email. The result is poor service and loss of sales.

Nuance, the leading provider of speech and imaging solutions, has the expertise to transform a retail operations customer support operation. With communications solutions tailored towards retail environments, Nuance delivers superior service when and where consumers need it, via land-line or mobile, the contact center or the store.

Automated solutions include:

• store locators
• pricing and promotion information
• product availability information
• account status
• order status
• hours of operation
• satisfaction surveys and billing inquiries

Nuance also offers communication solutions for retail employees, helping them help customers better. Solutions include:

• price and product checks
• maintenance and facility requests
• shift scheduling
• password resets
• product announcements and updates

All of this can be accomplished with Nuance retail solutions. Nuance solutions help cut costs, increase efficiency and can scale to your organization. Systems integrate with other data sources to help manage information and facilitate secure access across the organization. Most of all, Nuance solutions consistently deliver optimal customer service, when and how your customers and employees need it.

* Verde Group, 2007.