This week, Coniq joined over 5,000 participants and over 1,600 retail, leisure, and food businesses from 75 countries. We proudly sponsored an expert panel session, ‘Don’t hesitate to innovate: Harness retail tech’, which delved into the vital role of technology in a changing retail landscape and how solutions like Coniq’s can support retail growth and transform your customer’s experience.
Now that this year’s Mapic event has come to a close, we wanted to share some of our key takeaways:
1. Firstly, don’t wait to act
You need to be investing in and implementing customer engagement strategies now because your competitors already have. It requires a level of risk to be a first mover in the industry, but many fail to understand that you do not need a perfect solution to get started. Learning as you go is far better than trying to make a perfect solution the first time. The future and success of technology lies in the ability to trial and develop accordingly.
2. There is a huge focus on leisure and entertainment.
Customer experience is key to establishing customer loyalty, and in today’s market, your shoppers want unique and exciting differentiation. It is no longer viable to produce identical shopping malls with uniform strategies. Retail destinations must focus on creating density and variety to connect with each of the communities that engage with them – the more experiential and personalised, the better.
3. The buzz surrounding technology is bigger than ever.
It is now essential to have a digital platform in place if you wish to succeed. Today, technology is key to building connected communities -whether that be residential communities in the surrounding area, your shoppers or your retail tenants. But don’t worry, you don’t need to build it yourself- because people like Coniq already have!
4. Collecting big data and understanding your shoppers is essential.
Retail destinations are realising that simply collecting data isn’t enough. You need to be able to leverage it afterwards practically. Asset managers are making operational investments and dedicating resources towards customer intelligence. It is no longer feasible to give this responsibility to individual centre managers. It needs dedicated focus and attention.
5. There will always be innovations to explore and experiment with, in the customer interaction space.
Technology moves at such a pace, and it’s essential to keep a watchful eye on how that progress and become real (or not!). However, emerging fast-built tech often lacks a solid foundation. Having a reliable, open customer engagement platform that has solved the business-critical issues of segmentation, analysis, loyalty mechanics, fraud prevention, scale and security, to name a few, is crucial for success.
If you did not get the chance to meet us, you could still book in with one of our team by contacting us here.
