To survive in today’s challenging retail environment, businesses need to get creative. BOPIS, or buy online pick up in-store, offers are no longer a differentiator in the retail space; they are a necessity.

How are retailers making their BOPIS services stand out as more and more in the industry turn to this option to stay ahead? Craig Bloomfield, Global Development Director of Pickup Solutions for Acrelec, provided his insights.

At this stage of the game, Bloomfield said it’s more about how a retailer offers click and collect, not should a retailer offer click & collect.

“It’s become a huge part of everyday consumer lifestyles. People crave the convenience that collecting from a store brings,” Bloomfield said. “It’s now about how easy you make it for customers and how simple it is for them to use.”

With the COVID-19 pandemic causing many retailers to shift how they operate, click and collect is one way the industry continues to offer value to consumers when many cannot go shopping inside the store.

“The retailers that, day in and day out, provide us with our food and our essentials have really had to up their game,” Bloomfield said. “What we’ve seen is the growth in online demand has manifested itself in huge proportions. The adoption has gone through the roof.”

Even after the pandemic subsides, a new quantity of digital customers will exist.
“People who perhaps didn’t know about online ordering and collecting in store, didn’t see the convenience or hadn’t had the chance to utilize it; we’ve created a lot of new customers,” Bloomfield said. A huge concern for retailers is not rolling out a proper BOPIS service.

“A poor experience is equally important, if not more so than a good experience,” Bloomfield said. “Customers have so much choice of who they shop with, how they shop and where they shop, that, if retailers are not living up to this high standard of expectations that consumers set nowadays, consumers can vote with their feet and go somewhere else.”

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