Increasing sales through improved employee experience

In short

Services

Product design
Service design

Industry

Retail

Challenge

Understand customers purchasing process. Diagnose the in-store sales routine and eliminate loss in time and revenue caused by frictions in the flow.

Solution

Optimization of the omnichannel experience in order to drive sales. Design and development of an employee platform that increases salespeople's efficiency, reduces customer uncertainty, and helps the entire sales team improve conversions and get fair compensation. The solution also enabled NAY to accelerate the performance of its recently acquired chain Electro World.

Background

With a 25% market share, NAY is the largest electronics retailer in Slovakia. Besides ecommerce, the brand owns a vast network of physical stores across Slovakia which sets it apart from its competitors and lately, it has also been expanded by the stores of recently acquired brand Electro World. The in-store experience is enhanced by highly professional sales staff who can assist with complex electronics-related inquiries. However, the time taken to serve one customer was evaluated as excessively long, leading to decreased performance and reduced profits.

Working with Lighting Beetle* has been transformative. They strategically analyzed the entire customer journey and employee interactions, resulting in a sleek, modern customer management app, significantly enhancing our operational efficiency and customer engagement.

Martin Derňar

Chief Digital & eCommerce Officer

Overview

To cut the opportunity costs, we started by comprehending the whole customer journey and how the experience is delivered at different touchpoints. Service blueprint based on qualitative interviews helped us see a cross-section of customers expectations and the services provided by NAY.

Customers:
Consumer electronics are expensive and after visiting the store, I want to reconsider my purchase and complete it at home.

Employees:
If a customer buys a product via a website after I recommended it at the store, I automatically lose out on commission.

Although there were over 30 stores across the country, the eshop and in-store assistance were in fact parasitising each other. Using service design methods, we set out to explore solutions with potential to encourage salesmen to provide outstanding assistance while giving customers the decision-making space they needed.

Extensive discovery phase

To increase customer satisfaction, we focused on improving the employee experience first. We carried out research across multiple stores, interviewed employees from different departments (stockroom, logistics, helpdesk, marketing…) and shadowed numerous salespeople in action. We observed that a single interaction with a customer can take dozens of minutes due to complicated queries being difficult for sales staff to explain. A cumbersome purchasing process through an outdated sales application further prolonged the entire process.

The most valuable insights came from extensive research conducted in the stores and behind the scenes.

According to our assessment, building a modern, ergonomic salesmen tool able to connect their in-store performance with ecommerce sales showed the most value. The platform would also allow customer care, delivery crew or installers to manage services provided to a customer.

Rapid delivery phase

To increase customer satisfaction, we focused on improving the employee experience first. We carried out research across multiple stores, interviewed employees from different departments (stockroom, logistics, helpdesk, marketing…) and shadowed numerous salespeople in action. We observed that a single interaction with a customer can take dozens of minutes due to complicated queries being difficult for sales staff to explain. A cumbersome purchasing process through an outdated sales application further prolonged the entire process.

The entire delivery phase was significantly simplified by the fact that it was conducted in a dual-track agile mode.

Managing the delivery process in dual-track agile, we aimed to design user flows sequentially and gradually forward them to the development team for coding. We prioritized screens and flows according to the research-based service blueprint. After wireframing the interface, we meticulously tested clickable prototypes for every single flow in real-life conditions.

Before the full-scale rollout, the app was tested in five stores to identify and fix bugs. This testing was run by the NAY representatives with the support of our UX designers.