As Retail eagerly prepares for the re-opening of stores and the lifting of lockdowns around the world, many will be found in a position where they try to do more with less, especially reduced staff. In this new reality, it’s important that retailers optimise the time to serve customers without negatively affecting service excellence

In stores with high service levels, when a customer wants to try on clothing or footwear items that are not available on the shop floor, this often requires a sales assistant to leave a customer waiting on the shop floor while they search for the product in the stock room. Long searches may cause the customer some frustration and even result in lost sales.

To accelerate service, avoid customer frustration and the loss of revenue, Mercaux has developed Floor Runner: A solution that enables quick and simple communication between the sales floor and stockroom and permits salespeople to spend more time with shoppers

Discover our top tips from our team on the launch and adoption of Floor Runner in your stores:

What is Floor Runner?

Floor Runner is a Mercaux solution that allows salespeople to send stock requests from the shop floor to the stock room. Products can be delivered within minutes while salespeople continue assisting customers in their shopping.

How does Floor Runner work?

• A sales colleague creates a basket with products that a customer asked to try on and sends it to the stock room via the Mercaux app
• A stockkeeper receives a request on their device, collects products and brings them to the customer
• If the requested product is not available, the stockkeeper can send a message to the shop floor.
• With this information, a sales colleague can offer alternative options to the customer and update the request to the stockkeeper based on customer feedback.

Floor Runner Request in Mercaux App

What stores can benefit from Floor Runner?

• Stores with stock rooms located far from the shopping floor, e.g. in the basement
• Stores with dedicated stock room staff who can be equipped with an iPad or iPhone to run the Mercaux app

What are the benefits?

With Floor Runner, store colleagues no longer need to waste time on going to the stock room and leave the customer behind – but this is not the only benefit. 

Having launched the solution with several retail partners, we noticed other positive effects in the following situations:

• Serving multiple customers at once: Footwear retailer Ekonika utilises Floor Runner to work with several customers at the same time by showing them products via the app and requesting the items from the stock room.
  
• Assist customers who want to try multiple items: in Stadium Goods stores, a premier sneaker and streetwear marketplace retailer, customers prefer to try multiple products before choosing a pair to buy; in such cases, Floor Runner is the right tool to efficiently manage time for both customers and staff.
  
  
• Serve customers looking for rare/low stock sizes: staff at Ekonika stores noted that customers wearing rare sizes like to try multiple options in their size in one go. With Mercaux, salespeople can limit the number of suitable products by filtering the available products by size, therefore permitting staff to request batches of products while a salesperson is showing more items to the customer.

How to adapt to the Floor Runner module?

While the benefits of the solution are clear, change is not an easy thing to achieve and requires smart strategies in order to bring all the team on board since the initial instinct will be for salespeople to continue making the trip to the stockroom. 

Here are some of the tactics that have proven successful when implementing Floor Runner: 

• Have the right amount of devices for salespeople and the stockroom: having the right level of equipment available to the whole team is the easiest and quickest way to build enthusiasm for the technology. If salespeople need to go find a device to use before they can send a request to the stockroom, they may choose the “old way”
  
  
• Enrol a Digital Guru: choose one colleague in each store who is keen to improve efficiency and give them early access to the tool for a couple of days. Allow them to ask questions and make suggestions.
  Once the colleague becomes a “fan”, they will be ready and able to support others, helping them overcome any barriers with the new feature.
  
  

• Establish a routine: Specify the time when everyone will be able to use the feature. During the specific timeframe (be it 30 minutes or 3 hours), the use of the Mercaux app and the Floor Runner solution should be mandatory. This will allow all store colleagues to develop a habit of requesting items via Mercaux and avoiding the frequent trips to the stockroom.

If you’d like more information about the Floor Runner solution and how it can be implemented for your business, please contact your Customer Success Manager.