5 Tips to Digitally Transform Your Convenience Stores
Convenience Store Digital Transformation
The convenience store landscape is changing quickly, and those brands that cannot adapt services to meet the demand from today’s consumers will miss out on revenue opportunities and are likely to fall behind their competition. Convenience Store Digital Transformation is necessary in the 21st century.
Top C-Store brands have understood the value of expanding their product offerings and the need to digitally transform service capabilities to provide faster, simpler, and more personalized shopping experiences. To help you drive increases in convenience and customer experience, check out our list of 5 tips that help cultivate customer loyalty and set you ahead of the competition:
1. Streamline your curbside operation
There has been a dramatic increase in demand for curbside offerings in recent years. According to a recent report, up to 67% of Convenience stores have rolled out new or enhanced curbside pickup offerings since 2020. With the help of these next-level service options, stores were able to meet the shopping needs of customers who expected service that was fast, safe, and truly convenient.
Integrating their consumer mobile app and Curbside operation was key in helping several top C-Store brands increase digital sales and gain an even stronger foothold over other Convenience, Grocery and Pharmacy stores while also rivaling service speeds against those in the fast-food industry. Integrated Curbside solutions like this can enable Frontline team members to fulfill, execute and deliver orders quickly. And while many C-Stores have struggled with Curbside operations due to dated technologies and labor constraints, improving curbside operations does not have to be difficult or costly. Theatro’s Curbside Solution is both affordable and proven to help C-Stores automate their Curbside operation.
2. Automate manual processes
Every Convenience store has routine operational tasks that must be completed daily. While these jobs are critical to the store’s success, C-Stores can automate many of these manual processes to increase efficiencies. Given that automation has doubled in C-Stores since just last year, adding to and enhancing process automation will be critical in positioning brands over their competition while also driving down labor costs.
Simply put, the faster tasks can be completed, the more productive your employees can be—this is what makes automation so crucial to a store’s success. Automating systems throughout the store make everyday responsibilities such as inventory management, employee scheduling, task assignment, and customer checkouts take a fraction of the time. And with those time savings, stores can operate leaner without sacrificing service capabilities.
3. Communicate HQ-to-Store information quickly and effectively
Because store policies and procedures can change rapidly, brands must be able to disseminate information to the Frontline quickly, effectively and through a channel that ensures no employee misses out on critical updates.
Traditionally, C-Stores have relied upon mass emails, text messages, bulletin board posts, or phone calls to each store to share this information with the Frontline. These sources all have their own unique downsides, yet all typically lead to missed information, confusion and inconsistencies across the enterprise. Utilizing Theatro’s Content Distribution Manager (CDM) allows HQ teams to send or schedule key messaging right to the ears of their frontline teams, ensuring critical updates won’t be missed or ignored.
4. Optimize your in-store experience with Convenience Store Digital Transformation
A primary goal for any business should be to offer service experience that delights their customers. While most C-Stores have not historically been distinguished by their customer service, the more satisfying and personalized stores can make these customer interactions, the higher the likelihood that the customer will return to make another purchase. Therefore, C-Stores investing in the overall customer experience opens opportunities to increase store revenue and stand out from the competition with Convenience Store Digital Transformation.
For today’s C-Store customers, brands must be able to provide diverse product options, quick speed of service and store environments that are clean and staffed with knowledgeable employees. Therefore, investing in a technology solution that equips your Frontline teams to deliver on customer expectations is a no-brainer.
5. Connect your employees
In a work environment that is as fast paced as C-Stores, the entire workforce should be connected to the people and information they need at a moment’s notice. Yet, most C-Store teams still only have access to the bare minimum when it comes to communication technology. And unfortunately, lacking in this area of investment is often the primary factor separating a team’s ability to provide a standout customer experience from a forgettable or frustrating one.
A better informed, engaged, and productive Frontline leads to higher quality service and enables stores to achieve operational consistency like never before. Therefore, teams need a mobile communication platform that connects them to each other and to critical store information so that they can work together as OneTeam to deliver fast, convenient and game-changing customer experiences.
Learn more about Theatro for Convenience Store Digital Transformation
Interested in learning more about how your stores can take advantage of these five tips? Theatro’s Mobile Communication Platform connects Frontline teams to the people and information they need while empowering them to deliver customer service that helps build customer loyalty. Schedule a demo today to see how Theatro can help you unlock your team’s full potential!
Sean Bush
Sean Bush is a dedicated product and digital marketing specialist from Dallas, TX, with a degree in journalism from Marquette University. He excels in crafting compelling customer narratives and has a deep passion for finding new ways to enhance both customer and employee experiences in retail environments. Sean's expertise lies in researching and implementing innovative strategies to create new seamless and engaging store experiences.
