Introduction
Today retail has its own vibe, this was not the case a few years ago when I would look around— pop & mom stores have given way to swanky, multi-storeyed, multi-brand stores where people throng to shop & to do a lot more. At many places it has become a cultural phenomenon affecting the people’s lifestyle in the 21st century. But it has brought so many challenges to the retail shop owners, this market place has become very competitive leading to retailers fighting for every penny. In this background, retail audit has become a preferred way to look different from others by promoting it as a marketing tool. Of course, it helps in staying tight in the face of operational & market risks. So, here we are, looking for ways to streamline auditing so that you (retail owners) can benefit more from it. In this blog, I am going to share 5 crunchy, new ways to improve retail compliance audit & get the most from it. Read on, here it goes.
Get the survey questions right
This gig called the retail audit process has an important enabler – surveys. They consist of chosen questions which are used to collect important data from the public to gain more insight. They have to be up right. If surveys are the axes of this vehicle called auditing then questions are the ball bearing. Be bang on target with your survey questions, they may target product positioning, customer likes & dislikes, store interior, mall interior, customer experience & so many other things. Focus on the right KPIs that will ultimately shape up in some way to positively affect your bottom line.
Find the right answer types
This point just follows the question types. Questions & answers are in a way intertwined – So, the answer types depend on the question itself. You may wonder what types of answers to include in my survey. Well, the answers may be something like on the scale of 1 to 5. Or, something amongst excellent to fair. These are called closed types answers – the participants will have to choose an answer from the given options. These answer types are easy to measure & analyze. The other answer type is open answers. These answers are used to get customers’ opinions or suggestions about something. However, even these open-ended answers are well used to do customer sentiment analysis to generate word clouds and other analytics tools which help in store compliance audits.
Collect all important data
But then remember, questions & answers are just a way to collect data about retail audits and store surveys. You will have to ultimately focus on what data you want to collect that’s the key. So, knowing customers’ opinion about your new door mate may not be that important in comparison to knowing about the effectiveness of your new loyalty campaign. Here I am providing you a list of data points to focus on: Coupons & promotions, merchandising & promotions, store interior & exterior, staff behaviour, product’s shelf positioning, service quality, inventory, customer opinion, equipment & other assets, safety & security, hygiene & others.
Videography & photography
If a picture is worth a thousand words, what’s the worth of a video – millions? Looks like a correct quantification when you see the effectiveness of images & video clips in the surveys and audits/ display compliance. They are really in fashion, & they do click. By allowing the respondents to log pictures & video clips you help them explain what exactly is going around in your shopping mall. They are also a very effective way to monitor, track & investigate point-of-interest situations. The use cases are many, let me share one with you – staff behaviour, what say? Aware or unaware of the camera they may come along in their usual self, you get the best shot to judge it and help improve it.
Select the right software tool
Well, that’s something worth writing. Because, these days many cloud-based vendors have come up who are providing very effective & economical solutions which you can not only easily afford but which will also help you in streamlining processes & gain competitive edge over others who are still satisfied with their legacy systems. Get your act right to choose the right retail audit checklists tool which will help you in collecting, processing & reporting information. Though, there are many pointers in choosing the right survey software, keeping things in the scope of this blog, I would suggest going for something which is lightweight, scalable, easy-to-setup & easy-to-learn. Besides, it should also be able to collect all types of survey data and produce insights with embedded analytics.
Conclusion
These are really some points to ponder on a guide to retail auditing I believe, meanwhile, adding to the last point let me introduce you to WovVIA – an inspection & audit software from WovVTech – a SaaS, business productivity software company which will be really helpful to you. You can use this software to follow all these points, which I have mentioned, while doing audit & inspection in your retail store. You are reading this blog means you are serious about your retail audit, then look no further, try this FREE-FOREVER software today. Yes, it is absolutely free & you can use it for as long as you want without paying a single penny. Get onboarded & scoop the cream of auditing.
