Argos has topped Retail Week Indicator’s cross-channel category, which measures retailers’ initiatives to link stores and online. Here, we delve into how Argos creates a near-seamless customer experience across all channels
If one retailer epitomises cross-channel excellence it is Sainsbury’s Argos, which has managed to create a near-seamless customer experience across stores and online.
Grocer Sainsbury’s acquired general merchandise giant Argos in 2016 to create a multichannel powerhouse capable of competing with Amazon and the Sainsbury’s Argos cross-channel experience blends digital capabilities and the strengths of a store network to offer shoppers a wealth of convenient options.
A customer searching on the retailer’s site or app for Lego, for example, as a last-minute kid’s present, can first benefit from the retailer’s geolocation options to check availability in nearby branches.
They then have the choice of reserving for collection – in which case they don’t need to enter a raft of personal details, extremely convenient for the customer – and will receive an email and/or text with an order collection reference. They pay upon collection.
Or they could pay online, in which case they can skip queuing time when they go to the shop to collect their order.
The power of the store
The ease of click and collect is built upon the retailer’s extensive store network, comprising standalone branches and collection points in Sainsbury’s supermarkets.
There are 281 Argos shop-in-shops in Sainsbury’s supermarkets, and another 207 order collection points in Sainsbury’s convenience stores – altogether Argos has 1,200 points of presence.
Eighty-five per cent of Argos’s customers who order online collect in-store, but the other option is to order for home delivery.
The retailer’s Fast Track same-day delivery service covers 20,000 products typically carried in stores and gives shoppers a choice of four time slots. Customers can make an order right up until 6pm and have their product in their hands by 10pm. The service is offered seven days a week and covers 90% of UK postcodes.
In-store availability and rapid fulfilment is backed up logistically by the retailer’s hub-and-spoke distribution model.
Tech that improves CX
Argos has traditionally been a technological innovator and over the last year has introduced voice search on its app, followed by visual search, allowing customers a variety of convenient options to find what they are looking for.
Digital technology has been deployed to improve the in-store experience. Shoppers use tablets to place orders and staff are on hand to assist with the process if necessary. At present, 476 of Argos’s stores, including 281 in Sainsbury’s supermarkets, have adopted the ‘digital’ store format.
Argos has just opened what it terms its “first self-service digital store”, a checkout-free shop, in the Sainsbury’s branch in Dulwich, London.
Customers can buy products using the same digital catalogues that they use to search on, removing the need for them to queue at a checkout to pay.
Sainsbury’s Argos chief executive John Rogers said the change gives shoppers “a speedier way to pay” as well as “giving our colleagues more time to serve and help customers”.
As retailers seek ways to make the most of the interplay between bricks and mortar and ubiquitous smartphones, Argos has led the way in making life easier for its shoppers.
