Use People Counting Systems to Schedule to Opportunity – Not History
Posted on Thu, Apr 12, 2012 @ 12:49 PM
Retailers often tell us that one of their biggest on-going challenges is scheduling. Using a people counting system can help retailers to identify traffic flows through their store. Knowing when people are visiting the store, not just when transactions are made, helps to determine when to schedule associates. Identifying the optimum STAR (Shopper-To-Associate Ratio), the number of store employees on duty at a given time relative to the amount of traffic in the store, provides the ideal solution to labor scheduling challenges.
By studying trends in hourly and daily store traffic reports, district and store managers can identify the ideal STAR for a particular location. The goal is to strike a balance that provides the best possible customer service paired with the highest average conversion rate and average dollar sale per transaction during all operating hours, without overstaffing the store with unnecessary labor.
Once the ideal STAR is identified, scheduling additional labor above that number will result in diminished returns on the retailer's labor investment, while scheduling below the ideal STAR will result in not enough employees being on duty during peak selling days or hours, leading to lower quality customer service and lost sales. We recently worked with a customer who thought their weakest selling period was a Friday night and Sunday afternoon. After using our people counting solution, they found out that this was one of their busiest foot traffic periods, unfortunately they had not been staffing to the opportunity.
Staffing to the opportunity (traffic) not history (past transaction logs) is just one way that a people counting system can help to deliver incremental dollars to a retailer’s bottom line.
To learn more about ShopperTrak’s people counting solutions, visit our Managed Service page.