Convenience retailers must strengthen in-store connectivity or risk losing shoppers to their rivals, new research released this week has warned.
The new data, released by tech firm Evolve, was a result of a survey of 1,500 consumers, and showed almost half (45%) recently experienced problems with paying, ordering or using loyalty programmes due to tech outages. To make matters sorse, the majority of failures (49%) hit during the lunchtime rush.
Almost a third of respondents (32%) walked out and bought from a competitor when systems went down, according to the findings, with two in three (66%) saying they wouldn’t go back if it happened again.
Alan Stephenson-Brown (left), CEO at Evolve, said: “Convenience stores thrive on being quick and easy, and poor connectivity is a customer retention problem hiding in plain sight. Too many operators are accepting unreliable systems and it’s costing them sales and repeat visits.
“When a payment terminal goes down or a self-checkout freezes, shoppers don’t wait. They leave and walk to the next store. The convenience retailers that will win are those investing in robust, reliable connectivity as core infrastructure rather than treating it as an afterthought.”
The emotional response to tech failures helps explain the impact on customer loyalty. The findings also reveal that 63% of customers felt frustrated, while nearly a quarter (24%) worried about being charged twice or had security concerns and one in five felt embarrassed (20%) or angry (19%).
People will wait up to five minutes for problems to be resolved before abandoning their purchase, according to the research, with almost one in five (17%) unwilling to wait more than two minutes.
The most common problems shoppers encountered were slow payment processing (33%), self-checkouts or ordering systems becoming unavailable (32%), loyalty programmes and offers not being applied (27%) and payment terminals that stop working entirely (25%).
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