Keells Reduces Customer Wait Times with Zebra's Personal Shopper Devices
Keells, a prominent Sri Lankan supermarket chain operating over 130 stores, sought to enhance its customer shopping experience. The company implemented Zebra's PS20 Personal Shopper Series to boost customer satisfaction and operational productivity.
Zebra Success Story: John Keells
Overview: Retail Challenge
Implement a robust and sustainable solution to reduce customer wait times, abandoned carts and free associates to have more time to help shoppers and drive upselling and cross selling.
Benefits / Outcomes
- Improving in-store purchasing experience
- More technology adoption among shoppers
- Better operational efficiency at Keells supermarket locations
Customer
Keells
Colombo, Sri Lanka
Partner
Solution(s)
About John Keells
Operating for over 30 years, the Keells chain of modern retail outlets is a Sri Lankan supermarket chain. A subsidiary of the John Keells Group, Keells operates more than 130 supermarkets conveniently located across the country.
The company’s core purpose is to improve the quality of life for the nation and provide customers with a world-class retail shopping experience.
The Challenge
Being one of John Keells’ key business verticals, the Keells chain of modern retail outlets provides a marketplace for around 700 large and small-scale suppliers.
With over 5,000 staff employed across its retail outlets, Keells wanted to introduce the right technology to improve shopper satisfaction and enhance operational productivity. Keells wanted to reduce queue times and provide customers with more insightful information and easy access to promotions and discounts.
Keells realized the need to deploy a solution to enrich the purchasing experience at its stores. Keells contacted Crosspoint Business Solutions, a Zebra Business Partner, to source and implement a personal shopping solution that could enhance self-assistance for shoppers, reduce manual labor-intensive transactions and provide an innovative method to continue their shopping at Keells Retail Stores.
Our retail associates are delighted with the PS20 as it reduces their workload at the point of sale (POS). The device updates shoppers of any in-store promotions based on their shopping behaviors, which enhances the overall shopping experience.
The Solution
Elevating shopper loyalty by improving the in-store purchasing experience is an important aspect of Keells’ continued operational efficiency. Therefore, it was critical to deploy a solution that enabled shoppers to scan as they shop while reducing the wait times to check out. It also needed to free associates from low-value task so they could focus on value-added services.
Crosspoint Business Solutions worked extensively with Keells chain of modern retail outlets to understand the primary requirement and deploy the best possible solution that shoppers would be comfortable using.
“To deploy the right solution, we had to understand the shopping pattern at the physical stores. We realized that deploying a software solution would not be enough. It would also require a reliable device rugged enough to ensure all-day operation.”
-Samudra Paththinige, Sales and Marketing Manager at Crosspoint Business Solutions
Zebra’s PS20 was the best option, with more than 160 devices deployed across ten retails outlets of the Keells chain.
“Shoppers at our stores have been using the PS20 personal shopper for quite some time and seem to enjoy it,” said Nishan Rathnayake, Head of IT Infrastructure, Security & Operations for Keells. “Our shoppers’ in-store experience has been elevated with the touch screen which allows them to easily navigate through the application and make hassle-free purchases.”
Deploying the PS20 personal shopper has considerably elevated the overall shopping experience. “Our associates have also been able to improve their productivity as the PS20 helps with hands-free scanning,” added Rathnayake. “Our shoppers can place the PS20 in the cart holders and automatically scan items as they are placed inside.”
The Zebra Difference: Outcome and Benefits
Keells has seen considerable adoption of the PS20 among shoppers thanks to faster barcode scanning capability. A further enhanced personal shopping experience is expected to lead to more operation efficiency in Keells supermarkets.
The PS20 offers maximum operating system longevity with built-in support for future versions of Android™. Zebra’s LifeGuard™ delivers the regular OS updates required to stay on top of emerging security threats, while always allowing users to migrate to new versions at their own pace.
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