Three of Google's retail customers recently took part in a hangout to talk about their experience with Google Chrome devices. Each of the three customers explains how it's been able to use Google Chrome devices to improve the customer experience in store and deliver a significant boost to the bottom line – in three very different ways.
1. Big Lots
Big Lots, a discount retailer with 1500 stores, is using Google Chrome to support the approval process for a new credit finance service that allows customers to buy big-ticket items in its furniture departments. Benefits include:
- Time taken to process applications down from 45 minutes to 10 minutes
- Average sale size in furniture departments up from $200 to $400
- Overall sales up by around 10%
- Customers confident their personal information is safe and secure
2. Whole Foods Market
Whole Foods Market, a leading retailer of natural and organic foods, with 400 stores in the US, Canada and UK, is using Google Chrome to transform the store employee experience, by giving staff access to a new HR system through Chromebooks. Benefits include:
- Improved productivity for the whole team, as staff no longer have to interrupt managers to use their Pcs to log hours, request vacation time and so on.
- Low total cost of ownership that won't hit stores' bottom line
- Easy to deploy and manage
- Scalable enough to keep up with Whole Foods Market's ambitious growth plans
- Easily extended to support customer-facing uses such as the retailer's Holiday Order Program
3. Sears Hometown and Outlet stores
Sears Hometown and Outlet stores, a national chain of 1400 franchised stores selling home appliances, hardware, tools and lawn and garden equipment, is using Google Chrome to power a touch-screen application that helps customers find the right product in store and use the retailer's "Store to Home" ordering and delivery service. It's still early days, but the retailer reports that benefits include:
- Customers more likely to use the touch-screens by themselves, without needing help from a store associate, than with the PC-based systems they replaced
- A positive impact on ROI and conversion rates
- Easily extended to support using the screens as digital signage when idle and integration with the retailer's rewards program
Deploying and managing Google Chrome devices across hundreds of sites is made simple using the Chrome Enterprise Upgrade.
