Loyalty360 Reads: February 25 | Four Ways Fuel And Convenience Retailers Can Drive Consumer Engagement; How Will Customer Experience Evolve In 2021?; and More

Four Ways Fuel And Convenience Retailers Can Drive Consumer Engagement
Michael Schulte writes at ChainStoreAge.com that, in today’s challenging economic environment, fuel and convenience retailers face a critical inflection point. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Americans are driving less: one analysis found that more than 60 million workers had stopped commuting, and the number of drivers who reported getting gas once a week had fallen by 26% compared to the pre-pandemic months of January and February 2020.

At the same time, an increase in oil supply has triggered a significant drop in oil prices. As demand for fuel remains low, fuel and convenience store retailers must adapt in order to survive.
 
How Will Customer Experience Evolve In 2021?
Stephanie Bannos writes at BuiltIn.com that the overnight shift to full-digital in 2020 meant pain points as omni-channel sales and service delivery reached their tipping points.  Investments around self-service and digital channel consistency will certainly continue into 2021; beyond these reactionary measures, though, we expect to see an acceptance of the new way of operating.

This means brands will rethink their audience strategies and messaging; invest heavily in martech and content; and finally address challenges in customer-identity management. Voice-of-consumer (VOC) insights will become central to decision-making, and brands will face heightened accountability for socially responsible behaviors.
 
Verizon Expands Customer Experience, Contact Center Portfolio With Genesys Cloud
Verizon Business announced the addition of Genesys Cloud, as part of the company’s global customer experience and contact center offerings.

The solution, a cloud-based Contact Center as a Service from Genesys, offers businesses the ability to deliver brand-defining customer experiences (CX) on an end-to-end, cloud-based platform with remote access that takes advantage of Verizon’s award winning network. The Verizon Business customer experience portfolio also includes Genesys Engage subscriptions to provide a path from on-premises to hybrid cloud and public or private cloud deployments.
 
McDonald’s To Tie Executive Pay To Diversity
Bloomberg.com reports that McDonald’s Corp. is tying 15% of executives’ bonuses to meeting targets including diversity and inclusion and began disclosing data on the racial makeup of its workforce, major steps by one of the largest U.S. companies to better reflect the population.

Among the information McDonald’s is releasing for the first time is a full breakdown of U.S. employees by race, ethnicity and gender, a victory for transparency advocates and investors increasingly pressing companies to do more to address the country’s deeply rooted social inequality.
 
QR Codes Are Today's Must-Have for Retail Mobile Apps
André Ferraz writes at risnews.com that as consumers have sought out ways to minimize contact, today’s new retail landscape has ushered in rapid changes in both online and offline shopping behavior. With consumers looking to minimize contact, online shopping has surged, and so has consumer enthusiasm for contactless payments.

The biggest retail surprise of the past 12 months has to be the emergence of QR code payments as the quick fix for deploying contactless payments without requiring dedicated POS hardware.
 
 
 

Recent Content

Membership and Pricing

Videos and podcasts

Membership and Pricing