Productive boredom, or what salespeople can do with the empty sales floor hours.

With the advent of online shopping, it is difficult to bring customers into physical stores. However, brick and mortar retail models aren’t completely dead, customer behavior has just shifted to a different medium — online. In fact, brick and mortar retail stores have innovated their approach to providing services to their customers’ accommodating online shoppers almost as well as walk-ins. It’s no secret that the sales staff always had a lot of downtimes. But now, when customers do a lot of research and purchases online spending less time in physical stores, salespeople have more idle time than ever.

As the shopping trends shift to digital commerce and big department stores are closing, brick and mortar retailers are facing a difficult task in maximizing idle time inside their stores. It’s a big challenge to keep their employees at work even if customers aren’t spending as much time in stores as they used to. Yes, there are activities that a store’s sales staff can do: clean aisles, organize items, process returns, fulfill exchanges, and practice their selling skills to maximize efficiency but they won’t be able to bring in more customers if their efforts are kept within the premises of the store.

In this article, we will talk about the activities that will keep the sales staff occupied during idle time. Those activities are likely to increase foot or digital traffic and make use of the empty time at work.

Customers now prefer web browsing over going to a physical store to browse items. For those who are not familiar with webrooming, it is the process where a customer researches items from the internet before going to a physical store to pay for them. It’s convenient and customers like the freedom to choose from multiple retailers, review which ones offer the best service, and choose the best deal.

Meanwhile, salespeople in those physical stores are less occupied because the time they would spend assisting that web browsing customer is now freed. There are tools, however, that allow salespeople to engage with customers online. One of those ways of engagement in social media where salespeople can listen in on what consumers are saying about their brand, respond to them and offer promotions to attract their customers back. Most stores utilize social media to handle customer inquiries, requests, and other issues a customer might have with the brand or the branch.

In the past, people called in or emailed their requests for return or repairs, now they tweet or send a DM. Some brands even have dedicated social media managers that are well trained and able to cater to the needs of their customers online. From taking orders to replying to customer concerns. Social media indeed helps stores understand their customers better. On the other hand, the store’s social media accounts which are left unattended will make customers feel ignored. Brands know and avoid that.

In the previous article about inconveniences customers experience while shopping online, we have mentioned live video commerce. With this type of e-commerce, live video is being used to connect physical retail and online stores. This is a great idea for the sales staff’s boredom problem: they can incorporate live video commerce and assist customers online. Some stores provide iPads and Android tablets to their salespeople to take video calls, tour around online customers inside their stores, or provide remote repair assistance. In addition, HUD or head-up displays with video calling function can also be used to facilitate live video commerce. Some high technology companies use HUD devices to conveniently take calls and respond to customer demands in no time.

These are just a few of the many ways stores can make use of the empty time. The time that can be spent not just on the most common tasks but tasks that could lead to getting more from an online traffic.

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