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Microsoft as an alliance partner for co-innovation in the Retail industry has a unique Ecosystem across the costumer journey and its touchpoints. In a joint Design Thinking workshop around the New Generation Store of Dufry, the two companies wanted to bridge the online and offline world to a “phygital” Point-of-Experience (physical and digital). Dufry and Microsoft tackled two costumer touchpoints: The Omni-Channel Experience and the checkout process.
The piloted Dufry Store Assistant, developed by Ombori in association with Microsoft, provides a flexible and intuitive user interface: it is both voice and touch activated. Travelers can scan their boarding pass at the entrance of the piloted Dufry Store to find more information about their flight. The intelligent Store Assistant leverages artificial intelligence by telling the traveler how much time they have left for shopping before catching their flight. It also tells them which their gate is and how far away it is.
Helena Radeson, Global Strategic Projects at Dufry, says: “Microsoft’s wide ecosystem in the Retail & Consumer goods industry is really impressive. In addition to a profound understanding of technology, the experts at Microsoft have a high level of industry know-how and knowledge of the customer journey. Together with our own industry expertise and the large eco-system that both companies bring to the table, we are really able to innovate retail and implement new concepts.”
Interactive guides help customers to choose between the wide product variety such as gifts, skincare products, fragrances, or liquor. Travelers can make an immediate purchase in-store and leverage a wayfinder that helps them to locate the product. In turn, Travelers are also made aware of Dufry’s Reserve & Collect service.
Following the initial pilot deployment in Madrid airport, the Dufry Store Assistant is already launched in Stockholm and is due to be tested in other locations worldwide, including Zurich airport.
Helena Radeson said: “We are excited to test the Virtual Assistants in our stores. We are constantly looking to bring our consumers elevated shopping experiences at their own terms, and these tests truly break the barriers between on- and offline and enable consumers to move seamlessly between personal mobile devices and in store technologies. The voice feature is marvelous to bring consumers attention and the boarding pass scan with following flight and gate info are great calls to action. All in all, the Virtual Assistants should make it possible for our consumers to make full use of our extensive in-store and on-device services and offers, and so far, we seem to be doing exactly that.”
Initial figures show that 8% of those who use the Store Assistant are first class ticket holders and 76% of travelers who scan their boarding pass to find their gate begin to browse for products to purchase. This shows the insights you can gain through a data driven approach even in your “offline” stores. Moreover, the Store assistant can be applied to seasonal campaigns like Christmas or Easter holidays from anywhere.
Checkout Process: Dufry Red lets you skip the line
Especially when you are in a rush in places like airports you want to check-out without queuing too long. Lukas Eberle, Microsoft Retail & CPG Industry expert, says: “Surveys of Dufry’s clients have shown a very high interest in fast-track convenience. Moreover, it’s interesting to have the online experience of getting relevant products recommended as well offline in a store while using the Dufry Red App once you scan a product with your Smartphone. Therefore, we involved our partner Mishipay into our Design Thinking workshop to learn on how they use our Cloud Platform Azure in order to speed up the checkout process for customers at the Point of Sales to create a Point of Experience”. The Pilot will be rollout outed in 2020 and further information and learnings will be shared soon.
For more information please contact
Karen Sharpes, Dufry Media Contact, Email: [email protected]
Lukas Eberle, Microsoft Retail & CPG Industry, Email: [email protected]
Find more on Microsoft’s retail experience here:
Enabling intelligent retail: Your customers. Your people. Your data.
