The highstreet store has become a less prominent feature of businesses everywhere, including for telco brands. Many alt-nets choose to only sell online and door-to-door, while a number of telco giants are shifting their focus to digital.

However, although stores aren’t necessarily the primary sales outlet they once were, they can still be a flagship presence in a city or a small but meaningful presence in a community – and with the right technology to manage leads, the store can remain a powerful sales channel.

Why Vodafone Ireland chose PSI for stores

Vodafone Ireland, for instance, first came to PSI so they could get their own field sales team on the streets – and they’d seen great outcomes. It was a hit with reps and back office teams. Productivity was up. Morale was up. And a new bar had been set for customer experience, lead management, and sales performance.

After seeing these results, the Vodafone team realised that there was no reason their stores couldn’t function to the same gold standard. Because PSI can run on a rep’s tablet as effectively in a store as in the field, there was nothing stopping them from multiplying their success in retail.

How the store can become a smarter lead generator

In their stores, Vodafone Ireland didn’t have the same level of lead capture that they had grown accustomed to in the field. But by introducing PSI into their stores, they could have the same system across all channels, and the back office could receive the same standard and type of data from field sales, tele sales and in-store sales.

“Now all customer details are taken on a tablet in-store, and that information goes to the same back office team that process field sales – and they contact the customer.” says Michelle Brazzill, Channel Partner Manager at Vodafone Ireland. “So we’re leaving sales people to do the sales and office people to do the processing.”

With all the validations and logic built in, the PSI software quickly became popular among both sales reps and processing managers. The Vodafone sales reps found the PSI customer acquisition form so simple to use, so fast to take a customer through, and meanwhile those in the back office could quickly find all the information they needed with very few manual inputs.

The store as part of a multichannel approach

By using PSI across multiple sales channels, it gives you far more flexibility, and visibility, when it comes to following through with sales. An initial conversation in a store can quickly become a phone call the next day, and if the person isn’t ready to make a commitment at that time, a field sales agent can follow up weeks or even months down the line – and when they do, they can be fully up to speed on the prospect’s situation.

This sort of insight-informed multichannel approach can bring a massive uplift to both lead generation and the completion of sales. And with one source of data for all your sales, it makes reporting on this upward trend far easier.

Some brands may prefer to reserve their stores for lead capture only. That’s exactly what Three is doing with PSI’s technology. Three’s teams don’t complete sales in-store, but use PSI anyway to provide an effortless experience for both rep and customer – reps working on other channels can then follow up later.

Protections against fraud and misuse

PSI for stores runs using the same kind of technology that’s behind our Touchstone Embedded web sales product. That means compliance is baked into the customer journey, and you won’t need to worry about too-competitive sales reps, or falling afoul of customers using dodgy account details.

It’s so secure that there’s little stopping you from putting PSI straight into the hands of your customers, even if no reps are on hand. A fixed tablet, like a self-checkout, can be a great option for crowded stores that don’t want to miss a single opportunity. In this scenario, your reps could be there to answer questions and build rapport instead of giving their attention to data input. If you’re looking to reinvent how your stores approach the customer experience, it’s worth exploring this option.

To learn more about how telcos are using PSI, see how Vodafone Ireland created a highly successful field sales team or see why telcos are choosing PSI’s pre-configured sales software.