Melbourne’s Telstra Discovery Store showcases a suite of digital signage solutions that may well change retail forever.
Story: Christopher Holder
Retail digital signage has promised so much. It’s promised stores without tickets; a world of amazing customer insights; a more motivated, switched-on workforce; it’s promised more efficient, customer-centric marketing; a more dynamic, exciting retail environment; it’s promised the power of centralised marketing control along with the potency of hyperlocal messaging… it’s promised so much.
It’s fair to say that the reality has been slow to catch up to the promise.
Worldwide, there have been examples of stunning digital signage delivering incredible results. But it’s hard to point to successful signage networks that aren’t simply amazing one-offs or expensive proofs of concept. They’re rare as hen’s teeth: networks that offer a rock-solid technical backbone and a suite of solutions that can be rolled out in a scaleable, reproducible way and backed up by content creation, service and support.
Admittedly, I’m in danger of sounding like a share prospectus here but what you’re about to read about is truly awesome, and, dare I say it, a gamechanger for digital signage, not just here in Australia but worldwide.
MAPPED
As soon as you cross the Discovery Store threshold, cameras track numbers as well as noting the gender and age segmentation. Once inside, cameras continue to map foot traffic and dwell time. The resulting data helps to build a heat map of the store plan.
Leon Condon: “In days past, store management couldn’t report to higher level management with any certainty about what’s going on in the store. And it’s a really fundamental question. Now with these cameras we can provide heat maps that show the dwell time across the store floorplan. ‘Let’s increase the product range in that section’, ‘let’s reduce it’, ‘let’s reset the layout’. None of those decisions could be made empirically without analytics.”
Fhil Vella: “The store is built to be adaptable. And with the heat map we can respond to the metrics without shutting the store for weeks and resetting. Here we can reset overnight.”
PROXIMITY EFFECT
This story is as much about an amazing telco concept store as it is about a digital signage solution. As of 2016 the product is called Telstra Proximity Powered by Engagis.
Everyone knows Telstra. But the Telstra you may not know is a company that’s shifting its focus from being a big telco to being a global technology solutions provider. Meanwhile, Engagis is a digital signage specialist; has been for nigh-on 10 years. It has deployed and manages thousands of displays across the country, counting a small but influential stable of blue-chip companies as its clients. Engagis has amassed a suite of digital solutions that allow its clients to, in turn, follow its customers through the full pathway to purchase (and beyond): Attract, Entertain, Engage, Transact and Reward.
FOYER TOTEMS
If ‘Attract’ is the first step in the pathway to purchase then the six 10m-high LED pillars may as well have Attract written all over them. In fact, you could have anything written all over them and thanks to the hi-def 3mm pixel pitch it’d look amazing all the way across the street.
The totems are updated seasonally and are interactive. Floor Manager, Fhil Vella, loves their visibility: “They’re like the next Myer windows. You can actually see the display across the street from the yellow store [Optus] and the red store [Vodafone], it really does attract.”
Engagis has been working with Telstra for some time, helping it with its retail signage. The latest deployment in the flagship Telstra Discovery Stores has been so successful that the Telstra Retail Innovations Team is now selling the suite of products to its enterprise and retail customers under the aforementioned moniker: Telstra Proximity (powered by Engagis).
So what you see profiled here is more than a way-cool retail digital signage deployment, it is now a all-singing/all-dancing signage showcase for Telstra’s business clients to experience Telstra Proximity.
FEATURE WALL & ECO SYSTEMS
The Telstra Discovery Store is a large two-floor site in the heart of Melbourne. It’s Telstra’s chance to tell its story, and the story it would like to tell is: ‘we sell a lot more than phones’. The feature wall plays a significant role in setting the tone. The ground floor is weighed heavily in favour of the Dreamer and the Explorer — experience and touch — with ‘ecosystems’ showing a technological bigger picture.
Fhil Vella takes up the story: “You can walk into any store and have a budget in mind, but if you’re offered a value solution, then the budget goes out the window. I might go shopping for a $100 pair of jeans but if the sales consultant can get me excited about a whole outfit then my $100 jeans turns into a $500 ‘solution’… even if I can’t afford rent for another week!
“We want to demonstrate that value. We want people waiting for a tram to come in and see new technology being properly showcased.”
DIGITAL METRICS IN AN ANALOGUE WORLD
I’ll allow you to navigate the various signage pieces in the Melbourne Telstra Discovery Store throughout the pages of this feature story, but I’d like to explore the big picture of how Telstra and Engagis transformed its retail environment.
“The Discovery Store was trying to solve a business problem,” noted Lucas XXX from the Telstra Retail Innovations Team. “Telstra is a world-class tech company but we had our products behind a counter on a shelf and there was a lack of connection between customer, product and sales representative. Using digital, we’ve broken down those barriers.”
“It’s all about bringing the benefits of digital into the physical bricks and mortar space,” explained Engagis CEO, Leon Condon. “Every business now expects sophisticated analytics from its web presence — who’s visited, how many clicks, what they’ve touched, where they’ve spent their time and what they prefer — and now we’re developing the same thing here in the world of bricks and mortar, knowing customer behaviour so we can serve them better.”
ELECTRONIC SHELF LABELS
You won’t find printed brochures, tickets, dockets, posters, or price tags. Instead you’ll find electronic shelf labels.
Fhil Vella: “Every Tuesday we used to have two guys come in at 6pm and refresh all the paper tickets, and it was very expensive. Now we’ve got electronic shelf labels, so these are all remotely updated from the CMS by RF.”
Right, Google-style metrics for the real world. Sounds almost too good to be true. The truth is, there is some homework required to get those insights. First, Engagis looked at the job with fresh eyes, making an assessment of who came into a Telstra store, profiling customers into four ‘Personas’:
The Resolution Seeker, who is on a specific mission, such as a warranty return or an issue with a bill.
The Locator, who has done all their research at home and is simply there to make a purchase pickup — locate it and go.
The Dreamer, who knows they want a phone and a plan, but they don’t know which one. So they’re going to spend some time with an expert.
And, finally, the Explorer, who has 20 minutes to kill at lunchtime, doesn’t really purposely want anything, but is happy to learn and browse.
Other retailers might categorise their customers based on whether they’re a baby boomer, DINK, or student but profiling customers based on their Persona has proven to be far more powerful. It’s meant that a door greeter with a Windows Surface tablet can quickly determine a customer’s purpose and ensure they’re funnelled into the right digital pathway to purchase. The ‘concierge’ software on the tablet is part of the Proximity suite, it’s called the Electronic Floor Manager.
STORE IN A STORE
Leon Condon: “Retail leaders are moving away from being product specialists — buy a phone and a mobile plan — and instead targeting a customer segment: ‘what else are these customers interested in?’ What you see here is ‘Curated for the Curious’. In other words, the same person interested in the latest iPhone is likely to also be interested in a GoPro camera and a Crumpler bag. So Telstra is selling lifestyle, not just pushing product like you’ve seen in the past. Naturally, the physical product is supported by digital engagement.”
JUST THE DIGITAL TICKET
Curiously for a DigitalSignage story, one of the key pillars of the Discovery Store digital solution doesn’t involve a digital sign at all. But it most certain is digital and does away with printed brochures.
The interface is called Digital Ticket and it allows customers to continue their journey of exploration at home. It’s based on a biodegradable NFC-enabled card which the customer is given by an assistant. If you want to learn more about, say, a Samsung Galaxy S6 you can use the card to tap on the interface — up to 10 products per card. When you return home you simply type in telstra.com/ followed by your unique digital ticket number and you’ll be presented with the wishlist from the store. Before too long the NFC card will be replaced by tapping your smartphone.
“The purpose of this store is in the name: discovery,” noted Leon Condon. “It’s designed to inspire and let you explore. The Engagis solution encourages you to continue the journey on other channels when you leave.”
“It also means that as people are waiting for an appointment they can explore the store with the Digital Ticket,” observed Telstra Discovery Store Floor Manager, Fhil Vella. “They can then hand the ticket to the sales consultant and work through what took their fancy.”
It’s a pertinent point to observe: every customer digital interaction is gold for the sales team. Every button press, every movement… all of that engagement allows all 90 of the Discovery Store’s staff to do their job better — serve customers better, talk to them about what’s of most interest, interact with them in a way that best matches their Persona.
It’s not a point lost on Leon Condon: “We’ve got a pretty large team building these solutions — 62 Engagis people working on this store alone. We’ve found that more than half of our effort, more than 50% of the lines of code, is actually to assist the store staff. The value of bricks and mortar retail is in the physical footprint, but the real ace is the people working in the store. This solution, Telstra Proximity Powered by Engagis, allows those people to worker smarter and more productively.”
ENTERTAIN
Engagis has added ‘Entertain’ to the (Attract, Engage, Transact and Reward) pathway to purchase.
Leon Condon: “You can walk into a Telstra Discovery Store and have a not-for-profit latté, spend time on the PlayStation, get free wi-fi or charge your phone. We all know retailing is moving more toward experiences and if we make it more experiential, entertaining and enjoyable then we’re getting longer dwell time, resulting in better sales and conversion.”
STAFF PIC, STAFF PICK
It’s easy to explore the features of a product on display. Touchscreens provide access to the information, including Staff Picks, where photos of actual staff members are used to provide a personal touch to informational easter eggs. Putting a face to information works, according to floor manager Fhil Vella: “It showcases our staff and helps customers to engage with our staff. It’s great to hear someone ask ‘Hey, can I speak to Stewart about the Galaxy S6?’.”
SELLER DOOR
All the product is now on the floor. From mobile phones, to bags and accessories, there’s no storage at back of house. There’s a recognition that part of the joy of purchase is the ceremony involved in taking ownership and the unboxing. Sales Associates are now trained to ask the customer if they’d like to accompany them to the display cabinet to secure the product themselves. “It’s that ‘cellar door’ experience,” noted Fhil Vella. And he’s absolutely right.
TAKING TABLETS
Telstra Discovery Store ‘counters’ aren’t formidable monoliths with a Pay Here sign overhead, they’re portable pods that can be repositioned depending on the need. The enabler of this flexibility is the store associates’ use of tablets. It may not feel like a big deal but the ramifications are profound. Because staff can be alongside the customer on the floor it means the customer is freer to explore — the journey to purchase doesn’t need to be anchored back to a fixed point.
Fhil Vella: “The personalisation and localisation of the digital media has really helped drive all of those key metrics. Getting the staff on the floor with tablets, and having the stock close at hand has changed the atmosphere from being very transactional to very adaptable. A customer can sit anywhere they want and we’ve got the technology to sit with them.”
MEDIA FOUNTAIN
Seeing product in the flesh and exploring the features and functionality is a big Discovery Store drawcard, but increasingly Telstra is moving into selling services. The Media Fountains, at first glance, look like advertisement hoardings, but upon closer inspection they’re interactive. Each Media Fountain allows customers to explore available services. Touch on the NBN logo to check on availability and why you would choose Telstra as your NBN provider. At kids’ level there are trailers for age-appropriate movies.
THE ENGAGIS MODEL
Engagis is a new breed of thoroughbred digital signage providers. In a market with a host of individual software and hardware providers, Engagis takes care of the entire solution from cradle to grave. Engagis takes care of the design, UX, software development, the hardware sourcing, testing, provisioning, install, deployment and support.
Telstra Proximity exposes the Engagis smarts to a whole new market. Rather than the Engagis solution being necessarily bespoke to suit the client, Proximity takes a complex platform and allows it to be deployed at scale and backed by the people who designed it. Proximity recognises that deploying digital signage for many retailers has to be an ‘all in’ decision, but it doesn’t need to be risky — not with the right long-term support.
“What’s most impressive about the Telstra Discovery Store,” observed Leon Condon. “Is the fact we’re doing all this without breaking the bank — it’s a small percentage of the build. And that includes the content creation and media management, which is a core part of the Telstra Proximity offer. That component in the past was viewed as a huge percentage of the investment, to the point where you wouldn’t buy the car because you couldn’t afford the fuel. Now we have it down to three or four percent of the cost.”
Engagis: 1300 203 810 or www.engagis.com
DEVICE LAB
The Device Lab is one of the real success stories of the new store. It’s enjoyed incredible engagement. Using a touch table format, customers can drop one or two of a selection of phones (with a QR code on the bottom) onto the table and explore and compare features.
It’s not unknown for some customers to spend over an hour on the Device Lab comparing phone features, and it’s easy to see why. There’s something about the interface that’s really quite mesmerising. It’s perfect for Explorers. They can take as long as they need and they know they won’t be interrupted unnecessarily.