Online retail is booming. According to Statista, a provider of market and consumer data, there will be 291.2 million online buyers in the US in 2025 — up from 256 million in 2020. And because 70% of consumers believe a company is only as good as its customer service, offering a personalized customer experience is your first line of defense in standing out in the noisy eCommerce space.

The Genesys AppFoundry® Marketplace is packed with third-party solutions designed specifically for the retail industry. Whether you want to make it easier for your customers to contact you the first time, personalize campaigns according to what folks are saying about your brand on social media, or give employees a fun way to track — and improve — their performances, there’s an app for that.

Take a look at these five AppFoundry solutions that can be deployed quickly and with little effort to help you stay ahead of the retail customer experience curve.

  1.     Simplify and Secure Customer Contacts with Voice Biometrics 

Contact centers have become the weak link in security. Hackers are constantly targeting agents, attempting to steal sensitive information. But many customers dislike passwords, long identification numbers and having to answer multiple security questions to access their information. They also don’t want to start each conversation they have with chatbot or human agent with a long authentication process — every time they contact a company.

Omilia Authentication and Anti-Fraud uses a caller’s natural speaking patterns instead of traditional verification questions. Caller authentication is performed in real time in the background by scoring the speaker’s voiceprint match against previously enrolled samples. This saves up to 40 seconds on each call. The application, which integrates with existing fraud analytics software, identifies higher-risk calls while reducing call times for legitimate customers.

Older voice biometrics systems create unnecessary verification and enrollment challenges for callers and agents. The Omilia Authentication and Anti-Fraud solution authenticates faster — seamlessly reducing fraud while improving the customer experience. The solution authenticates callers before they reach an agent and also while they’re speaking with one.

  1.     Use Chatbots to Schedule Customer Call Backs   

For a product or service issue, many customers want to (or need to) speak with a customer representative or salesperson. But if an agent is busy, the IVR system will ask that customer in wait in line. Many companies offer call backs if frontline agents are busy; however, most don’t do this in a customer-friendly way.

The Mindful application allows customers to schedule a call back through a voice or chatbot using their natural language (not hard scripts). It can proactively offer multiple options for when to schedule the call based on the real-time availability of your resources.

Customers can decide which time slot is best. And pre-scheduled calls can be rescheduled multiple times through the same chat or voicebot interfaces, as needed.

Customers can also receive a text reminder for the call back. You also use the same solution to create automated follow-up engagements on any customer response, such as scheduling a follow-up call after receiving negative survey feedback. You can also use Mindful Feedback, a post-interaction IVR survey solution to collect and act on feedback from customers in real time. With native Genesys CloudTM integration, Mindful Feedback gives brands a live “heartbeat” across customer and agent interactions to enhance customer relationships, improve agent satisfaction and deliver better CX.

  1.     Offer Employees Performance Enablement, Analytics and Gamification

Your employees want to know how they’re doing. And they want that feedback to be objective and constructive so they can act on it. With AmplifAI, you can fully personalize each employee’s performance dashboard to deliver feedback in an objective and fun way.

Launch engaging games, quickly recognize employees who hit commitments (even in a hybrid environment) and enable your team to proudly share their achievements socially. The standalone SaaS solution also allows each contributor to follow — and even share — their real-time performance metrics on their mobile phones.

AmplifAI Performance Management Platform for Operations integrates contact center data sources and applies artificial intelligence (AI) to learn from high-performing frontline agents, leaders and trainers. It understands behaviors and best practices and delivers actions to employees so they can replicate the work of high performers.

  1.     Simplify Reporting with a Unified View of the Customer 

Combining real-time and historic reports across different systems isn’t easy, especially if data is collected in various formats and requires customization for reporting engines. To do this, you need smart algorithms and a smart engine.

Most companies usually have a different set of applications and unique business workflow to carry out regular business functions. Often, these applications have basic connectivity but don’t offer a cohesive and unified experience.

Genesys and NovelVox offer a single unified agent interface optimized for business workflows to empower agents. This industry-specific interface integrates with multiple backend applications like CRM systems, ticketing, cart, payment gateways and logistics. It give agents all the information and quick actions in a single pane view. With Genesys voice and digital channels, the NovelVox Retail Agent Accelerator app on Genesys Cloud allows agents to manage the entire customer journey from one platform.

  1.     Know How Your Brand Stacks Up on Social Media

Knowing what your customer and prospects are saying about your brand is important for delivering great customer experience. But contact centers often have limited visibility into their customers. And brand monitoring on social media channels, including discussion groups, YouTube channels, Facebook and Twitter feeds is a time-consuming and impossible task.

But noticing — and commenting on — a customer’s social media post about your brand makes them feel recognized and appreciated. And that builds brand loyalty.

Commerce.AI gives your marketing, sales and service teams a continuous social listening service to capture the Voice of the Customer. The system scans over 170 social channels, collects Voice of the Customer data and then creates actionable recommendations or tasks that can be routed automatically to your customer service teams for follow up.

You can even use this data to update messaging, campaign strategies, target groups and advertising strategies based on these insights.

Power in Partnership for Great Retail CX

The Genesys AppFoundry has numerous third-party applications and solutions to help improve your customer and employee experiences. Search the Genesys AppFoundry library to find a solution that fits your needs. And learn how Genesys can help you realize your customer experience vision.