BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ThirdChannel, Inc., the leader in optimizing retail execution and in-store customer experience, today officially announces the industry’s first real-time safety auditing system developed on the latest guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), World Health Organization (WHO), and evolving state and local guidelines, among others.
The mobile auditing system, Retail Safety Auditor™, addresses head on retailers’ top priority: Ensuring a safe environment for workers and shoppers. The solution also provides a crucial and defensible audit trail to reduce business and legal risk for brands as they begin to reopen and work to stay open. As scores of new safety protocols are put in place, the key to remaining open lies in how disciplined stores are at consistently and effectively executing them. Especially for large retailers, this proposes a challenge.
Retail Safety Auditor works by simplifying how retailers conduct comprehensive store wide audits that score each store and surface gaps so that retailers can act immediately on the safety hotspots revealed. Audit modules follow a routine, comprehensive walk through of all kinds of stores, collecting information about:
- Customer Information and Safety
- Employee Education, Health and Safety
- Store Cleanliness and Sanitization
- Security and Loss Prevention
- Evolving State and Local Guidelines
- Customer Confidence Feedback
“As stores start to see regular levels of traffic again, we must ensure that fearful workers know we’re doing everything we can to keep them safe. And word spreads quickly among consumers who mentally check off their own safety lists as they walk through a store. If they conclude a store is not safe, not only do they take their business elsewhere, they tell others,” says Gina Ashe, ThirdChannel CEO.
For retailers, especially those with dozens or hundreds of locations, it has been nearly impossible to track how effectively and consistently these new safety protocols have been implemented. And it gets harder the more stores a retailer has under their umbrella.
ThirdChannel’s Retail Safety Auditor™, available in free and enterprise versions, solves this market need by assessing store health and quickly addressing the gaps in safety that are uncovered.
Storewide audits can be conducted by authorized in-store personnel or by using one of ThirdChannel's CertSafe Representatives™, a specially trained division of ThirdChannel’s vast network of retail reps.
Conducting store audits is only one of the ways that retailers can use CertSafe Reps. As visible "go-to" resources in stores, these specially trained and certified safety experts can be used to:
- Enforce safety measures and de-escalate confrontations in an authoritative yet friendly way
- Train store employees and teams on safety best practices
- Even take temperatures at store entrances, and more
Ashe continued, “At a national level, retail spending accounts for almost 30% of our GDP. Whether stores have remained open during the outbreak or are just re-opening now, if we don’t lower risks, we may see a spike in disease transmission, which forces closings again. That could have a cataclysmic effect on our economy.
Many stores have been working to rapidly deploy new health and safety protocols. We’re seeing discipline sliding quickly, and there are already significant gaps in our processes that can no longer be overlooked. Retailers must remain vigilant for at least 12-18 months, and we are ready and prepared to support them as they tackle the challenges ahead.”
For more information on this platform, visit here.
About ThirdChannel, Inc.
ThirdChannel’s retail intelligence platform is used by the world’s leading brands and retailers to know what's happening — or should be happening —on the ground in thousands of stores, and to identify opportunities to improve in-store experience and ultimately drive higher sales. The Web-based auditing platform integrates real-time data from teams on the ground in stores with POS, inventory, traffic, and other sources of data to reveal retail execution issues. The system generates action plans that guide in-store efforts, unlocking sales potential and quantifying results with measurable ROI. Need additional resources in stores? ThirdChannel matches an exclusive, on-brand force for brands and retailers to flex up presence in stores.
To learn more, visit thirdchannel.com, read our blog Mind the Store, or follow us on Twitter @ThirdChannel3C.
