Rack Room Shoes Maintains 95% Task Completion Rate Amid 4x Volume Increase
Rack Room Shoes, a leading footwear retailer, has modernized its operations by implementing Zebra’s Workcloud Task Management and mobile solutions. The company previously relied on an email-based system, making it difficult to manage changing directives and track task completion.
Zebra Success Story: Rack Room Shoes
Overview: Retail Challenge
By adopting Zebra’s solutions, Rack Room Shoes streamlined its communications for clear, organized task management. This improvement has allowed store associates to spend more time on the sales floor, enhancing customer service and increasing their knowledge of promotions and offerings to match customer awareness.
Benefits / Outcomes
- Maintained a 95% task execution completion rate with a 4x increase in tasks
- Facilitated better customer service by keeping associates on the sales floor
- Enhanced promotional execution with automated task distribution and verification
Customer
Rack Room Shoes
Charlotte, North Carolina/USA
Industry
Retail
Solutions
About Rack Room Shoes
Rack Room Shoes is a leading footwear retailer with over 520 stores across 36 states. For over 100 years, the company has maintained its commitment to providing quality, brand-name shoes at competitive prices while delivering exceptional customer service. By adopting Zebra’s solutions, Rack Room Shoes has revolutionized its customer service across all shopping channels, enhancing communication for efficient task management.
The Challenge
Rack Room Shoes’ previous communication system had reached its limits. “All of our communications for stores were distributed through email,” explained Hannah Simpson, Store Technology and Communications Manager at Rack Room Shoes. “It was challenging to convey any corrections or edits. If we’d previously communicated something and that directive had changed, it was tough for stores to utilize because there was no way to effectively structure or organize communications so you could forecast your daily work.”
Zebra Workcloud Task Management is a very robust engine and it can do a lot for your organization. It’s an application that you can grow into very easily and it effectively allows you to organize both work and information in one tool.
The Solution
To address these challenges, Rack Room Shoes first implemented Zebra’s task management software, then integrated mobile hardware. “Workcloud Task Management lets you introduce communications in a calendar view or a view similar to email,” said Simpson. “It helped us organize information being delivered to stores, so they didn’t have to sort through what they needed to know three weeks from now and what we communicated to them for the current day.”
The solution also allows automated task management for store operations. “When we have standardized work for stores, such as promotional changes, cycle counts, or delivery notifications, we automate the process. Backend procedures automatically load these tasks to specific store locations,” Simpson explained.
Associates appreciate the mobility and efficiency that Zebra’s solutions provide. Associates can conveniently attach small mobile computers to their belts or tuck them into their pockets while working on the sales floor. And with wireless mobile printers, they can print shelf labels and packing slips where needed instead of making multiple trips to the back office.
The Zebra Difference: Outcome and Benefits
Rack Room Shoes has realized significant benefits since implementing Zebra solutions including:
- Streamlined communications for clear, organized task management
- Maintained a 95% task execution completion rate with a 4x increase in tasks
- Facilitated better customer service by keeping associates on the sales floor
- Enhanced promotional execution with automated task distribution and verification
- Enhanced associate knowledge of promotions and offerings to match customer awareness
Zebra has also enhanced Rack Room Shoes’ store auditing capabilities. Stores can document compliance with promotional setups, security checks and merchandising standards using the mobile devices’ camera feature. “We use Workcloud Walk, Forms and Task Management to collect feedback from our stores,” Simpson noted. “We can take pictures to show stores being in or out of compliance in certain areas, help troubleshoot technical issues or verify product issues for merchandising and buying groups.”
“We worked hard with store operations to understand the kind of experience we wanted to deliver to customers and what our associates needed to deliver that experience,” said Brian Minnix, CIO of Rack Room Shoes. “Once we provided the mobile computer to associates, we saw endless possibilities. It’s shifted our thinking from what’s new to what’s next.”
Simpson added, “We want our store associates to stay mobile rather than behind a cash wrap all day. We fulfill our e-commerce orders through our stores, and the mobile devices let us handle everything from ship-to-home orders to buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS) notifications when customers arrive—all while staying on the sales floor with our customers.”
Rack Room Shoes continues to expand its collaboration with Zebra. The company is implementing Workcloud Scheduling and Timekeeping to optimize labor management to ensure compliance with local and state labor laws and Zebra’s Device Tracker to deliver excellent customer experiences.
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