Exploring Retail
Summarize
Summary of Exploring Retail
The Retail applications in ServiceNow are designed to streamline operations and enhance communication within retail organizations and between stores and headquarters (HQ). By extending Customer Service Management and Field Service Management capabilities, Retail optimizes workflows, boosts coordination, and supports both frontline store activities and backend operations. This enables front-line employees and managers to report store issues promptly, reduces call center volume and truck rolls, improves store performance visibility, and facilitates efficient task assignments from HQ to multiple retail locations.
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Retail Users
- Store Associate: Perform daily store tasks, report issues, and interact with customers.
- Store Manager: Manage the store, handle issues, request HQ support, and contact local vendors if needed.
- Regional Manager: Oversee multiple stores within a region and monitor issue resolution.
- Area Manager: Oversee multiple regions and maintain awareness of store issues and their status.
- Central Operations Support (HQ): Address store inquiries, resolve issues, coordinate with vendors and field staff, create tasks and standard operating procedures, and manage cases related to security, ITSM, and customer support.
Retail Workflow and Case Types
Retail uses specialized case types to manage retail-specific workflows end-to-end, each with dedicated tables, workflows, and user interfaces:
- HQ Communications Case: Coordinate large-scale actions across multiple stores.
- Store Inquiry Case: Streamline store-to-HQ communications for issue resolution.
- In-Store Operations Case: Standardize reporting and resolution of in-store issues, enabling structured case and task assignments to reduce resolution time.
- Customer Complaint Case: Capture and resolve customer complaints efficiently.
Retail Data Model and Benefits
The Retail data model supports the creation and maintenance of retail organizational structures and attributes, supporting unified case and task management to enable efficient Retail workflows. Key components include:
- Retail Task: Operational activities ensuring smooth store functions, customer satisfaction, and compliance, managed across HQ and regional teams.
- In-Store Operations Task: Daily store-level tasks executed by associates or managers linked to store cases.
Additional Tools and Access
Retail Portal: Provides a self-service interface for viewing cases, tracking tasks, and accessing retail metrics. Requires installation of Retail Core and is accessible via <instance>/rsp URL.
Retail Mobile Application: Offers a mobile-optimized experience for frontline retail teams to manage store activities and issues in real time, compatible with Android and iOS platforms.
Next Steps for Customers
- Configure Retail according to your organizational needs.
- Manage customer complaints and store inquiries effectively.
- Use the Retail portal to track cases and tasks.
- Deploy the Retail mobile app to empower frontline teams with real-time insights and issue management on the go.
Whether you're starting or expanding your implementation of the Retail application, learn more about the features available to optimize your retail organization.
Retail overview
The Retail applications streamline operations and optimize communication within retail organizations and with headquarters. By building on the existing functionalities of Customer Service Management and Field Service Management, this application optimizes workflows, improves coordination, and supports both frontline and backend operations to run smoothly and efficiently.
- Enable front-line employees and managers to report issues on behalf of the stores they're associated with.
- Help reduce calls to the call center, reduce or eliminate truck rolls, and enable store-based case management.
- Get better visibility into store performance, which can also drive improvement in metrics for store support.
- Streamline task assignment from teams at headquarters(HQ) to multiple retail organizations at once.
Retail users
| User | Description |
|---|---|
| Store Associate | Store associates who perform store tasks, organize the store, are often the first to notice and report issues, and engage with customers. |
| Store Manager | Store managers who manage the store, address issues, or request help from the central operations team if needed. If issues aren't resolved in time and manage staff and schedules, they step in to contact local vendors. |
| Regional Manager | Regional managers who oversee multiple retail locations, staying aware of issues and their resolution status across the area's hierarchy. |
| Area Manager | Area managers, also called market managers,who oversee multiple regions and stay aware of issues and resolution status across their store hierarchy. |
| Central Operations Support | Central Operations Support or the HQ Operations team who addresses store questions and needs, performs issue resolution, and interfaces with company field staff or third-party vendors in coordination with Store Manager. They’re responsible for creating tasks and standard operating procedures. They're acting as the fulfilling agent for cases routed to them, including the cases related to security, IT Service Management (ITSM), and Central Customer Support. |
For more information on the roles that come with Retail Core, see .
Retail workflow
Retail case types are designed to address various business needs and streamline workflows for store-level and HQ-driven task management. Each case type is essentially a new case application with its own table, workflows, and UI experience that drives the end-to-end flow from issue to resolution.
- : Initiate and coordinate large-scale actions across multiple stores with the HQ communications case type in the Retail HQ operations plugin.
- : Streamline the process for contacting HQ for store-to-HQ cases with the store inquiry case type in the Retail Store Services plugin, which provides a clearly defined workflow for resolution at HQ.
- : Standardize the reporting, tracking, and resolution of in-store issues with the in-store operations case type in the Retail in-store operations plugin. This case type contributes to structured assignments of store cases and tasks, reducing the time to resolution.
- : Help ensure quick and efficient customer service resolutions by capturing store-related complaints from customers using the customer complaint case type in the Retail customer complaint plugin.
Retail data model
| Benefit | Feature |
|---|---|
| Helps to create and maintain Retail organization and Retail specific attributes on it. | Retail organization data model |
| Covers the unified data model of cases and tasks in Retail. It helps in solving the Retail workflows. | Retail unified case and task data model |
- Retail task: A retail task is an operational activity in a retail environment that ensures smooth store functioning, customer satisfaction, and compliance. These tasks can be manual or system-generated and are typically part of broader workflows managed by HQ or regional teams.
- In-store operations task: In-store operations task is used to support daily in-store activities. These tasks are typically tied to a store-level case and are executed by store associates or managers.