Do you want to handle business? The service staff holding the Pad will take the initiative to walk up to you and do the business while standing and talking; you buy a villa or a large flat floor, but you don’t know how to network your home? At this time, you can touch the "model room" on the interactive big screen of the business hall, and you can see at a glance where to put a few routers; Xiaomi, Huawei, Apple and other companies have built a sales scene similar to the study and living room here. In addition to mobile phones, there are also various Internet celebrity products such as smart sweepers, smart speakers, and smart rearview mirrors…
?
Today, Shanghai Telecom’s first smart business hall at 1551 Zhangyang Road has been upgraded and reopened to the outside world. This is also one of the five pilot smart business halls launched by China Telecom Group in Guangzhou, Nanjing, Hefei, Chengdu and Shanghai.
?
They need to transform themselves, and their peers are also transforming
?
Shanghai Telecom’s Zhangyang Road Business Hall was officially opened in June 2008. It is a first-class business hall operated by Shanghai Telecom. Because it is located in the bustling Lujiazui Financial District, it not only serves community residents, but also serves white-collar workers in surrounding business buildings. Therefore, the business volume has always been very large, and the sales of mobile phone digital products are also good. Why is it taking the lead in launching "change change" now?
?
According to industry analysts, in recent years, with the opening of electronic channels such as operator’s official website, official Weibo, telephone customer service, APP, etc., the customer service function of traditional telecom business halls has been increasingly replaced; at the same time, with the development of Internet technology, the application of facial recognition, big data, scan code purchase, Mini Program and other advanced technologies of new retail enterprises emerge in an endless stream. In contrast, the traditional sales methods of mobile phones and digital products in telecom business halls are still very outdated and difficult to capture the hearts of young consumers. Zhangyang Road Business Hall is located in a prosperous area, surrounded by many high-end real estate and many commercial buildings. Therefore, the acceptance of taking the lead in transforming into a smart business hall is high.
?
The transformation of Zhangyang Road business hall is also the result of internal competition in the industry. On December 18, the flagship business hall of Shanghai Mobile Changshou Road was replaced with "new makeup", which caused a lot of shock in the industry. The newly remodeled Changshou Road flagship business hall is carried by Shanghai Mobile’s "dual gigabit" network and integrates into multiple experience areas such as smart home, smart life, and e-sports mobile games. At the same time, the flagship store on Changshou Road has also been built into the first e-sports experience hall in the country. The core e-sports event area in the hall is supported by China Mobile’s Gigabit Optical Broadband network. The world-renowned game provider Perfect World and the world-renowned e-sports event KPL have joined hands with well-known Chinese game equipment providers Razer, Gigabyte AORUS, and Ningmeidu. The goal is to become a landmark of Shanghai e-sports culture. In the future, not only will dozens of formal or informal competitions be held here, but also live broadcasts of international e-sports events will be introduced.
?
Since the mixed reform, China Unicom has successively used its own business hall resources in Guangzhou, Chengdu, Xuzhou and other places with Alibaba, JD.com, Suning.com and other e-commerce enterprises to jointly create "smart life experience stores". With the blessing of e-commerce, Unicom has further revitalized its own brick and mortar stores. At the same time, Alibaba, JD.com and other offline entities have opened up online and offline to implement new retail.?
?
Each clerk has a QR code, and the user is the exclusive "fan" of the business hall.
?
Walking into Shanghai Telecom’s new smart business hall, I saw that its spatial pattern was divided into 9 functional areas: entrance consultation area, smart home experience area, end point exhibition and sales area, service leisure area, business acceptance area, payment area, cooperation area, complete service area, and self-service area. The entrance consultation area has cancelled the manual consultation desk and served users through the intelligent customer identification and intelligent guidance system. After loading the facial recognition system, as soon as the high-star user enters the business hall, the service staff will receive the user’s information as soon as possible, so as to actively provide users with personal consulting services. The "mobile" business processing can also be completed through the handheld Pad, and customers no longer need to wait in line and go to the cabinet for processing, which greatly saves time.
The large screen in the pick-up area at the entrance of the business hall is connected to the Pad in the hands of the service staff through the network. When the service staff sees an object that needs mobile services, they will take the initiative to greet it.
"Xiao Ai, start the sweeping robot." The clerk gave an order to the Xiaomi speaker, and the Xiaomi sweeping robot began to clean the business hall carefully. For young people, smart homes help them free their hands and reduce the thought of cumbersome affairs. For the elderly with limited mobility, smart homes are a necessary guarantee for life. In this smart home exhibition area, customers can get up close and personal with smart home products such as smart smoke detectors, door and window alarms, Find smart pianos, etc.; in the end point experience area, I saw this business hall starting from a single mobile phone sales to a diversified smart end point sales expansion, the introduction of Huawei, Xiaomi and other brands close to 40 kinds of smart products, mobile phones, smart speakers, car purifiers and other smart products can be purchased in one stop in the business hall, users can scan the QR code on the product label, that is, you can understand the product more detailed technical parameters and instructions, can also be mobile payment, and the business hall provides home delivery services.
?
From dial-up Internet to broadband, from copper cable to all-optical network, today, with the improvement of people’s living standards, intelligent networking for enterprises and institutions has begun to enter households with villas or large flat floors. In the past, intelligent networking was a relatively abstract concept, and people only knew that it was a magical thing that could cover the whole family with WIFI, full signal everywhere, and fast network at all times. How is intelligent networking realized? Many customers have little understanding of this. In the Zhangyang Road business hall, I saw that the intelligent network was displayed through AR technology, and the large screen in the display area had the room type map of the nearby community. Customers only need to click on the screen according to their own room type to see the real scene. Click on the corresponding room location to view the product information. Pick up your mobile phone and scan the QR code to achieve one-click ordering.
The intelligent networking experience area provides various room types of the surrounding main real estate, allowing users to follow the map and choose the best networking solution.
In the leisure experience area, Shanghai Telecom has created different areas according to the different age groups of users, including popular e-sports such as "VR Eating Chicken" and "QQ Speed Car", as well as VR movies, allowing users to immerse themselves in the entire virtual world.
Next to the machine that pays bills by itself, a large video game screen is placed, so that customers are no longer anxious when queuing.
In addition, in order to enhance customer stickiness, the business hall also tried the "DingTalk + Handmade Amoy" sales model. Each clerk has an exclusive QR code, and users scan the QR code through Taobao to become exclusive fans of the business hall.
?
Telecom has a large number of self-owned business halls, and will become a force to be reckoned with in the new retail field after transformation
?
Peng Hong, senior manager of China Telecom Group’s sales and channel development division, said that after the completion of the pilot of the five smart business halls at the end of this year, China Telecom will rapidly promote the construction of smart business halls in provincial capitals and important cities next year. By the end of the year, companies in all cities across the country will build at least one provincial-level benchmarking flagship store, achieving full coverage of administrative areas in cities and regions across the country. By 2020, the total number of smart business halls in the country will exceed 1,000.
?
She said that the upgraded smart business hall has three major changes, one is the restructuring of sales and service processes, intelligent customer recognition through customer portrait big data, accurate matching of customer needs and marketing strategies, and integration of exhibition and sales in the store, shortening user waiting time and improving store operation efficiency; the second is to strengthen customer interaction experience, with traditional mobile, broadband, and end point product sales, transforming into a pan-intelligent end point, and diversifying the experience of smart family life solutions; the third is to unify the standardized image layout of stores, transforming from traditional stores to experiential and technology-based stores to attract young passengers.
?
Although the transformation of China Telecom’s smart business hall is not early, it is much more specific than the other two in terms of steps. Why is this? Industry analysts believe that this is mainly because China Telecom has a huge number of its own business hall resources, far more than the other two operators, and due to historical reasons, the location is very advantageous. Therefore, the urgency of transformation is particularly urgent, and once China Telecom’s business hall forms a transformation model, in today’s high-quality physical store resources are increasingly scarce, it will become a force to be reckoned with in the new retail field.