Dive Brief:

• Fast-fashion retailer H&M has rolled out Convo's Retail Social Collaboration Platform to its 500 U.S. stores, reaching over 15,000 employees, according to a press release issued by Convo on Monday. The technology will be used to inform and connect workers.
• The Convo platform combines task management and chat apps in one place and replaces corporate email among non-desk employees, who represent the majority of H&M's personnel, according to the press release. The platform centralizes functions and allows employees to avoid switching between apps. It can handle in-depth discussions, and provide visual feedback and context-aware threads.
• The Retail Social Collaboration Platform, which takes the form of a social media feed that allows all store employees to collaborate and converse in real-time, is the first such solution designed specifically for retail, Convo said in separate press release.

Dive Insight:

Engaged retail employees result in satisfied customers who value their personal experience of retail brands as the leading factor in determining repeat business. A study by Ipsos and Medallia found that 64% of consumers have avoided brands, including both physical and online retailers, because of a bad experience in the last year. In contrast, 77% of consumers chose a product or service from a company or brand because of a good experience. Retail associates, for the most part, determine the outcome of in-store shopper experiences.

The Convo platform aims to build effective, two-way communication and collaboration in retail environments, the press release said. Because most store associates are young people who are highly conversant with social media, and rely on the instant information provided by their mobile phones, they want employers to give them tools that fit with the lifestyle they know.

"With a geographically dispersed workforce that is 80% mobile, it's crucial for us to connect in one place," Luca Michelangeli, marketing manager, H&M USA, said in a statement in the press release. "Convo provides a simple way to do that: its UI and real-time feed are very familiar and similar to other commonly used social platforms. When we rolled this out to our employees, they knew how to use it immediately."

H&M, which is trying to recover from lower sales and profits, along with bloated inventories, has made a number of significant moves in technology. By deploying the Convo Retail Social Collaboration Platform, the company is investing in its store employees in the expectation that they will improve the shopper experience and thus increase sales.