Enhancing the In-Store Experience: How to Use Technology to Offer Personalized Mattress Recommendations

It's one of the most common complaints bandied between friends who meet for coffee, exchanged by family members having Sunday dinner, or discussed by strangers chatting in the checkout: I had a bad night's sleep. It is an experience familiar to all; who among us hasn't slept poorly once in a while?

For too many Americans, it's not a once-in-a-while situation. According to the National Council on Aging, "More than a third of Americans report getting less than seven hours of sleep in a 24-hour period" and "Among adults older than 18, 13.5% reported feeling tired or exhausted most days."

There are many reasons for poor sleep, ranging from work stress to misaligned schedules to insomnia. Whatever the reason, improving it is top of mind for many Americans, and a better mattress can help.

While in-person mattress sales might seem like a ho-hum industry of prior years, that couldn't be further from the truth. Online mattress retailers are shipping out untried and untested mattresses, and that's not going to solve the problem of poor sleep. What can solve it, then? Personalized mattress recommendations right inside your shop.

Goals of the Mattress Retailer

Whether you work in the head office of a franchise or are a private mattress retailer, responsibility no doubt lies heavily upon you. This is true whether you're managing a new shop or taking over for an older family member to keep the business going.

Whatever the case, you have one clear goal: Sell more mattresses to more customers, increasing your retail chain profitability and traffic. This comes with a number of smaller goals that help you unlock the potential of your mattress sales:

• Luring customers away from online purchases and drawing traffic to your store.
• Providing a reliable and routine customer experience that meets the expectations set by your marketing promises.
• Offering your shoppers amenities that they cannot get online, such as a pressure mapping system to create a picture of how they sleep (more on that below).
• Increasing consumer confidence in your goods.

Of course, the flip side of any goal is the challenge that comes with meeting it, of which there are plenty in mattress sales.

Challenges of In-Store Mattress Shopping

Of the many challenges in mattress retail, one rises inexorably to the top: It's just plain hard to convince people to make large purchases. In addition to this, mattress retailers routinely face additional hurdles, including:

• Exorbitant inventory and shipping costs
• The premium price of retail space
• Lack of support from manufacturers
• Competition from online retailers with lower overhead
• Untrained or unskilled retail sales associates

One of the biggest challenges is that it's hard to tell how a mattress will perform over time. A 5-minute test run does little to quantify whether a mattress will help heal someone's shoulder problem, if it will realign their spine, and if they will feel less pressure on those sore heels.

That's where a personalized mattress testing system comes in.

Crafting a Personalized Mattress Testing System

The one question you can count on people to routinely say yes to once in a retail environment is, "Would you like to learn more?" And a mattress testing system can do just that.

Customers already know that improper support from a mattress leads to aches and pains, injuries, and insomnia. Now, all you have to do is convince them that you have the answer. And with the ability to evaluate their sleeping position, you can point them in the right direction.

Here's how it works:

1. Use XSENSOR's REVEAL mattress recommendation system to create a personalized, real-time map of how the sleeper's body interacts with the mattress.
2. Demonstrate where problems lie in high-pressure areas, explaining how that can lead to discomfort and injury.
3. Explain how the right mattress can fix those problems.
4. Show them the results and invite questions from the customer.
5. Help them create a list of potential inventory options they can try out to see what they like.
6. Reassure the customer that the mattress is still refundable, but they probably won't want to once they have a customized solution.

Boom: Mattress recommendation system for the win.

Why Pressure Mapping Is So Important

Pressure mapping matters for two main reasons:

1. People are suspicious of sales pitches and marketing messages. They want the cold, hard facts, and if they don't have them, they'll trust their own opinion over anyone else's. For that reason, it's important to come armed with facts about the individual specifically, which is what a pressure map will do.
2. A pressure map is not only convincing to shoppers, but it also gives you the information you need to select the best mattresses for your customers' needs. Once you know how to give them a good night's sleep, you can easily narrow down other considerations.

Now, all that remains is to get the system.

REVEAL: The Complete Mattress Recommendation System From XSENSOR

If you're ready to improve your store's performance, increase your sales, decrease your returns, and do it all easily, then you're ready for the REVEAL Mattress Recommendation System from XSENSOR.

Our flexible kiosk experience combines lightning-fast software with easy-to-use, out-of-the-box hardware. You can choose the configuration that works for you at your retail outlet, whether mobile or in a central location. Paste your company branding over the top of it for the most seamless marketing possible.

The benefits of REVEAL continue after your customers walk out the door. Using our software, you can easily collate sales reports weekly, monthly, or annually. From there, you can draw conclusions about what is and isn't working, pivot accordingly, and evaluate your revenue on a rolling basis.

Don't wait any longer to test out our complete mattress-selling turnkey solution. Contact us to learn more today.