80% of the Cisco Store's merchandise powers an inclusive future for all -- but what does that mean?

The Cisco Store has just launched a brand-new Spring 2024 Lookbook per region (AMER, EMEA, and APJC). In these quarterly lookbooks, we will delve further into how our merchandise powers an inclusive future, as well as our latest collections, curated style guides by our very own Cisco Store staff, and what’s trending every season.  

You can get to learn a bit more about the Cisco Store Tech Lab in every lookbook. The Tech Lab is a real retail environment powered by Cisco and Cisco partner technology: our collaborators can deploy their products in our stores to gather learnings and advance their products. The Tech Lab allows us to show customers where Cisco’s heading and what’s available now. 

Every quarter, we will highlight a new set of technology (including the latest releases) revolving around relevant themes in the retail industry, such as sustainability and AI. Get a closer look into product use cases, demo videos, and more. 

The Cisco Store is always bringing in new products and ideas, and our lookbook will be a key way for customers and employees to keep up with all our updates. To be notified of upcoming lookbook launches and to stay in the loop of what’s going on at the Cisco Store, be sure to subscribe to our mailing list at merchandise.cisco.com.  

Check out the Spring 2024 Lookbook for your region!

AMER

EMEA

APJC

Meraki’s smart cameras offer businesses an easy-to-deploy way to monitor their physical security, with the added benefit of being managed entirely on the cloud. Various Meraki cameras are deployed in the Cisco Store, including the outdoor smart cameras MV63 and MV93, which have long been useful in the Cisco Store. The MV63’s wide-angle, fixed-focused lens monitors the entrances and exits of the store, while the MV93’s 360° fish-eye lens offers panoramic wide area coverage, enhancing surveillance capabilities even in low lighting. Both cameras have helped keep the Cisco Store secure by using important features such as intelligent object detection using machine learning, motion search, and motion recap.

Now, these two cameras have indoor counterparts. Launched in February 2024, the Meraki MV13 and MV33 cameras will continue to improve security measures with even clearer footage, higher performance, and stronger analytics. Meraki’s latest camera features, attribute search and presence analytics, will further improve these cameras’ capabilities. 

The new Meraki MV13 has a fixed lens and is ideal for monitoring indoor hallways and spaces. It is easy to deploy and offers some of the best visual components like 8.4 MP image quality and up to 4K video resolution.

Meanwhile, the Meraki MV33 has a 360° fish-eye lens and 12.4 MP image quality, and can be used to monitor general indoor retail, hospitality, education, and healthcare spaces.  

Meraki simultaneously launched two new features: attribute search and presence analytics.

The attribute search feature is an easier and faster way of parsing through video footage based on a person’s clothing color (both top and bottom) as well as a vehicle’s color and make. In the event there is a suspicious person or theft, this feature would allow security teams to quickly filter through footage by these attributes from up to four cameras, thus improving store security measures.

Meanwhile, the new presence analytics feature includes area occupancy analytics and line-crossing analytics. These will allow security teams to define areas to be analyzed and then accurately gain insights on people movement in those spaces.  

Both the MV13 and MV33 will add to Meraki’s broader portfolio of cameras, giving organizations more flexibility and ways to monitor all areas of their buildings with ease, including in the Cisco Store. Attribute search has been incorporated into both the indoor Meraki MV13 and outdoor Meraki MV63, while presence analytics is now available on all second and third generation cameras. By creating tracking areas and easily being able to adjust those lines, security teams can customize what they monitor and then receive analytics that help them identify suspicious activity and gain insights into crowds. 

The new MV13 and MV33 smart cameras will be deployed in the Cisco Store in San Jose, California this week! To get a sneak peek, watch our Tech Lab expert Brian Domine showcase the two cameras at Cisco Live EMEA in Amsterdam.  

Interested in learning more about the Meraki MV13 and MV33? Request a demo now.  

Five months after the launch of Webex Connect in August 2023, the enterprise-grade Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) has continued to enhance how businesses engage with their customers. With its ability to handle customer communications over multiple digital channels, its variety of integration options, and quick agent escalation, Webex Connect has become an efficient solution that is relied upon by the Cisco Store.  

455 total chatbot sessions occurred at the Cisco Store in the first quarter of FY24, but that number jumped to 599 in the second quarter, an almost 32% increase. The number of sessions handled by the bot also increased from 193 in the first quarter to 288 in the second quarter, while the number of total agent handovers increased from 262 to 311. This means that not only were more people interacting with the chatbot, but the bot was able to handle 49% more sessions while still giving customers the opportunity to speak to live agents as they saw fit, all while retaining the conversation context. Webex Connect’s easy interface makes it convenient for a small staff to continuously improve the bot’s responses and speak directly with customers whenever needed.

Customers can select their preferred channels to interact with the chatbot. Over Q2, 97% of the bot’s sessions occurred on the web. The online vs. in-person patterns of shoppers stayed consistent from Q1, as was seen by the almost 59% increase in online interactions. There was a marked decrease in in-person interactions, presumably due to the holiday season that dominated Q2.  

In-person store visitors throughout Q2 generally asked the chatbot questions regarding customer tours, engagement with a live agent, order tracking, women’s apparel, and men’s apparel. Online store visitors asked questions around order tracking, gift vouchers, and customer support. Placing orders and receiving assistance has never been easier using Webex Connect, and customers can get their order questions easily answered through a couple of quick interactions rather than having to drive to an in-store location.  

Check back next quarter to see how Webex Connect performed in Q3!  

Join us as we dive deeper into Cisco and Cisco Partner technology deployed at the Cisco Store! We asked Jeremy Martin (Sales Leader, Americas, Webex CPaaS Solutions) to discuss Webex Connect and how it is used in the Cisco Store and the larger retail industry. 

Jeremy leads sales in North and South America for the Webex cloud communications platform (CPaaS) solution. He has more than two decades of experience helping clients and partners create and grow innovative omni-channel digital engagement between brands and consumers. With several leadership roles over the years, Jeremy has deep mobile industry expertise that’s been leveraged across many vertical markets including retail, healthcare, pharmacy, telecom, hospitality, utilities and transportation. 

Webex Connect is an enterprise-grade Communication Platform as a Service (CPaaS) for orchestrating and automating end-to-end customer journeys in a single, cloud-based solution. 

Our CPaaS solution revolutionizes customer experiences by streamlining processes such as order status notifications, refunds, and returns inquiries. Customers are empowered to self-serve, effortlessly modifying orders or updating delivery information through the seamless integration of AI-driven chatbots.  

With Apple and Google owning the lion’s share of mobile operating systems (including the default messaging apps as well as maps applications that power local search), consumers are increasingly seeking and initiating conversations with brands through non-traditional channels (Apple Messages for Business, Google Business Messages). Webex Connect provides rich, integrated customer engagement, helping to drive navigation to stores, answer questions on hours and inventory, and reach retail associates to answer more complicated questions.  

Plus, Webex Connect integrates into existing backend systems, allowing retailers to harness valuable customer data for creating personalized shopping experiences across various channels.

Retailers these days are competing on customer experience (CX), so the ability to deliver distinctive experiences is essential. And with the automation Webex Connect enables, employees’ time is freed up to focus on more important tasks. 

Webex Connect plays a pivotal role in enhancing operational efficiency for the Cisco Store. Leveraging this platform, the team has successfully programmed contextual prompts and implemented a responsive chatbot to address simple customer queries round-the-clock. As an enterprise-grade CPaaS solution, Webex Connect is accessible to everyone: developers and businesses alike can create end-to-end customer journeys within the platform. Its user-friendly features, such as low-code tools and drag-and-drop flow builders, foster a collaborative environment across the entire business.  

We anticipate businesses leveraging CPaaS not only to adopt the latest communication channels, but also to craft synchronized customer journeys at every touchpoint. Think: experiences where every interaction works together to build a cohesive, multi-channel journey.

AI is also here to stay. As organizations invest in data, machine learning, and AI capabilities, they gain the tools to understand customers at a granular level; Webex Connect provides out-of-the-box AI capabilities as well as seamless integration with retailers’ existing AI platforms and investments. And with CPaaS, AI stands to make automated, self-serve interactions better, faster, and more cost-effective.  

Convenience is expected to remain a top priority for customers in the future. A seamless fusion of online and offline shopping experiences, like buy online and pick up in-store (BOPIS), is also likely to be a focal point. Customers will begin to expect proactive outreach rather than initiating reactive support – they want brands to anticipate their needs before they even know of them themselves. 

Currently, 75% of connected customers prefer to interact with retail brands using digital messaging channels – and that’s only expected to increase. So, to be consistent with consumer preferences, brands will continue to prioritize digital-first, personalized communications, which will become more integrated and more sophisticated by improving how customer data and touchpoints are leveraged. We anticipate they’ll also have a major focus on automation to boost efficiency and reduce costs. 
 
Interested in learning more about Webex Connect? Visit our retail solutions page or get in touch with one of our experts.  

Augmented reality (AR) has the potential to unlock a new level of interaction with the world around us. The Cisco Store has harnessed this technology by creating the Cisco Store Xplorer AR app.

When the app is first opened, it detects whichever store is nearby: the SJC store, the RTP store, or the relevant travel store. The experience has the capability to be customized as well: upon entering the store, visitors can click a Welcome button to be shown a personalized message on the entry signage, powered by Wipro VisionEDGE.  

As visitors explore the store, they can point their phones at hotspots located throughout the store to learn more about Cisco’s retail solutions and partner technology (for instance, a Meraki camera on the ceiling). They are given the option to read the product specifications or see what the camera dashboard is capturing in real-time.   

The Cisco Store Xplorer can increase the operational and data-collecting efficiency of the store. The app is integrated with Meraki API to allow staff to see data from Meraki sensors without needing to access a dashboard; for instance, it gives quick visibility into air quality metrics picked up by the MT15. Furthermore, the app is integrated with VusionGroup’s electronic shelf labels: a staff member only needs to enter a product’s ID into the app and the corresponding shelf label will blink, allowing staff members to easily locate the item. Applying this technology to retail environments will allow for a much smoother shopping experience. 

The possibilities for improved efficiency are limitless with the Cisco Store Xplorer app. Moving forward, visitors can even see and interact with the technology hotspots using the upcoming Apple Vision Pro.

The Cisco Store Xplorer is now available on both the App Store and Google Play. Come visit the Cisco Store Tech Lab to see it in action!

Understanding how to best serve customers is a primary focus for retailers. However, gaining this understanding can be complex. Retailers need to know what their customers are buying, when they’re buying it, and their feelings while shopping. Stationing staff members in the store to gauge customer reactions is not an efficient solution. This is where Meraki and EVERYANGLE come into play, enhancing the customer-focused daily operations of the Cisco Store.  

The MV12 and MV63 are directional cameras. The indoor MV12 offers a choice of a wide or narrow Field of View (FoV) and provides intelligent object and motion detection, analytics, and easy operation via the Meraki dashboard. The outdoor MV63 monitors the entrances and exits of the store.  

Meanwhile, the MV32 and MV93 are 360° fish-eye cameras. The indoor MV32 combines an immersive de-warped FoV with intelligent object detection and streamlined operation via the Meraki dashboard, in addition to addressing major security vulnerabilities. The outdoor MV93 offers panoramic wide area coverage, enhancing surveillance capabilities even in low light.  

The data from these Meraki cameras is utilized by EVERYANGLE in the Cisco Store in various ways.  

A challenge for physical stores is obtaining metrics comparable to online stores, making it difficult to tailor the retail experience effectively. EVERYANGLE’s technology levels the playing field for physical retailers.

EVERYANGLE uses data from the directional cameras MV12 and MV63 to help the Cisco Store better understand its visitors. The Next Generation Footfall App breaks down customer genders and ages, monitors their satisfaction levels post-visit, and tracks the time spent in various store sections. For example, data from a Cisco Live event revealed a 50:50 male to female customer ratio, contrary to the expected 60:40, leading to adjustments in the Store’s product range.  

EVERYANGLE determines purchase conversion rates at physical locations by analyzing integrated sales data and foot traffic. Their machine learning and AI algorithms provide 95% accurate customer insights. Staff members are automatically excluded from these insights, ensuring data accuracy.

EVERYANGLE’s True Customer Identification accurately distinguishes genuine shoppers from non-customers. This empowers retailers with precise customer data, crucial for targeted strategies and store optimization, ensuring decisions reflect real customer activity.  

The Cisco Store can thus easily gauge customer demographics, engagement, and group dynamics without a heavy in-store staff presence, adjusting displays and marketing tactics accordingly. Fortunately, we have seen an increase in positive sentiment from when customers enter the Cisco Store to when they exit!  

This data is used to maintain smooth store operations and continuously improve performance. The fish-eye cameras MV32 and MV93 are used to monitor the checkout lines: a threshold on the queue count allows for staff adjustment at checkouts as needed. If people spend a comparatively longer time at certain stations, we can begin to understand if that longer dwell time means more sales of those specific products.

Meraki’s people detection capabilities, integrated with EVERYANGLE, help the Cisco Store maintain top-notch security. Cameras, integrated with the point of sale (POS) system, anonymously track high-value purchases and returns, aiding in fraud prevention.

Meraki and EVERYANGLE enable the Cisco Store to better understand its customers and serve them effectively, prioritizing their security and privacy. The analytics and dashboards facilitate customer service improvement, ensuring customers leave with a positive shopping experience.  

The National Retail Federation (NRF) just hosted its 2024 show at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City over the MLK long weekend. Kaleigh Bisconti and Brian Domine from the Cisco Store and Cisco Store Tech Lab team share their insights into the technology they experienced and where they see the future of retail heading. 

Kaleigh: I’m Kaleigh Bisconti – I oversee the Cisco Store and Cisco Store Tech Lab program, which includes the travel stores, physical stores, and our online stores.  

Brian: I’m Brian Domine – I run all the technology deployments in the Cisco Store through the Cisco Store Tech Lab, both at the physical locations and at our travel stores.  

Kaleigh: There was a space called the Innovation Lab that displayed up-and-coming technology solutions. The Tech Lab’s partner EVERYANGLE was there: EVERYANGLE is responsible for giving us in-store metrics, such as customer demographics, sentiment, and purchase conversion rate, that you would previously only be able to get from online stores. 
Typeface was also a cool find. You can input your company’s brand guidelines and they leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to generate content in accordance with those guidelines. They can also cater the content they generate towards specific target markets. For example, if a car manufacturer wanted to adjust their content by geographic region, Typeface could do that for them. I could see the Cisco Store implementing this kind of technology in the future: Typeface could help create content for specific platforms.  

Brian: There were multiple companies such as Proto and ARHT with spaces containing life-sized holograms of a person. You could have two-way live interactions with the holograms, which was pretty cool.  

Kaleigh: From a retailer’s point of view, there were a lot of electronic shelf label (ESL) solutions that would make store operations more streamlined. They can be quickly updated with price or product changes, and you can even alter the currency according to which country you’re in.   

Brian: Lots of self-checkout kiosks with larger, more interactive screens than just a small tablet.  

Kaleigh: A big problem is workforce optimization. Retailers need to streamline the efficiency of sales associates on the floor in physical stores: for example, finding a way to automate the retrieval of products at the back of house. With workforce shortages, solving this problem is especially important. 

Brian: The Cisco Store utilizes Webex Connect to quickly answer customers’ questions and forward them to live agents if they need further assistance. Meraki cameras placed throughout the store help track customer demographics and sentiment and detect any theft or fraudulent purchases. These are just a couple of examples of how we try to solve the problems Kaleigh mentioned.  

Kaleigh: Having a seamless experience is one of the most important aspects in a retail environment. If a product is available in a physical store, it should be available online (and vice versa). At the very least, a customer should be able to quickly locate items in a physical store or get rapid assistance finding those items and/or shipping them home or to the store itself. There should be a self-checkout option that moves quickly too.  
One of the biggest plus points of a physical location is that a customer should be able to have a fresh experience there compared to the online offerings. This means having a more engaging store experience through interesting attractions such as in-store customization options.  

Brian: On the note of better engagement in-store, Webex demonstrated their customer communication platform, Webex Connect, through a mobile order coffee bar experience called Café Cisco at NRF. Customers could scan a QR code to begin the process and then quickly place their coffee orders by interacting with Webex Connect on their native messaging client. The baristas in turn could interact with the customers and keep them updated on their orders.  

The possibilities of Webex Connect don’t stop there. The concept behind Café Cisco can be translated into other experiences as well, including our upcoming in-store customization experience which will launch at Cisco Live Vegas later this year.  

Kaleigh: Meta displayed its Meta Quest products at the Innovation Lab, showcasing mixed-reality environments for multitasking at the workplace.  

Brian: There weren’t a ton of other AR experiences we saw, but spatial computing will become more of a topic of discussion once the Apple Vision Pro is released. 

Kaleigh: I see workforce optimization being tackled in the next few years. Electronic shelf labels (ESLs) will become a lot more prevalent, especially in the US. I hope we’ll be seeing more RFID self-checkout as well; it’s much more common in Asia and only a few stores in the US have implemented it so far. I also think we’ll see more integration in product searchability between online and physical stores.  
Understanding in-store audiences on a deeper level will be even more important in the coming years to make sure that physical stores stay efficient and worth the time and staffing power required to keep them running. As we mentioned before, Meraki cameras and Everyangle do a good job of getting us those physical store analytics at the Cisco Store.  
I think the retail industry will also be trying to develop and integrate more technological solutions that gather information about their customers while still maintaining their privacy. Shopping experiences may start becoming more personalized and stores may start creating more immersive experiences in their physical locations: for example, a digital screen changing based on who the visitor is. These changes will be interesting to track over the next few years for sure.  
If you had the chance to join us this year at NRF, thanks for stopping by! Hope to see you next year. 

Consumers are relying on digital channels for their retail needs now more than ever. This shift requires online experiences to be increasingly enhanced, and a strong digital experience can make a significant difference in consumer attraction and retention. 

While creating such engaging experiences is necessary for businesses of all sizes, smaller teams in particular need to find a way to get their customers’ questions answered without relying on as much manpower. The Cisco Store is one such program, and Webex Connect provides an efficient, easy-to-use solution to this problem. 

Webex Connect is an enterprise-grade Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) that transforms how businesses engage with their customers. In simple terms, CPaaS is a cloud-based technology that lets companies easily add custom communication features—like messaging, video, and voice—into their apps or services by deploying application programming interfaces (APIs). Webex Connect enables enterprises to deliver secure, automated, and hyper-personalized interactions at scale. And with little to no coding required, it empowers technical and non-technical teams alike to create rich, seamless customer interactions. 

With a diverse API portfolio and multitude of integration options, businesses can connect their existing backend systems – such as their customer relationship management (CRM), order management, delivery management or even shift management – with the latest digital communication channels to create personalized, automated customer experiences. 

Webex Connect handles customer communications over multiple digital channels, including SMS, WhatsApp, Voice, Email and more. The platform allows for inbound messages and automated two-way interactions, allowing customers to feel just as attended to as they might in a physical location. Customers can manage their communication preferences and consent at all times in accordance with online regulations, giving them full control over their digital experience. On the business side, employees can easily debug any issues in real-time and view key statistics through the platform’s centralized dashboards, data visualization, and data analytics capabilities. 

The Cisco Store sets up multiple travel stores every year at events such as Cisco Live Amsterdam, Cisco Live Vegas, and Cisco IMPACT. These stores feature both our merchandise and our Tech Lab equipment, and our small team hosts numerous customer tours every day. To streamline efficiency with our limited staff, we can easily program Webex Connect to have prompts and answers ready regarding our events, such as the store’s hours and location in the building. Customers simply need to message the bot on their channel of choice to receive rapid assistance.  

The platform also allows for bot interactions to be seamlessly handed over to live agents while still retaining the conversation context. Escalation to an agent is routed to a Webex Space, where someone on the Cisco Store team can claim the task and interact directly with the customer. 

Webex Connect is currently being used both online and in-person at the Cisco Store, with 77% of the bot’s sessions occurring on the web, followed by 23% of the sessions occurring on Apple Messages for Business. Moreover, throughout the first quarter of FY24, Webex Connect averaged 30.4 messages per day, with 42% of the total sessions being handled by the bot.  

 Interactions with Webex Connect during Q1 FY24 have mostly occurred online compared to in-person at the store locations. The most common conversation topics with the bot, in order of frequency, were engagement with a live agent, order tracking, store timings, and store locations. 

The Cisco Store plans to use Webex Connect in a multitude of additional ways moving forward to truly maximize customer engagement. Customers may be able to do self-checkout via the platform by simply scanning a QR code and paying from their mobile devices. To speed up their order process, customers could buy their products online and pick them up curbside with the assistance of the chatbot. Moreover, Webex Connect could eventually be integrated with order management systems: customers can receive updates on their order statuses and shipping notifications via their preferred mobile channel. 

The possibilities of Webex Connect reach far beyond a simple Q&A platform – teams will receive 24/7 support, developer resources, account management, and expert live chat whenever they need it. Webex Connect will prove to be an efficient solution for customer engagement, starting with the Cisco Store itself.  

Interesting in learning more about our enterprise-grade CPaaS solution, Webex Connect? Visit our retail solutions page or get in touch with one of our experts.