Shop & Chat: Radios in Retail

For us, the customers, shopping can be a fun-filled trip into town on a pleasant sun-dappled afternoon, complete with good company, interesting conversation and tasty treats.

However, a shop is actually a lot more than a pleasing Saturday afternoon’s distraction for the people who run it. The average high street store is, in fact, a tightly run combination of clever marketing, well-planned store layouts and hard working employees, all of which come together to create a state of the art consumer environment. Two-way radios are a big part of this operation.

How? Well, there’s health and safety to consider first and foremost. Shoppers need to be protected, with rapid medical attention provided should any problem befall them.

Then, there’s security of course. Allegedly, in 2009 alone, over 800,000 people were arrested for shoplifting. The following year, The BBC reported that shoplifting had cost UK stores £4.4bn in less than a year. Apparently, thefts add around £180 to the average family’s annual shopping bill. Security employees need to be more vigilant than ever, but without imposing their presence on (and thus discouraging) innocent shoppers.

A reliable two-way radio system is a great way to achieve this. Using radios, security personnel can monitor a potential situation quietly and discreetly, questioning (and if need be, apprehending) the suspect without causing too much of a fuss.

But those aren’t the only reasons that radios are vital to a retail environment. Staff and shoppers need to be protected from potentially volatile situations as well. We’ve all seen a seemingly mundane situation grow out of control for one reason or another and it’s down to the store’s management to see that these incidents are controlled and diffused in a quick and professional manner.

Of course, we also need to consider the larger retail environments like shopping malls and large centres of commerce. Across areas as big and sprawling as these can be, security, safety and customer comfort are all key concerns that become that much harder to monitor and manage. On that scale, every concern becomes amplified. In these situations, radios need to be reliable, able to operate over long distances and run with a relatively long battery life.

Two-way radios are ideal for the task at hand, allowing management to oversee complex operations and staff to perform their duties in a safe and respectful working environment. Without two way radios, a Saturday afternoon’s shopping would be a far less appealing prospect…