NRF holds conference

The National Retail Federation (NRF) held its annual conference in New York City last week, accompanied by dozens of new product announcements from technology and service vendors, says Supply Chain Digest.

As usual, the primary focus was on in-store technologies, with a relatively small emphasis on the supply chain.

A key trend was obviously enhancing - or possibly revolutionising - the in-store experience by using a whole range of technologies, including kiosks, 3D and virtualisation, mobile devices, and "contextual" information to "wow" consumers, make them feel special, and provide better product information.

Source Technologies and Direct Source have announced a partnership to provide tier-1 retailers with new interactive self-service kiosks, states Kiosk marketplace.

"The retail industry is rapidly developing a need for self-service technology beyond price-checking and self-checkout," said William Bouverie, chief executive of Source Technologies.

The kiosks offer retailers a flexible device that performs multiple consumer services, including price checking, product location, gift-card and registry transactions, store mapping, coupon dispensing and frequent shopper tracking.

Thomson, a part of TUI Travel, was awarded Best Virtual Contact Centre at the CCF European Call Centre Awards, for its successful Virtual Call Centre deployment, reports Targetwire.

Thomson integrates multiple customer contact systems across four contact centers, 380 retail stores and a dedicated group of home workers.

The judges based their decision on a number of criteria, including the delivery of an efficient multi-site operation combined with enhanced customer service across the company's various brands.