Major Canadian retailers are redesigning their stores in a bid to become more service-oriented and tech-savvy.

The remakes, which can cost millions of dollars, range from consumer electronics outlets to drugstores to car dealerships and office-supply outlets.

Firms such as Future Shop, Rogers and Shopper's Drug Mart are opening stores with whole new looks and retrofitting older stores with some components contained in flagship locations.

Anson Lee, director of customer experience strategy for Karo Group, a design company that advises retailers and other firms on their communications, advertising and in-store environments, says innovative interiors are just one component of redesigned business operations. Firms are also giving their printed materials, advertising methods and online operations extreme makeovers.

Todd Empey, Future Shop’s vice-president of retail operations

"We're seeing companies take a different tack and improve their business," says Lee, whose firm has offices in Calgary and Vancouver. "It's not just about saying, 'Let's improve customer service or customer satisfaction,' or 'let's improve this widget and give it more storage or more horsepower' or whatever.

"They're looking at an overall package of experiences that customers encounter when they're trying to shop or buy or deal with using the product."

Karo is helping firms such as Calgary-based Shaw Communications, Edmonton-based ATB Financial, which operates Alberta Treasury Branches credit unions, and Open Road, a Vancouver-area car dealership, change their interior features in order to create a more positive perception of the company in the customer's mind.

For example, Karo is trying to develop ATB's branch of the future.

"We're looking at improving the customer experience beyond contemporary strategies, where you might have a café built into a bank," he says.

Design changes help differentiate retailers from their competition, Lee says, because increasingly intelligent consumers realize that many products already have the same functions and features and know how to navigate them.

The banking sector, he adds, is one that is really in need of a new look, both inside the premises and online.

Automated teller machines and online banking have prevented customers from developing close relationships with banks and exploring everything that they have to offer.

Richard Talbot, a Toronto-area retail consultant who is helping Shopper's Drug Mart change its store design, says retailers are trying to appeal to a customer's sense of sight, sound, smell and touch.

Shopper's Drug Mart, he says, has created a store within a store while introducing new cosmetic lines. The changes were influenced in part by big-name cosmetics firms that want their brands in specialized environments.

Talbot says Shopper's challenge was to figure out a way to introduce cosmetics and convenience food into a "fairly sterile" drugstore environment.

"On the cosmetics side, they've really created a separate 'shop in shop,' " he says. "If you come into a Shopper's Drug Mart, you really come in through the cosmetics area, and the cosmetics area has many (sensory) features."

However, Talbot adds, many operators are still making critical mistakes. "You want to invite customers to come and touch your product," he says. "I still come across stores where (a sign) says, 'Don't touch the merchandise,' which is madness, unless you're selling maybe very expensive wedding dresses."

"Often, when people find stores and don't want to go in, there's a (sensory) clash. There's a nice-looking Victorian kind of a store and it's playing rap music. It's amazing still how many times I've come across problems like that."

Meanwhile, at its new flagship store in Toronto, Rogers has moved sales to the front and service to the back.

The new store, based on a prototype developed in Montreal last year, also contains pods that enable customers to pay for and pick up their purchases right at the sales counter, rather than having to retrieve it from the back.

Staff stationed at rear service counters handle billing inquiries, as well as technical issues.

"In the small-retail footprint, there's always the crossover between sales and service," says Dale Graves, the firm's vice-president of real estate and stores. "When we developed this design, we intentionally wanted to separate the two elements, which we think we were successful in doing."

The switch has provided a better experience for customers and sales staff, who often had to attend to technical-service issues while buyers wanted help with purchases, he says.

"We've already taken components of the flagship store and started to roll it out in the more typical mall stores and streetfront stores," says Graves. "We call this the 'Next Gen' design, so any new store we open today is under this design and incorporates the same kind of elements. We've retrofitted a number of mall locations already to incorporate some of the same elements."

Meanwhile, Burnaby, B.C.-based Future Shop has opened a new concept store at Park Royal Mall in West Vancouver and will open another one at West Edmonton Mall in November. The new store features a central "hub" and four quadrants called Living, Working, Playing and On the Go - which reflect customer lifestyles.

"We hadn't looked at our floor plan in eight years," says Todd Empey, Future Shop's vice-president of retail operations. "It was just time to do it.

"We've connected all four areas wirelessly. The idea is to show people how all the different technologies work with one another."

The new-concept stores will have connectivity experts who work on salary rather than commission and help people enable technologies to communicate with each other.

Future Shop examined what retailers in Europe and the U.S. are doing, but its decisions were based mostly on consultations with customers and employees.

Some older stores will be also redesigned according to the new formats.

Empey says today's customers want brighter, cleaner, more open stores in which products are easy to find.

"In this West Vancouver store, we've done a much better job of way-finding and signage," he says. "You can walk into the store and easily see where the product categories are that you're looking for."

(Monte Stewart can be reached at monte@businessedge.ca)