How To Create A Wow! Experience For Retail Customers?
In the era of customer experience, a new paradigm of solution design is evolving. The sheer number of technologies, products and platforms is overwhelming and businesses and service providers are at a loss to judge what best works and fits a retail customer’s need.
However to get transformational business outcomes, there is a need for careful curation of experiences. My building blocks are clickstream analytics, beacons, geo-fencing, cloud, mobility and tagged things (let us say, trial rooms and carts).
Let us see some examples. I can attempt customer enhancement/engagement by deriving insights from a point solution or a mix of these.
Clickstream analytics + Mobility => I have insights on a retail customer who had looked at a particular brand of jeans on my website but did not add the product to cart. I can send a cart abandonment email hoping the customer would be willing to go back to my mobile website / app and complete the purchase.
OR, I can dream of customer experience transformation by curating an experience for customer delight!
Clickstream analytics + Mobility + Beacons => I have insights on a retail customer who had looked at a particular brand of jeans on the website but did not add the product to cart. Also, now I know the same customer is spending considerable time at the Aisle 5 (Women’s wear –Jeans) and has moved on towards baby products.
Clickstream analytics + Mobility + Beacons + Tagged Cart and Trial Room => Here is the opportunity is for real-time persuasion
I know from the smart cart that is tagged that the cart does not have the pair of jeans the customer had spent time on. I can decode this business moment and send a push notification on the customer’s mobile app with a $10 off coupon code, urging her to go back to Aisle 5 and pick up the pair and try it on in Trial room 3 (which I know is free).
Clickstream analytics + Beacons + Mobility + Tagged Cart + Cloud enabled Mobile PoS + Analytics driven recommendations =>
Here is the opportunity to create a closed loop experience that results in tangible business outcome (revenue uplift) and truly delights customers with a unique experience imprint!
I station a store associate strategically near the trial room with Mobile PoS to immediately enable purchase as she walks out of the trial room. Additionally, I recommend two other accessories to complete her outfit–a bag and a pair of shoes that are unique to her tastes. I offer a 5 percent discount on the entire product bundle!
What we have just done is orchestrated an end-to-end experience that is beyond a pointed technology solution to solve a particular problem like knowing what the customer did on my website or what she purchased in the store.