High Street Retailer
- RETAIL SEGMENT: Apparel
- SOLUTION: Build™ & Recommend™
- CHALLENGE: An international retail company sought to create a customer journey that is consistent, seamless and positive across online and offline channels. .
- RESULTS: Project X shoppers (compared to shoppers who did not interact with X)
- 133% increase in AOV
- Increase in one item per checkout basket
- Reduced returns by 2%
- Improved customer experience: 84% “excellent” rating Personalized Digital Receipts
- Open rates in excess of 70%
- Click-through rates of 8%
“Transforming sales associates into indispensable shopping assistants recasts tomorrow’s physical shopping experience into one that is as adaptive, flexible and innovative as the online environment.” — I.T. and Ecommerce Director International retail company.
In today’s digital world, the retail store continues to offer critical opportunities for omnichannel retailers to level the playing field with the likes of Amazon. Omnichannel retailers are in a unique position to integrate the best practices and learnings derived from the online experience into the store environment, with mobile device integration that not only converts sales associates into personal assistants with minimal training, but also unlocks access to real-time product, sales and inventory information that can directly inform the shopper. Further, retailers can extend customer engagement beyond the store visit—by delivering highly targeted recommendations and offers on digital receipts.
In two omnichannel initiatives, an international retail company has partnered with RichRelevance to create an in-store customer journey that blends seamlessly and consistently into a positive customer experience across all channels.
From personal assistant to personal shopper
Leveraging an integrated technology solution developed by Oracle, YESPay and RichRelevance, “Project X” enables this retailer’s sales associates to locate and sell a product anywhere in the UK supply chain, by scanning or searching product names or descriptions using in-store mobile point of sale (POS) tablets and payment devices.
Using Project X, sales associates can perform a number of activities, including:
- Showing shoppers an extended and personalized product range
- Locating stock, whether in the same shop, another store or e-commerce distribution center
- Using mobile POS to order products in store for home delivery and complete POS transactions within the same basket
- Busting or minimizing queues
The solution calls upon a RichRelevance API (application programming interface) to access and deliver recommendations, putting the wisdom of online learnings into the hands of customer-facing sales assistants. On the tablet, the item page or “no search results” pages display RichRelevance product recommendations, enabling the sales associate to offer alternative products or to cross-sell relevant items. Recommendations are derived from online behavior, as well as structured (non-behavioral) product affinities that enable merchandisers to build outfit rules that incorporate cross-sell items.
In addition, if a shopper is identified by sales associates at the beginning of the transaction, the customer journey can be modified to deliver more personalized recommendations, with the goal of driving higher sales in stores and offering a more comprehensive in-store experience to the customer.
Project X has already delivered significant improvements in customer experience metrics such as AOV, return rate, basket size, queue busting, etc (see sidebar).
Subsequent phases will incorporate store sales data into online data.
From the business perspective, in-store staff gain a clear view of stock levels across the business, and are empowered to go the extra mile for customer queries, transforming even novice sales associates into expert personal shoppers. Because sales are made and recognized on an individual store basis, staff are also appropriately incentivized.
Optimizing customer engagement post-transaction
Partnering with RichRelevance and eReceipts, this retailer also incorporates
omnichannel data from both its in-store and online customers in emailed
receipts, from across its 321 UK stores.
The receipts leverage over 125 machine learning algorithms from RichRelevance in conjunction with its real-time decisioning engine to present highly relevant personalized recommendations and offers on digital receipts, based on a variety of shopper inputs such as online behavior, items in basket, etc.
The I.T. and Ecommerce Director notes that “While targeted offers have been commonplace for online customers, the development of our multichannel emailed receipts solution marks a significant industry first and ensures our customers will benefit from the most relevant offers and product recommendations.”
The eReceipts’ technology also augments loyalty card data by identifying customers at checkout and linking them to their transactions, which is of critical importance to augmenting customer profiles, since up to 80% of this retailer’s transactions originate in-store.
Conclusion
The battle for the future of the retail will be won or lost in the store. Notes the I.T. and Ecommerce Director, “Transforming sales associates into indispensable shopping assistants recasts tomorrow’s physical shopping experience into one that is as adaptive, flexible and innovative as the online environment. Similarly, extending customer engagement beyond the store with highly relevant recommendations and offers fosters loyalty—both online and offline.”
For this retailer, both initiatives have reaped improvements in key customer experience metrics and encourage higher lifetime customer value from today’s omnichannel shopper.
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