Powering Modern Retail’s Customer-centric Culture with Technology
Technology is the top catalyst of digital retail growth for over a decade now. Converging multiple channels and formats has helped traditional retailers propel bottom-line figures. This has also ensured streamlining sales, SCM, logistics, customer coordination, and more.
In my experience, businesses are creating a competitive advantage through a relentless focus on quality, convenience, and value. But, this move should be sustainable, practical, and promising. During 2020 & 21, we witnessed how the pandemic impacted the retail industry’s modus operandi.
Online marketplaces and conventional retailers need to up their innovation game to attract and keep customers, if not. Changing customer priorities have led E-marketplaces and digital/physical retailers to improve their operations, pricing, customer service, etc.
According to the DTC Hype Report 2021, over 57% of Americans state that large online marketplaces like Amazon are the “most reliable” while traditional retailers come next.
How do Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) brands outperform in today’s tumultuous retail landscape?
Through this blog, I wish to discuss the key cultural aspects of how to champion tech and customer-converged retailing.
Fundamental Shifts in Brand Culture
E-commerce saw the big move of daily operations to online platforms at a vast scale. While this improved discoverability and speed, personalized services were still core to customer experience. The pandemic created a snowballing effect that led to overburdened supply chains, delays, customer anxiety & shrinking profit margins.
It helps break the silos between the e-Commerce department, multi-location stores, and the rest of the business. Further, retailers must take into account digital natives which means relooking at business models to customers at the heart of operations.
In my opinion, it helps strengthen digital capabilities like Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, and IoT to leverage the existing digital infrastructure.
Digital-nativity through cloud adoption is another focus area in Phygital (physical and digital) retail transformation. These put customers and their data at the center of activities. Integrating new technologies and modernizing existing systems help boost customer experience and sales/profitability numbers.
Retailers can use technology to redesign operations to deliver seamless customer experiences. Disparate sales channels and multi-level offices can be converted using the Omnichannel paradigm that uses Analytics and Automation to deliver seamless, complete, and customer-first experiences. A radical cultural change merged with the right technological tools helps with holistic operations and business adoption to change.
Customer-centric UX Design — The Window of Opportunity
Building mobile apps with a service-oriented and responsive interface help follow an outside-in approach to customer service fulfillment. The design shapes customer interactions through context relevance. This helps with improved transaction rates and customer retention. There’s an emerging shift from performance-based UX design trends to customer personalization and the ‘feel-good; factor. Current apps and platforms integrate Analytics and tracking to other UI capabilities like social media integration, wish lists, product recommendations, ratings, etc. It helps retailers accelerate their design and information-based competitive advantage through relevance, customization, and responsiveness. Even newer skills like Ethnography and UX analytics are being implemented in finance, supply chain, and marketing.
Add New Capabilities with System Intelligence & Automation
Many DTC brands have created benchmark expectations with their incredible customer experiences, including fast shipping and customer service times. 20% of consumers believed that DTC brands were more customer-centric than their traditional counterparts. This was substantiated by using personalized messaging and responsiveness that these brands were known for.
In today’s digitalized world, chatbots and digital assistants play a pivotal role in shaping the personalized culture. Automated messaging about the order/delivery/return status and checking on the customer needs is imperative to modern retailing. Automating workflows and back-office functions helps enhance business operations while drastically reducing costs. Collecting customer data and integrating it with enterprise systems like CRM and ERP helps engage, update and track order updates. Combining automation, IoT, and Business Intelligence (reporting) helps combine warehousing, logistics, delivery, customer feedback, and more. Potential customers become loyal customers when the highest level of quality is offered using data visibility.
Embedding Machine Intelligence
Machine Learning algorithms help sift through terabytes of data. I find it fascinating as it provides greater visibility into your Customer and Order Management systems and during invoice processing. By converging ML and IoT, tracking consignments and predicting delays or early deliveries can help keep the customer informed. Transparency and accountability are crucial to a customer-centric culture.
Mind-boggling data volumes can be useless without harnessing the power of Artificial Intelligence. AI helps deliver actionable insights through Analytics-driven digital dashboards that provide data distribution and KPI metrics. These tools help build sustainable competitive advantages using the most valuable digital asset, customer data.
Future-fitting the Organization for a Customer-First Culture
Even the established retailers need to reorganize and reorient themselves to holistic operations. Cross-functional excellence tops the transformation to-do list. Milestones to be achieved include:
· Leadership must consciously communicate with teams about the customer priority and actions. It’s incumbent on the managers to incorporate cultural enhancement into the corporate operations. This includes cultural changes in everyday activities and progress assessment using visibility tools.
· Implementing agile methodologies for the strategic assessment of product mix, online store operations, and brand identity is essential from a customer perspective. Every interaction must guarantee a frictionless experience while seamlessly combining physical and digital channels.
· SCM assessment will help determine the how, when, and where of customer engagement based on their preferences.
· Operating models need to ensure that the organizational structure, processes, talent, and technology correlate to the new retailing economy.
· Repetitive and Administrative tasks need to be minimalistic and accounted for in retailing cycles. This will help re-deploy staff members for high-value tasks.
· Adopt agile development to map the customer journey nuances, identifies and resolves pain points while redesigning and simplifying experiences. This ensures repeat purchases and uniform experiences.
Closing Thoughts
Culture is paramount to any retailer’s success story. However, today’s winning cultures are marked by collaboration, integration, intelligent decision-making, and rapid adoption. Established retailers can bank on these cultures to regain the high ground despite the disruption. At the same time, the new entrants can reach newer heights with a customer experience-led culture. It’s essential, however, to leverage the right technologies for lucrative cultural shifts. What are your thoughts on how technology can help retailers deliver a competitive edge? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
About Author:
Saumil Shah, the CIO at Rishabh Software, is a technocrat with a successful track record of helping clients solve complex business problems. Under his strategic presidency, Rishabh has established a prominent market presence across multiple domains like Healthcare, Retail, Manufacturing, FinTech & more. He is an alumnus of IIT-Kanpur & London Business School and has been on the advisory panel of industry-leading bodies like NASCOM and GESIA. When he’s not busy solving business technology challenges, he enjoys playing tennis or football.
