A Complete View of the Customer Enables a Better Retail Experience

Analyst Viewpoint

Today we are in “the age of the customer” and terms such as “customer journeys” and “customer experience” are used in many contexts. However, unlike in the 1990s, it’s now possible for retailers to develop a more complete view and interact with the customer in a personalized manner. Our research finds that most organizations have come to understand that customer engagement and the quality of the customer experience are ways to differentiate themselves from the competition. This involves handling multiple forms of interactions, many of which are digital. The challenge for most retailers is to handle interactions in the context of the customer journey—the relationship the retailer has with the customer and the impact interactions have on both customers and employees. Due to this challenge, by 2024, one-half of retail organizations will see the need for a dedicated tool for integrating their siloed stores of customer data, spurring discussions between IT and CX professionals on data management strategies.

Customer journeys and relationships develop over the course of multiple interactions—commerce, social media, text messages, face-to-face discussions, chat sessions, posts to marketplaces and public forums—with marketing, sales, and customer service representatives. They might be one-off or frequent, involve one or more people and technology tools, and be close or at arm’s length. They can cover a range of subjects and vary in type (complaint, comment, request, inquiry, thanks). Furthermore, each interaction results in different reactions and responses, largely driven by emotions, that retail organizations should consider. Is the customer happy or sad? Satisfied or dissatisfied? Likely to recommend or negatively comment about the retailer? Likely to buy more or look for an alternative supplier?

From a retail operations perspective, organizations face a different set of questions: Are those who handle interactions doing a good job? Is handling interactions costing too much? Are interactions delivering expected outcomes? Is digital technology performing as well as it could? The challenge for retail organizations is to balance both perspectives.

There are many facets of interactions that can generate emotions in customers:

• Was the interaction easy for the shopper? How much effort did it involve?
• Was the interaction personalized?
• Was the interaction in the context of previous interactions and the overall relationship?
• Was the response consistent with interactions on other channels?

Our benchmark research finds that retail organizations increasingly recognize they need a more complete view of their customers and all associated interactions. To acquire this, many are adopting advanced analytics that can process large volumes of structured and unstructured data as well as present the outcomes in the form of reports, dashboards and journey maps. These retail analytics also include predictive and root-cause capabilities and increasingly use artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to automate processes and guide employees and digital technologies to smarter, more personalized responses.

But analytics by itself is not enough. Our research shows organizations must overcome three key challenges of supporting multiple channels of communication: difficulty integrating business systems, channels of engagement managed as silos and sharing information so that responses are consistent across all touch points. To address all of these issues, retail organizations first need an integrated suite or platform of channel management systems that support telephone, email, postal mail, the corporate website, IVR, social media, mobile text messaging, mobile apps, customer-employee collaboration, video and bots. Second, they need an integrated suite or platform of systems that includes workforce management and multi-dimensional analytics, and that at the very least integrates with business applications such as CRM, ERP, knowledge management, and customer feedback and channel engagement systems. Third, they need workflow and worker collaboration to share information and collaborate on the resolution of interactions.

However, before investing in such systems, retailers should first use analytics to identify gaps and issues in their interaction-handling processes and determine what impact these issues are having on customer relationships. This will help identify which new retail systems to invest in and how each would need to be integrated into the overall systems architecture. Having invested, retail organizations should then examine how these systems can support process changes, focus on training and coaching for worker engaging with customers and implement wider actions such as improving products and services so that customers have less need to engage with the retailer. Adopting this comprehensive approach to establish a complete view of the customer will ensure that a retail organization has the means to improve its relationship with customers, become more efficient and deliver optimal customer experiences.