8 minute read
The Evolving Face of Customer Experience
As customer experience (CX) moves beyond satisfaction towards community creation and engagement, Retail People Magazine speaks to global business transformation strategist, Renata Liuzzi, Founder of Axis Partners, on the future of CX.
Customer Experience has become the leitmotif for the retail industry. While more and more brands are seeking to enhance their CX; rapidly evolving customer needs are making the terrain tough to navigate. In response to rapidly emerging and accelerating CX challenges, Renata identified the opportunity to provide critical insights, support and strategy for businesses to remain relevant and sustainable. In 2019, when Renata founded Axis Partners, little did she realise the significance of her vision in light of the global events which occurred in early 2020. Awarded the second most influential CX/Innovation practitioner worldwide by the CX Magazine in 2022 and one of the top CX/innovation thought-leaders in 2021; Renata is engaged as a strategic CX and innovation advisor to investment, retail and real estate groups. She has worked with conglomerates like Emaar, Dubai Properties and Meraas, leading and curating their retail, real estate and even hospitality experiences. Here, she highlights how brands can make customer interactions more meaningful, profitable and more importantly, human.
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As a Customer Experience and Innovation expert, how do you see the current consumer retail outlook?
With the Edelman Trust Barometer 2021 revealing that 88% of consumers across 14 global markets believe that trust is critical, CX is no longer a nice-to-have, it is a must-have. Delivering on the customer promise is the key differentiator for a brand’s success. It is no coincidence that the most resilient and successful firms list ‘enriching the lives of their customers’ as their highest purpose. More and more brands are realising that financial growth and
maximising shareholder value come as a direct consequence of CX - and not the other way around. CX must be embedded in the DNA and culture of the company. Equally important is the brands’ ability to execute. Proper company governance, including closed-loop, follow up processes, rootcause diagnosis and test-and-learn systems are essential ingredients in delivering best practice CX. Retail transactions have evolved beyond the simple exchange of goods and services for money. A shopper’s ‘currency’ is no longer just money. Customers now consider the amount of time, their level of engagement, trust and loyalty as a transaction. Consumers are now looking at the brand’s values, its leadership team and what it stands for, more closely than ever before. With huge leaps being made in the digital world (Metaverse, NFTs and so on), customers are evolving from passively consuming, to being creative agents that curate their own unique virtual identity. Retailers can no longer deal only in products - exchange of goods is passé; they must provide experiences whilst creating platforms for customers to express themselves. The fibres of the “holy trinity” of retail: product, experience and platforms, must be truly embedded within an organisation – top-down and bottom-up. This is not easy to achieve. At Axis Partners we help brands acquire a truly customer-centric mindset through clear strategies coupled with impeccable execution. As CX and Innovation Advisors, we work towards creating ‘excellence communities’ that drive organic customer-centric innovation and CX transformation. Axis not only designs CX for brands, but also runs it and makes sure it is an integral part of the DNA and the brand’s operations.
What do you think are the keys to success in retail in the future?
Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon, said, “We’re not competitor obsessed, we’re customerobsessed. We start with what the customer needs and we work backwards.” This is a quote I always work by and exhort brands to work by as well. If Amazon focused on their competitors, they wouldn’t be where they are. The reason Amazon evolved so fast is that it cracked the CX code.
While there are many factors for retail success, the most important is to understand your customers and then create products and services that are aligned to their needs and behaviours. Customer behaviour is changing constantly; so brands have to remain agile and nimble in order to constantly adapt their offering. Additionally, a sense of “belonging” is becoming important to customers. Brands have no choice but to look at ways to engage customers in participation-driven communities, where they can co-create their own items and be the protagonists of the products and services they consume. Sustainability is equally important. 88% of global consumers believe that companies and brands have a responsibility to take care of the planet and its people – this is a data point that must not be ignored.
Renata Liuzzi
Founder & CEO Axis Partners
This is not the end of brick-and-mortar, it’s about an omnichannel experience. Despite the acceleration of digital platforms, the demand for human connection remains strong and it is vital for a brand to have a meaningful human touch in every experience. Having the right people in the team will become even more crucial. Predictions indicate that brands will require game-changing skills such as complex problem solving, creativity, innovation, ideation, reasoning, analytical thinking and decision-making to stay ahead of the game.
The Galleria Al Maryah Island - Building Communities
Once their vision is clearly established, well-defined KPIs will help brands measure progress towards their purpose, gauging evolution, and learning from both successes and mistakes. Axis Partners’ custom-made CX dashboards allow companies to set the stage for continuous improvement and innovation. And finally, brands should focus on training employees on developing a customer-centric mindset. I am a firm believer that brands need to embed higher elements of the “service” mentality within the team to ensure customers’ needs are at the epicentre of every interaction. Axis’ trainings are fun, engaging and practical, where everyone leaves with a clear understanding of CX as well as concrete strategies they can immediately execute.
With the introduction of Web3, the Metaverse and NFTs, how do you see the future of Retail?
The metaverse is fundamentally shifting the control of brands into customers’ hands (customer-centric virtual economy). Thanks to blockchain technology, customers will be active participants in company decisions, one example of this is voting for a new product launch. This is a great opportunity for brands to de-risk their businesses as they are effectively co-creating with customers and reducing the trial-and-error cycle, which can be expensive and timeconsuming. Just as customers love to be able to move seamlessly from brick-and-mortar stores to online channels, a good metaverse CX will allow customers to move seamlessly between the brand’s business and other parts of the metaverse. Designing omnichannel customer journeys is more critical than ever.
NFT-based marketplaces have emerged, formalizing the trend of a customer-centric culture united by a cryptobased community. The introduction of NFTs is enabling the shift from simple engagement to active participation
for customers. Through NFTs, customers will be able to hold smart contracts and even own a stake in the company – which has the potential to become a game-changer in customer engagement. With blockchain, it is more possible than ever before to open product and services design to a wider community. This gives even more control to customers and less power to unilaterally operated brands.
The key to managing uncertainty is to stay close to your customers. Companies that have been successful through the pandemic are the ones that have known how to understand and quickly respond to customer needs. Many companies say that they are customercentric, but less than 10% of businesses truly work on training their people, creating customer-centric SOPs, designing customer journeys, and creating a purposeful CX strategy that can drive dayto-day actions that have a tangible impact on their customers. CX is not a one department job, it’s a full-fledged organisational effort that requires strong involvement from the leadership – this is how it becomes the DNA.
Companies have to move away from only focusing on customer data. They will have to bring CX to life by making it real, in every interaction, at every touchpoint. Additionally, top management must recognize that the primary metrics must be customer-focused and not based on short-term financial returns.
The Galleria Al Maryah Island - Human Connection
How can brands build a foolproof CX ecosystem?
CX in retail is all about forging real, meaningful connections with people: the creation of a community. Customers are loyal to a brand if they feel they are building a true and honest bilateral relationship. A purpose definition is the first and most critical step for a customer-centric culture. This defines why and how the brand aims to serve customers and add value to their lives. To enable that purpose, there are three elements for a foolproof CX model: people, process and technology. PEOPLE: The focus always must be on people, whether employees or customers. Remember that happy employees equate to happy customers. People work hard for a pay-cheque, they work harder for a good manager but they work hardest for a meaningful purpose. Companies must motivate their workforce to believe they are working towards a greater purpose. Employees must be empowered and feel a sense of belonging - only then can they truly care about customers. If your team feels like a family, your customers will feel part of that too. PROCESS: It is critical to have thoroughly defined processes with a clear delegation of authority that empowers frontline employees to make decisions favouring the customer. Employees should be well trained on what they can and cannot do to serve customers. For example, the Ritz Carlton Hotel allows employees facing customers to provide rewards of up to $500, allowing them to do service recovery on the spot, without any bureaucracy or red tape. TECHNOLOGY: Having the right technology is vital to delivering seamless omnichannel experiences. AIpowered CRM, business intelligence systems, and voice of the customer tools, amongst others, allow brands to deliver experiences that blur boundaries between the physical and digital world.
