I came across a great article in 1-to-1 Media regarding 3 critical elements of the customer experience that enable retail organizations to position themselves ahead of the competition.
We remember the days of talking about the 3 must-haves in retail as:
- Buy
- Move
- Sell
But in the article titled “The Three-Legged Stool of Retail,” Timothy Hood presents three new elements that are critical to success:
- Leverage Big Data.
- Create compelling consumer engagement.
- Achieve flawless execution with integrated, best-of-breed back-office systems.
These three elements together should lead to greater customer loyalty, and thus greater revenue and higher margins, Hood says.
Let’s break it down to the details that Hood provides in each of these three areas:
Big Data
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“Understand past events, stay on top of your business in real time and, with recent technologies, predict future consumer behaviors and desires,” says Hood.
Consumer Engagement
Consumers want – and expect – the following:
- quality products
- reasonable prices
- speed—of responsiveness, service, and delivery
- personalized attention
- individualized offers
- direct contact when they need it
- consistency across the store, Web, and mobile experience
- feeling of “community”
Wow – that’s a lot! Better get to work.
Back-office System Integration
You must begin to be flawless in achieving:
- efficient inventory management and replenishment
- effective management of suppliers and employees
Without the third leg of seamless system integration, customer experience and Big Data analysis will fall flat.
This article by Hood really struck me because these are three elements of business strategy, operations and technology systems that our company advises on.
