Targeted, Personalised Customer Experience at the Core of Successful B2B and B2C Retailers

AI-led, intelligent software coupled with increased customer data is allowing retailers to finely tune targeting their customers, driving sales uplifts as well as increased customer loyalty. 

Retailers were already embracing the importance of a customised customer experience, but the pandemic has accelerated this due to a step-change in the number of people shopping online, which has led to larger amounts of data that allows retailers to track where their customers are coming from, the product suite they are interested in, what content they are interested and what will build their loyalty and love for a brand. 

The Online Retailer event, being held on the 20th-21st July at the International Convention Centre (ICC) in Sydney, will play host to companies and expert speakers who excel in this data-driven, personalised customer experience, for example, 2021 Orias winners, Signet, who went through a significant digital transformation building a personalised online experience for their customers. 

Developing a personalised experience starts with thoroughly understanding your customer, which means involving your customers from the beginning as well as bringing in people from the different areas of the organisation to develop detailed customer profiles.

Suzie Young, Head of Digital and Direct Marketing at Signet says, “It is vital to engage customers from the start. Personalisation strategy begins with a clear understanding of your segments and personas, and the ideal journey you want them to experience with your brand. We’ve found it beneficial to have multiple stakeholders involved with customer feedback sessions; the sales teams, marketing teams and supply-chain teams etc., this allows us to map the customer journey with the persona’s voice at front of mind“

A combination of qualitative customer research, for example, one on one customer interviews, overlaid with data allows online retailers the ability to really understand what the customer wants. 

Based on this information, retailers can curate the product offerings being shown to the customer, as well as showing customers dynamic, personalised content for example promotions, marketing campaigns and blogs. 

Additionally, understanding the customer allows retailers to understand where they are coming from and what social platforms they are mainly interacting with, which means retailers can tailor their social media, digital marketing and retargeting plans. 

For some retailers, COVID has allowed them to get even closer to their customers. Samantha Law from Aje says, “COVID essentially confronted the play-book as we all knew it; challenging existing rules and approaches about customer relationships and building brands. Customer-centricity is not newly coined – but being laser-focused on this is what allowed us to steer successful strategies; bringing in all teams across the business, practising continuous customer listening and demand sensing, we were able to capture customer sentiment clearly and develop carefully pacey plans in line with our customer groups.”

Personalised CX also allows retailers to build loyalty, creating a sense in the customer that the retailer and brand really understand them, only offering them product recommendations that suit their profile, offering promotions and loyalty programs that reflect their purchasing activities.

As Samantha Law from Aje says, “Loyalty is the byproduct of a customer’s positive experience which works to create trust and ultimately, the intention of continuing a relationship which is so important. When a customer is a true loyalist we know that they believe the offering is of value and this does not always mean providing discounts or gaining points, for example. Emotion and identity are key drivers that we understand create loyalty amongst a product or service and in turn association with your brand.” 

Using AI to track what the customer is searching, where they have been before and how they are coming to your site has been made slightly more challenging with the slow demise of cookies, however, Samantha Law says that there is still ample data to be able to get a really good understanding of your customer; “Building up first-party data, Google search, click-throughs from socials, an engaged customer base – there is still so much information to harness.”

Putting customers at the very centre of an organisation seems a consistent strategy throughout these successful online retailers. Building out the customer experience from this in-depth customer understanding is core to these companies driving their bottom line. 

And this hyper-personalisation is only going to continue as the systems continue to improve and retailers have access to even greater amounts of customer data. 

The subject of personalisation and hyper-focused CX will be one of the many topics discussed at the Online Retailer Conference and Expo. 

Online Retailer Conference & Expo, Australia’s largest, longest-standing and most recognised e-commerce conference & expo, will deliver an unparalleled speaker and retail brand line-up, set over 12  stages, bringing together the retail industry in person for the first time. 

In what promises to be the most comprehensive offering yet, Online Retailer will showcase the brightest names in retail.  The who’s who of the industry will come together across two days to talk about the sector’s hottest topics, including the Metaverse, conscious consumerism, and CX-led digital transformation.