Ensuring ‘customer centricity’ through hard times

By Arthur Moan

With so many reports of economic doom and gloom dominating our newspapers and inboxes, it is too easy for us to simply assume that all online retailers are having a negative time of it.

In actual fact, innovative brands that have worked hard to provide their online customers with an excellent cross-channel digital experience have managed to shine through much of the gloom, reporting some excellent figures in the face of widespread market turmoil.

Because my own role within Foviance brings me in close daily contact with a number of leading retail brands, I have been able to get a genuine feel for what has been happening, their ability to see decent returns on their customer experience investment, without having to rely on second hand reports. The recent achievements of some of these brands might surprise you.

The Shop Direct Group, which owns the Littlewoods brand, recently announced a bumper Christmas trade with sales up nine percent on the same period last year, with 60 percent of overall trading coming from online sales. This performance came as no surprise to me as the online team as Shop Direct has been focussed on enhancing the user experience throughout 2008 and have already committed to further usability testing entering into 2009.

Another client of ours, Sainsbury’s, also announced a 4.5 percent increase in sales over the same period last year. The grocery giant’s online sales rose by 27 percent during the quarter, boosted by a record number of orders in the week before Christmas. Like Shop Direct, Sainsbury’s conducted a lot of work with customers last year, looking closely at all feedback and acting to improve the overall digital experience of its brand.

Boden’s efforts to enhance its brand through innovative online retail methods that concentrated heavily on customer empowerment also delivered some excellent Christmas trade figures. Sarah Blair Gould, ecommerce manager for Boden, said: “Regardless of economic conditions, we believe it is absolutely essential that any innovative online brand makes genuine efforts to really get to know their customers, what they desire in a retailing experience, and what makes them feel valued and an important part of the brand’s core values. When times are tougher, it’s vital not to cut back on the extra frills that make customers feel that extra bit special. If anything, the more indulgent areas of an online retail business should be emphasized in a downturn in order to really underline the customer centric nature of the brand and retain loyalty.”

Of course I’m not claiming that all retailers delivering a good online experience managed to secure a bumper year end trade, despite the positive tone of many of the news items currently reported at IMRG, ‘the leading industry body for global e-retailing’. But it is true that many industry observers, including leading analyst firms such as Forrester, are now urging customer experience professionals to maintain their focus and to make the business case for new customer experience projects ahead the much sought after first green shoots of economic recovery.

Signals like these from some of our leading brands do serve to remind us that even in tough economic times, brands with a strong proposition and a careful consideration of the overall customer experience can perform well if they select online as their channel of choice and optimise that retail channel to the maximum benefit of their customers.