Many retailers today are struggling to bridge the gap between the types of experiences customers want and that which they’re able to provide. Consumers today expect retailers to know them personally and adapt to them in the moment, predicting their needs while adding value to their lives. Driven by a convergence of powerful, ubiquitous technologies, digitally mature customers, and an ever-expanding source of customer data, retailer’s today face an unprecedented “Perfect Storm” of opportunity to create and harness hyper-personalized engagement with customers at scale. To bridge this gap retailers must embrace a new level of customer experience maturity called Customer Adaptive Retailing.
Customer Experience Maturity Map
Customer Adaptive Retailing is the transformation beyond Omnichannel retailing and requires a shift from thinking in terms of multiple channels to a hyper-focus on the only channel that matters in retail today – the Customer Channel – transforming seamless omnichannel experiences into adaptive and predictive experiences at every customer touch point. Achieving a Customer Adaptive customer experience maturity level requires two critical business transformations:
a) Digital Transformation which ensures that your systems are highly integrated and capable of capturing and analyzing every engagement with a customer at any touch point in their customer journey thus enabling every employee to access this critical information to create compelling personalized customer experiences when the customer chooses to engage again, and,
b) Cultural Transformation which transforms a retailer’s business culture from a product and sales driven focus to a customer-centric, customer experience focus.
One without the other will significantly reduce a retailer’s ability to bridge the gap between the personalized customer experiences expected today from digitally mature consumers and what retailers are able to deliver. Far to often retailers myopically focus on digitally transforming their businesses as it’s now easier to justify given the pandemic, and with the help of a good partner, more palatable to embark upon. Cultural change however is very challenging and much easier to avoid or push down the road. Keep this in mind, however, before joining the kick-the-can crowd that instinctively avoids this critical challenge:
- A Digital Transformation will provide the foundation to enable compelling personalized customer experiences,
- A Cultural Transformation will provide the foundation to achieve compelling personalized customer experiences
I was a retail CIO for almost seven years and I know the numerous challenges associated with business process re-engineering and attempts at cultural change. Recently I came across an excellent white paper from MIT Sloan entitled “Why Every Executive Should Be Focusing on Culture Change Now”. It’s an excellent read and could go a long way toward helping your company evaluate and potentially embrace the challenges and huge opportunities associated with Customer Adaptive Retailing.