There are two critical, non-negotiable requirements to achieving the Customer Adaptive maturity level:

• 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,
• Cultural Transformation which transforms a retailer’s business culture from a product and sales driven focus to a customer-centric, customer experience focus. In a customer-centric culture, the first question when encountering any business challenge should be “how will this impact the customer”.

One without the other will significantly reduce a retailer’s ability to bridge the gap between customer expectations and retailer ability. 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. Challenges aside, The retail industry today may be facing its greatest inflection point: Adapt or Die. As quoted in the article:

“As online shopping reconfigured the very notion of retail during the early noughties, the writing was on the wall for businesses of every size: adapt or die.  But change, although essential, is often feared, resisted or considered politically unpalatable to many business leaders. Nevertheless, the situation remains the same: Adapt or die”.

A Digital Transformation will provide the foundation for a retailer to execute their hyper-personalization vision.
A Cultural Transformation will provide the foundation to achieve it.