How customer data platforms can rescue retail experiences

Have you ever suffered a poor experience when buying a product online?
 
If you answered yes, welcome to the club — and good luck finding a seat. In the UK alone, over 267,141 customers made complaints about online shopping issues during the 2020/21 financial year. A further 91,906 reported problems with their deliveries, too.
 
Some of these issues might seem relatively minor: an item is the wrong size; it arrives late; a return isn’t handled efficiently. But fierce competition and growing customer demands mean businesses often don’t have many chances to get things right. In fact, the latest research shows that 86% of consumers will stop buying from a brand they love after just two bad experiences.
 
Issues with order fulfilment and supply chains can be difficult to avoid, but what retailers can control is their approach to a customer’s data and the experiences they create using that intelligence. With a single view of customer, they can deliver the solutions necessary to restore confidence in their brand, one step at a time.
 
To explain why this kind of visibility of data is so valuable, we’ll use an example — meet Joe.

Who? What? Where? 3 W's in the retail customer experience

Joe visits his favourite sportswear brand’s website and treats himself to a t-shirt from its new summer range. The new style looks slightly baggier than his previous purchases, but he goes ahead and orders in the same size anyway. It arrives a couple of days later and, you guessed it, doesn’t fit.
 
Augmented reality (AR) features, such as a tool that enables shoppers to digitally ‘wear’ a product before they buy, or a size recommendation using Joe’s purchase history, may have stopped this issue in its tracks.  But getting to the root of a problem starts with the basics — identity resolution, customer history, and engagement data that pertains to who your customer is and what they’re buying.
 
Another piece of the puzzle is Customer Data governance, which is critical to opimising any online customer experience. Alongside complying with the right data standards and rules, strong governance also helps you attract new consumers and please existing ones by making personalisation more accurate. Tailored services make customers feel more valued, sparking long-term brand loyalty and, according to McKinsey, creating up to $3 trillion in new business value.
 
In Joe’s case, internal data practices should’ve flagged that the sizes of the new t-shirts don’t match his prior purchases or what similar customers purchased, and pushed this information to the e-commerce site. Then, the retailer could have used the product’s dimensions, plus Joe’s previous purchases, to recommend him the perfect size at the point of purchase, eliminating a laborious return process, and the cost of shipping, repackaging, and discounting (a UK average of £20 per return).

Communication is key

How retailers communicate with their customers during a return will make or break relationships. 8 in 10 online shoppers admit to getting frustrated by inefficient returns processes, so businesses need to be sensitive to their emotions. Communication with customers like Joe should be proactive, keeping them updated on the status of their return and treating refunds as a priority.
 
When Joe begins to initiate his return, he’s confused. There’s scant information in the package about how to send the t-shirt back, and the retailer is based online so he can’t take it into a store. To make matters worse, he receives an irritating marketing email from the website advertising the very product he wants to return. He decides to call their support line.
 
Unfortunately, the adviser struggles to help. Joe’s customer record is incomplete, his postcode is entered incorrectly, and they can’t find the order he wants to return on the system. The adviser deals with Joe’s frustrations the best they can — but without a single view of customer data, they don’t know that he’s a ‘high-value’ customer who’s made multiple purchases in the past. Joe eventually gets his return authorisation number and label, has to print the label (which became a hassle as his printer ran out of ink), then drops the package off, and waits 5-10 business days for his refund. He is not notified that the refund is complete and has to manually verify on his bank account. His confidence in the retailer is damaged, and he’ll think twice next time about using their site.

How to improve customer experience in retail?

Joe isn’t the type to leave a negative Trustpilot review of the company. He simply decides that next time he wants a new t-shirt, he might look elsewhere. But even if the retailer can’t tempt him back, it’s important that they request feedback on his experience.
 
Customer sentiment scoring is fundamental for spotting pain points, strengthening audience understanding, and creating better retail journeys. Gartner notes that 75% of organisations focused on improving customer satisfaction enjoy demonstrable revenue growth through increased consumer retention and lifetime value. By capturing attitudinal data on the sales and returns process, our sportswear retailer can run analytics and trigger downstream business-wide improvements informed by their findings.

The right foundation: customer data platform

Unfortunately, Joe suffered a poor customer experience at multiple points in his journey. So, it might be surprising to discover that one tool could have prevented each error and kept Joe loyal to his favourite sportswear brand. 
 
A customer data platform (CDP) could have stored and unified Joe’s consumer data from a range of sources, creating cross-channel customer identities accessible to multiple business departments. This is the foundation of positive customer experiences, enabling identity resolution, audience segmentation, personalisation, targeted campaigns, and more. CDPs are a core enabler of various improvements that help retailers avoid mistakes, or else learn from them, and determine how to best serve customers based on their preferences, behaviour, and attitudes.
 
With a CDP and accompanying technology solutions in place, Joe’s experience would have been very different. Once he ordered the t-shirt, he would no longer see targeted advertising about the product. Instead, he’d receive contextual ads tailored to his likes and dislikes. Likewise, the call centre adviser would’ve been able to access all of Joe’s details on a single platform. With the knowledge of Joe’s order, and the fact that he was a valuable customer, they could have issued him a 20% discount on his next purchase by way of apology.
 
One week on, Joe would have received relevant communications, including a further apology and invitation to submit feedback. He would feel valued. Fast forward a month, and he might decide to log back onto their website to browse their t-shirts and put his discount to good use.

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