In a world where consumer expectations continually evolve, companies must meet demands not just promptly but seamlessly across different platforms.
Swave Szymczyk, director of digital and retail marketing at Adidas, delves into the transformative force of omnichannel strategies and the pivotal role they play in fostering customer-centric ecosystems.
CX Network: How crucial is omnichannel to the success of retail brands?
Swave Szymczyk: Well, consumers just expect it – to be truly onmichannel you need an online presence, a retail presence, a social media presence and do some advertising. Consumers expect to walk into a store and for staff to know everything about them and yet still retain their privacy. It comes down to having connected planning, from PR through to in-store, digital and everything in between just to meet basic consumer expectations.
Why should businesses still look to strive to provide an omnichannel environment?
Szymczyk: There’s just so much competition out there right now and so many single players. You’re never going to beat Amazon, they are the best at what they do and that’s fine. However, they’ve set consumer expectations very high and made it so important to have a constant presence within a consumer’s life.
When a customer is repurchasing a product, it’s likely it will be done online because they know the product and trust it.
Omnichannel consumers are worth about 30 percent more over their lifetime than a single channel consumer, so it is really important to use the store as an acquisition point for omnichannel or for online, and vice versa.
Each customer is going to experience a campaign or experience the brand in many different ways.
Everyone knows the adage: ‘Give the consumer what they want, when they want’. The reality is that consumer takes it when they want it. So you have to serve it up on an easy enough platform for them to take what they want, when they want.
The first store of adidas' new retail concept "HomeCourt" in Beijing. Image source: Adidas Media Center.
Have you noticed any CX trends that are unique to countries within either North America or EMEA?
Szymczyk: I work in a global role, and North America and EMEA are actually fairly similar. Greater China’s system is so interconnected already, it’s a great place to learn about how to put a campaign together where it really is so interconnected.
Yes, they are one of the leaders when it comes to omnichannel.
Szymczyk: Absolutely. Their privacy is treated differently in China, so you could never truly replicate the closed system that exists there in the West. The great thing about China is that as a retailer all you need is one QR code and customers can use their phone to pay for anything from a taxi ride to a snack at a fruit stand and everything in between.
As a consumer, you’ve got the equivalent of Uber, WhatsApp, Facebook, Messenger, your banking app, your airline app all in one. That is very consumer centric. So really looking at what companies like WeChat and Baidu do that is the future.
But when it comes to North America and EMEA, trends come out first in the US and UK, and then the rest of the countries are willing to adopt it a little bit slower. The adoption rate is quicker than they used to be, instead of taking a few months it’s now a few of weeks.”
How are CX trailblazers in retail parting themselves from the rest, would you say?
Szymczyk: There are definitely some standouts and it’s anyone that can capture a consumer’s imagination and use data to combine the two to provide a great consumer experience.
What Nordstrom Men’s is doing in the US with the virtual store, that’s a really interesting model. Obviously, it’s one store, so we don’t know if it’s working yet.
There are so many things happening in this space and we’re going to see a lot of ‘trailblazers’ that will have some phenomenal successes and some will have pretty spectacular failures. What is important is to test things, listen to the consumer and they will vote with their wallet, they will tell us what they want.
As brands, it is our job to provide new levels of comfort, convenience and be thinking about things that the consumer doesn’t know they want yet. In reality, the things that will work are the ones that will be edgy enough for the consumer to have fun with and add value to them in a real way.
If you’re not adding value and not looking at it from a consumer-centric point of view, then it’s probably not going to work, no matter how much you want to make it happen.
The one piece of advice is to really put yourself in the shoes (pun intended…) of a consumer to see how they experience your brand, spot where their touchpoints are and work out whether you control them or not. Because let’s face it, a viral video from a 16-year-old on YouTube giving an opinion on your brand counts as a brand interaction, whether you like it or not.