How to build a personalized luxury experience by digital channels
What your customers are expecting from your brand? – Nowadays customer experience is crucial for any business, and that is especially true in luxury and fashion industry. Customers are pretentious and they are even more demanding in luxury context. If your challenge is to draw attention in the luxury industry, you should be aware of it, no matter what you are selling: shoes, cars, body care products, voyages.
Customer experience is the perception generated interacting with your brand; then it is not about your effort, it is about result and expectations, which are higher in Luxury Customers.
Customers expect a greater level of personalization in digital commerce, says Gartner, and this is true also for the multichannel commerce experience driven by digital marketing.
Luxury customers expect you to know in advance their needs, that means solve their issues, a fluid online experience , and so on. For this reason, even an unexpected support will be incredibly appreciated.
Looking for a shirt or a bag in a high end department store could be challenging, such as find out the best moisture for your skincare in a pharmacy shop, at least if you don’t want to spend your entire day figuring it out. Your duty is to provide the right mobile app to make it easy and help your customer to find and buy the right product for their needs. Some examples? Geo targeting to find the product, extra info via QR-Code to better describe the product, live chat to share tips on the right match among dress and shoes, etc. Customers during their daily CX just wonder how to get to the target as soon as possible, without getting confused in those offline and online labyrinths. That is why customers most of the times are already expecting both, physical assistance and digital support.
Considering this context, how to deliver proper Luxury Experience? – Known and contactable customers (both online and in store) spend at least 20% more than non-contactable ones, according to Contactlab-Exane BNP Paribas’ research Digital Frontier: The new luxury world of 2020.
Hopefully, your showrooms are consistent with your digital environment. You have already developed mobile app and landing pages to host customers’ queries and answer to their needs. Your customers can easily buy a pair of shoes (and return it) via e-commerce at the same price than in store. They can find the perfect facial cream in perfumery knowing which ingredients is made of and which benefits for their smile will provide. Users are enabled to consult a free-to-download app to explore your offer, and to leave feedbacks after their visit using courtesy tablet in store.
Having said that, what really makes the difference is knowing your customers by collecting and storing the whole amount of data your clients are spreading around. When you add value to their experience, for instance giving them a little help, a precious suggestion, some special perks, your customers will be likely to share a greater amount of info beyond their email address, such as behavioral info, shopping preferences, country, gender, language, plus all opportunities enhanced by a social login, and they will allow you to use this data to personalize the relationship. Then you will be able to use those data to understand their needs, shaping your product around their preferences and empower a personalized communication plan through the right channel to deliver the right message within the right context.
Sending messages to your customer base doesn’t mean sending countless emails after the subscription (it’s happened, true story!), neither to wait one month before send a communication (without any opt-in confirmation email nor “Welcome email”). To create a real Luxury Engagement means to better know your DB, coordinate several touchpoints to sync and normalize data, contextualize them to build a real one to one relationship, improve consistency among offline and online environments and provide personalized digital luxury experience through the time.
