Retailers: jointly own your customers’ journey to strengthen their trust and loyalty

Authored by: Charlotte Sobolewski, EY Consumer Products & Retail, Digital Transformation Sector Leader
Contributor: Kristina Stamos , Senior Manager - Privacy & Data Trust at EY

In today’s retail landscape, a connected customer experience is the key to consumer trust

In brief 

• Canadian consumers increasingly expect customer experiences that are equally frictionless and trustworthy.
• Retailers who meet this expectation can set themselves apart in the market.
• Collaborating across internal teams and departments empowers you to create a safe customer-centric customer experience.

Customer experience is increasingly important to Canadian consumers. People now seek buying experiences that are frictionless and trustworthy. This holds a lot of potential for retailers looking to set their brand and bottom line apart in a tech-enabled world.

That said, for retailers to provide the kind of connected customer journey consumers have come to expect, they must first unite leaders from across functions to jointly own a fundamentally safe, secure, ethical and transparent customer-centric experience.

How are Canadian customer journeys changing in real time?

At EY, our latest Future Consumer Now Index shows the percentage of consumers willing to pay more to buy a brand they trust has increased significantly over the last 18 months. Consumers want to feel seen, valued and protected at every stage of the customer journey, whether that means in store or online. In fact, the connection between these two worlds is critical: today’s consumers are seeking a consistent brand experience through every possible interaction with retailers. What could that entail? 

For Canadian retailers, the future of customer experience (CX) will be rooted entirely in hyper personalization and conveniences that extend beyond traditional shopping experiences. Strong CX will be grounded in the ability to predict demand effectively, personalize experiences, drive convenience, enhance customer service — think new and improved chatbots — and employ artificial intelligence (AI) to support quality control.

Creating these kinds of distinctive experience requires all kinds of inputs. It’s built around a great technology stack, reliable internal control environments capable of generating and preserving trust, engaging opportunities to learn about individual products, and helpful advice from well-trained and insightful staff. 

This last component is critical. The technology alone is not enough to set retailers apart in the eyes of discerning customers. To truly resonate, customer experiences must be elevated to the level of white-glove service. That means customers feel satisfied and challenges are resolved quickly and efficiently at every interaction across pre-purchase, purchase and post-purchase touchpoints. Staff must be equipped with training and knowledge to work seamlessly with the technology and deliver on customer expectations across omnichannel experiences, whether in store or online. 

At EY, we recommend embracing these four steps as part of that process:

• Reframe customer experience as a jointly owned value driver. Working in silos won’t work. Fractured ownership of the customer leads to gaps in customer experience. To employ technology as part of a connected customer experience, you need the right owners at the table from day one.  
   
  This de-risks the process so teams don’t inadvertently develop ideas and experiences in isolation from, let’s say, the IT team that will ultimately bring the technology to life or the cybersecurity group responsible for safeguarding the personal information on that platform.  
   
  Privacy teams also offer invaluable insight and bring knowledge to the table regarding what the customer wants, expects and is entitled to under law when it comes to how their data is used, handled and kept. Done well, this reinforces consumers’ trust and bolsters their willingness to extend boundaries and share more information in exchange for a continuously improved customer experience.
  
  
• Increase investments in the right technologies. Delivering personally relevant products and services with speed, convenience and efficiency requires retailers to have strong technology fundamentals. Emerging and evolving technologies including AI, machine learning, data digitization and Internet of Things empower you to improve customer experiences by drawing on the data you already have. If this underlying information isn’t effectively managed and maintained, the capabilities you create won’t necessarily address the up-to-date needs of your actual customers. We’ll take a deeper dive into these emerging and evolving technologies in future thought leadership.
  
  
• Empower leaders equally to deliver better results. Delivering on these ambitions will require large volumes of data — particularly, personal information. Spending habits and patterns reflect sensitive personal information that can be helpful to customize experiences. Using this information requires retailers to de-identify — that is, to remove personal identifiers — or anonymize data through a process that’s virtually irreversible and extends beyond aggregation to comply with privacy laws.  
   
  You cannot go to market without strong privacy and data protection practices. This is key to enabling the use of data needed to remain competitive in a rapidly transforming market, all while building and preserving trusted relationships with your customers.  
   
  While the business owns the customer journey, IT, cybersecurity, privacy and data teams — as well as other functional leaders like finance, which ensures organizations spend in ways that drive ROI considering margins — each need an equal stake in reimagining how that journey unfolds. Bringing people into the tent later on in the process will slow you down and cost you more.  
   
  As much as customers must trust the experience you’re providing, your internal stakeholders must trust that they can speak freely and share openly to support innovative and effective progress.
  
  
• Think about generating consumer trust by design. Better business decisions are data driven. How effective these decisions are will depend on the quality, accuracy and fit for purpose of the data you hold. With an evolving regulatory landscape, an enhanced consumer awareness to privacy matters and an increasingly sophisticated technology, risk and cyber threat environment, organizations are progressively growing their investments in building trust by design.  
   
  Data trust is rooted in using data in a secure and compliant way that respects individual privacy rights with all stakeholders in mind. Creating data trust starts with understanding the data you collect, use and store to support the execution business activities — and having processes in place to manage, govern, protect and report on it. Refuse to position this as a one-off compliance exercise. Instead, embrace this as a new way of doing business. Making these considerations as part of the business strategy makes for more sustainable compliance over the long term.