*Overview: Successful relational shopping requires a solid data collection practice. Information that tells a story about a potential customer's tastes, preferences, habits and history makes it possible to better understand potential buyers and existing clients. This in turn allows retailers to build more profitable and longer-term relationships with their global markets.*

Department stores are uniquely positioned for data capture

Department Stores' deeper and wider merchandising assortment generates higher-volume, and more importantly, higher quality data, giving them an edge over single-brand businesses.

This in turns not only allows the brand to better qualify its prospects and existing clients, but also its employees to build a deeper, more personal and unique experience with shoppers. In other words, Department stores are uniquely positioned to build a virtuous cycle around data, one that can drive business growth for years to come and support the brand when sales fall short (e.g. during a pandemic).

What is "data" anyway?

Data is a broad concept, so it is worth looking at what exactly we are referring to, namely:

1. Demographic data: information about a shopper's location, preferred language, gender, age and more. Those are naturally relevant for a successful buying journey where relevance is key.
2. Product / merchandising data: in this category especially, Department Stores have a key edge as they are able to capture a far wider range of prospects and client interactions. Merchandising data can range from browser products on the website to selected product categories during a booking journey and more. Naturally, the richer the product data, the more relevant the sales team's effort will be.
3. Contextual data: is the shopper buying for herself or someone else? Is she getting married? Is she in a rush or planning ahead? Contextual data offers invaluable insights for the sales team to create a personal touch when interacting with their customers.
4. Product lifecycle data: this one is particularly relevant from an operational standpoint for a Department Store's sales team, as it is defined around the natural follow up opportunities certain categories of products imply. This may include after-sale questions about how to use an appliance (e.g. an advanced vaccum), maintenance service on a watch, second visit for a wedding dress fitting… these are some example of product lifecycle data that further

Data is expensive. Online digital services allow to capture more, earlier.

The cost of obtaining, maintaining and consolidating customer data is high. As a result, the more and better data is capture early in the buying system, the more successful a retailer becomes over time.

Shopping is driven by experience. The ability for Department Stores to elevate this experience online with prospects and clients - even before they visit stores - has become fundamental. This means thinking well beyond "adding a chat" or "booking tool" on their website.

The quality of the experience are only partly a function of the tools used. What distinguishes a brand's experience is the people - employees - who drive that experience. This means the more trained but also and more importantly informed employees are about the market, the more successful they will be at forging long-term relationships.

The solution to this is actually simple: put sales associates front and center in the buying process. This means allowing a new prospect in Paris to quickly connect and book an appointment with a wedding specialist, or a an existing watch owner in New York to be contacted by a watch expert near him to discuss their needs and then plan a follow up appointment online or in-store.

Ultimately, Department Stores can't limit themselves to adding a feature - e.g. a Chat - on their website. They need to think about their digital services as a complete and globalized ecosystem centered around people.

When they do that correctly, the sky is the limit.

Lorenzo Benazzo – CEO Clientela - lbenazzo@clientela.com

*Clientela is a RetailTech company based in New York and Paris.

For more than 10 years, Clientela has defined and developed applications dedicated to improving the performance of salespeople and employees of major brands, distributors and department stores.

Main services are Clienteling, Drive-to-Store and boutique's resource management.

www.clientela.com*

Learn more about Clientela here