VP, Retail Operations“This has been an initiative that started only 5 weeks ago. It has been brilliant to see the team work together and so quickly. This is Agile at it's best"
Leading global jewellery manufacturer
Rapidly responding to emergent shopper behaviours forced by COVID-19
The challenge
The effects of COVID-19 have moved like a hurricane through the retail sector. With stores closing worldwide and the birth of entirely new customer behaviours - the industry has been forced to innovate in ways like it’s never had to before.
Fundamentally it’s changed the way people shop and the relationship they have with brands. Early reports indicate these new customer behaviours are not temporary as first thought but are in fact the “new normal.” We’re witnessing a complete overhaul of an experience that up until now had been fairly safe. Why would a big retailer need to change it’s customer experience when it’s making such a healthy profit? It’s one thing to return to normal, whatever that might be, but it’s another thing to return to a winning position.
The world’s biggest jewelry manufacturer asked us to run an innovation programme with their product teams to kickstart how they should respond to a socially distanced “new normal” and to plug a huge gap in potential lost revenue for Q4 of this year.
Our approach
We started by understanding what this new customer experience would look like now and in the future. In just 7 weeks we ran a global remote programme with a team of 15 people across IT, retail and marketing. We spoke to over 50 customers, store managers and people from the central office about their needs. Use of remote workshops and agile ways of working were a first for the retailer, enabling the team to work incredibly quickly.
The process began with understanding what customers felt was desirable then using that to inform business viability and technical feasibility of potential initiatives.
Results
We created a cohesive customer vision (for both online and offline experiences) with 11 initiatives showcasing their potential to bridge the gap in lost revenue for now and the future.
The outcomes of this rapid 7 week programme were presented to the CEO. All 11 initiatives received funding to be taken forward into a prototyping phase, with the potential for them to be built and scaled to 28,000 employees and 7000 stores worldwide.
