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In retail, the only constant is change. Regular disruptors, constantly changing consumer habits and an ever-evolving privacy landscape have made it difficult for retailers to keep up.
In order to survive, retailers must be agile, and adapt their products and experiences to align with their customers’ ever-changing needs.
The global pandemic may have exaggerated the pace of change, but changing consumer habits have impacted retailers for centuries. Staying ahead of trends is a challenge that only continues to grow as fads become bigger but die out more quickly.
“Staying ahead of trends is a challenge that only continues to grow as fads become bigger but die out more quickly”
At Alida Activate UK, an annual (and virtual) CX conference hosted by global CXM company Alida, leading customer-centric organisations gathered to share how they’re not only gathering insights from customers to inform strategic decisions, but how they’ve been able to adapt products, messaging and marketing campaigns with these insights to meet the ever-changing needs of consumers.
Here are two organisations that have tapped into their customers to drive unprecedented growth in 2020:
Kramp
Kramp’s mission is to improve the brand experience for its 50,000 customers in over 24 European markets.
Its goal is to continue creating customer-integrated, data-driven experiences throughout the entire organisation.
For its upcoming 70th anniversary, Kramp’s global marketing department wanted to understand the type of messaging that would resonate with its customers.
“Kramp’s goal is to continue creating customer-integrated, data-driven experiences”
The team developed four creative concepts, which they shared with Kramp’s customers using their Insight Community Panel.
Kramp quickly learnt that customers were not always able to understand the message, revealing that they needed to simplify their messaging in order to resonate with customers.
By pre-testing their concepts, the marketing team was able to optimise and perfect the brand message, ensuring an impactful launch.
Majid Al Futtaim
Majid Al Futtaim is a leading shopping centre, communities, retail and leisure pioneer operating in 16 countries across the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
With a vision to create great moments for everyone, everyday, the company’s main priority was finding a way to stay connected to its customers at scale with quick turnaround time and minimal cost to provide key insights to make critical decisions.
The company utilised a panel of 22,000 of its customers to understand how shopping habits were changing as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. This feedback was fed into monthly pulse checks on changing consumer habits and widely shared across the organisation.
“Majid Al Futtaim’s biggest priority was finding a way to stay connected to its customers at scale with quick turnaround time and minimal cost to provide the key insights to make critical decisions”
Leadership teams within each of the company’s business units relied heavily on these pulse checks to properly adapt their customer offering.
Not only did its customers get to test products early and provide feedback, but the organisation shared how their feedback impacted business decisions, making them feel more valued and a part of the process.
The group has been able to increase customer loyalty and brand affinity, all while learning how to better serve its audiences in a tumultuous time.
It’s no longer about meeting customer needs where they currently are, but putting a system in place to stay connected to customers and evolve and adapt in tandem with their changing habits.
Although there is no way to tell the future, by gathering ongoing feedback from customers retailers are able to future-proof their businesses and weather the storm of adversity by being agile and keeping ahead of constantly changing consumers.
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