Customer Experience event: Dixons Carphone using technology to bring people back to shops

Instead of replacing the in-store experience with something entirely digital, the technology is intended to “combine the best of human empathy with technological knowledge. It gives customers a reason to walk into our stores,” said Diment at the Retail Week Customer Experience event today.

Pin Point was introduced earlier this year and allows sales assistants to use a tablet to guide the customer through what tariff and phone works best for them.

“If you want to deliver a digital revolution, you have to start with people,” Diment said. “And it’s not about revolution but evolution. We want to know how to get their first, and then learn when in the market.”

Fail Fast

This strategy of “fail fast” is one the company is keen to follow as it attempts to stay ahead of its rivals in a highly competitive market.

“We knew Pin Point wasn’t going to be perfect when we launched it, but with that mentality we did as much as we could before launch,” said Diment. “Put the customer in the driving seat – we got live feedback listening to customer and colleague at every stage.”

Although this fast pace does work well, Diment cautioned against going live with a new product without first testing it.

“We also learnt that changing habits takes time. When we launched it we found that it was the lesser performing stores and colleagues who embraced it. But the top 250 colleagues took longer; they were already doing it in their own way. So we had to change the behaviours. We underestimated this and we’ve learnt from that,” said Diment.

Although this style of product is focused on selling to customers, Diment believed it has potential for retailers in a much wider arena but companies must be willing to try and fail.

“Never stop evolving, nothing is perfect; this is not a perfect tool but we are very excited about its development,” Diment said.