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Posts Tagged ‘Centric’

Once a retailer has decided to focus on being customer-centric, the next step is toaddress the following four strategic imperatives:
1. Build an organization that defines a shopping experience that evolves with changing customer expectations: Retailers need to build a dynamic organization that is aligned to listen to the customer so that it can continuously enhance and sustain customer satisfaction. This requires a commitment to innovate and experiment with new concepts and offerings.
2. Provide a truly convenient shopping experience: Stores need to be designed to create an environment that is easy to shop and provides customers with the necessary tools, information, and services needed to make an informed and confident purchase.
3. Develop an integrated view of the customer: Retailers need to achieve a foundational level of customer information integration that includes eliminating customer data silos and integrating fragmented pieces of data gathered across all customer touchpoints and channels. This level of integration allows retailers to deliver more seamless shopping experiences and also deliver more relevant offerings to customers.
4. Deliver a flexible product/service offering: Retailers need to be able to tailor their offerings to meet customer needs across different segments, local markets, shopping occasions and product categories. The store should be designed and operated with flexible options that allow customers to shop the way they want to shop.
Further, while it is critically important to embrace these imperatives, achieving an increased focus on the retail customer’s perspective requires retailers to focus on execution excellence throughout their organization. In doing so, senior managers should focus on six major aspects of their business operating model: organization, People/process, information, tools/systems, format/merchandise, and IT infrastructure. We provide examples in three selected areas:
• Organization: Precise execution comes from clarity of approach and alignment of incentives and performance measures that supports a customer focus. In merchandising, for example, a retailer could consider moving the focus from products and product managers to customer segments and segment managers.
• People/Process: Since store employees are integral part to delivering a customer-centric experience, it will be important to reduce non-customer-facing administrative tasks and elevate training policies to emphasize “continuing education” versus a one-time event tied to a new capability rollout.