Episode 3: Why many retailers are failing to deliver an excellent customer service experience

We see many retailers focusing on omnichannel through the lens of the business or marketing -- buzzwords like seamless, personalised or unified -- but what is the perfect omnichannel experience for customers?

Amie Larter spoke to Michael Tutek, Founder and CEO of retail experience platform Preezie, to find out. 

Transcript

Amie Larter:

Coming up on this episode of Retail Untangled.

Michael Tutek:

Make customer experience simple and efficient, management or C-levels going, "Okay, we know that if we do something that isn't perfect, we won't get too punished." Therefore, they're more comfortable to give their teams a culture to go, "Hey, try something, create an experience for the business and it can be anywhere."

Amie Larter:

Welcome to Retail Untangled, I'm Amie Larter and this is a podcast dedicated to business hacks and retail insights you won't find anywhere else. There are stories from the coalface, realtime innovation and solutions, and each episode will untangle a widespread retail problem. I posed the following question to Michael Tutek, founder and CEO at retail experience platform, Preezie. Michael, we see many retailers focusing on omnichannel through the lens of the business or marketing, buzzwords like seamless, personalized or unified, but if we had to look at it through the lens of the consumer, what does this mean for customers?

Michael Tutek:

So from my end, I feel like as a shopper, a consumer myself, like everybody else, it's just getting back to the basics. So if you look at lots of experiences, they often leave the basics alone because they've got caught up in something else. And it could be a trend on AI, a trend on search, a trend on whatever it may be, the latest social media platform that's on trend, but I feel like as a shopper, it's always just back to the basics, which is the customer experience, all the way from the first engagement I have with your brand, whether that be an ad or whether that be a sign or whether that be walking down the mall, whatever it is, just the first engagement all the way to the latest, which actually ends up being the next first one because it ends up being a cycle and a loyalty loop. If you just think about it like that, most people just want an experience that allows them to bring up a feeling of enjoyment when they interact with the brand.

So just making things easy and convenient because we get caught up in it's 2023, there's so much tech going out there, so it's just, "Hey, let's just make it simple, let's make navigation simple, let's make it efficient to understand what it is I'm looking for." Can I check out simple? All these little things about, "Hey, I want to look at something in store, how do I go home and buy that online if I need it to be delivered somewhere else?" Or even all these left field or fringe experiences, I go to Sydney one day, my partner's looking for a laptop, so I go into JB Hi-Fi and I find a laptop. Well, I'm not going to buy it then, maybe I just want it delivered. How can I really connect that bricks and clicks, vice versa?

So I believe a lot of it just comes down to just getting back down to the basics and just understanding all the way from the start to the end and not taking any of that simple communication and simple understanding that there's so many different channels and just make it easy for me to buy from you, make it easy for me to find you, make it easy for me to discover products and make it easy for me to buy. And then when I do, make me feel special so that I remember you next time and you're always top of mind.

Amie Larter:

I think you're right and there's been so much focus on omnichannel experiences in retail for so many years now. There's a lot of good solutions out there, but I think despite this, there's in many cases the customer experience still leaves a lot to be desired, why is that?

Michael Tutek:

Part of it is, I think a lot of it is culture. So for example, Amazon, they are historically, they've taken the most share the quickest. There are even videos you can look at with Jeff Bezos talking about how they're not a retail company, they're actually a customer experience company. And I feel like the point he was trying to prove is just make customer experience simple and efficient and don't overly stress a lot of the things. So don't overly stress using the fanciest tech or don't overly stress having a brand that is every single pixel perfect. It's just about consumers don't often know that everything is pixel perfect, it's just like, "Cool, I go on your site, I search, it's easy, I understand what I'm doing, I can save it for later, I can easily add to cart, if I have a problem post that I can refund." So something even like Refunded making just post-transaction easier.

There are all these little examples about just making it simple, so I think what happens often is that we get into a culture and I think it happens probably a little bit more in Australia because we're obviously smaller and the competition isn't as hard as say the States or the UK because they're obviously a little bit more ahead because they have to be because the competition's harder. But it's this whole, if it ain't broken, don't fix it. And then as a company, if you don't build a culture that allows you to innovate and fail on a project, then you're never going to try things. So for example, I think if we look at several brands that are still founder led, we look at the Miss Amaras, the Blue Bungalows, LSKDs, the Oz Hair & Beautys, these are founder led brands and often because they're founder led, founders have felt the pain of mistakes and they know that part of innovation is to make mistakes or try things that didn't work.

Bezos, I think even once said, one of the things that he respected was how many projects did you try that did not work? Because that means I know you're trying things that are pretty left field. So I think with that you need a culture that allows you to foster that, that's not even a thing that consumers do, that's shoppers being okay, understanding brands aren't always going to be perfect and then that'll filter through to upper management or C-levels going, "Okay, we know that if we do something that isn't perfect, we won't get too punished." Therefore, they're more comfortable to give their teams a culture to go, "Hey, try some things and don't get overly excited with just the latest form of ML or AI, just look to the basics, what works? What doesn't? And then just don't get too scared to try things, test things, pilot things and just try something different." And I think overall that will foster significantly better customer experiences.

Amie Larter:

In Octo we've got a sort of test small, win big philosophy. To be able to drive that test culture, you need to embrace the fact that you're going to fail.

Michael Tutek:

Yeah.

Amie Larter:

And it's hard for big brands and that's probably where it's coming a little bit unstuck. So we hear the word personalized and seamless thrown around a lot, I know you would see probably in your line of work many examples of best and even worst practices. But for me, when I think about the consumer and I'm looking through the customer lens, I think that what people are looking for, and you sort of spoke about this a little bit earlier, it's more of a continuous experience. And I'll use an example from some recent consumer research that we've done. Customers wanting to receive recommendations from staff in a physical store based on what they've bought online, or another response was customers wanting retail staff to have access to technology that would enable them to assemble their online wishlist in a store.

And I think to do this, this means that retailers need to understand where customers have been, where they're likely to go and provide options for the customer to shape their own journeys based on this knowledge. I'm keen to understand, given that you're at the forefront of these behaviors and you are seeing how customers are using sites, et cetera, are you seeing these types of interactions along the path to purchase? And are there brands that sort of stand out for you?

Michael Tutek:

I do think this is where it's going, we've got some research that I'll share later on, but this is where I think it's interesting, what shoppers say today with things like this is probably what their expectation will be in three or five years. Working with brands like yours or whatnot, getting this information, it's just gold, it's so valuable because imagine being in a position where to go and to say, "Well, I have a really good idea of where I think things will go." So I think shoppers know that technology takes time, we all just know it because just simple things like the smart homes things. 20 years ago we were talking about smart homes, they're still not there. So people are used to things taking time, they also know enough about technology now to kind of know, "Hey, I feel like this is reasonable." At some point in time.

I feel what we're seeing is that the expectation is going up when you ask for the information, but when shoppers actually interact, our general vibe is they're not asking for that right here now, today, it's almost like a peek into the future, into, "Hey, these are things that would be nice." It's almost like what's a nice to have list today in three years time is a must have. Go back 10 years, did you have to have buy now, pay later? Probably not. Did you have to have some form of Intelligent Search? Probably not. Now you must have these things, and moving forward it's probably going to be, it could be guided selling, it could be connecting online and in-store. So when you walk into a store, it might be as simple as, "Hey, what's your email [inaudible 00:09:30]? Cool, I know everything about you." And I know brands like NewStore are doing things like this. So what we are seeing is yes, this is 100% what people are doing.

We do have examples like Canon Cameras work with us to actually build in-store guided shopping experiences. So you scan a QR code and you can actually do a quiz in the store to help you figure out, and that's all about just trying to bridge that gap. The experience between online and in-store is almost blurred, and I feel like at some point, maybe it'll be a while, could be five, could be 10 years, it won't even be the considered in-store or online, it's just going to be trade experience or CX, I feel like that's where it's going.

Amie Larter:

Do you think it's going to just be retail experience?

Michael Tutek:

Yeah, I do. If you're a brand, let's say you're Lorna Jane, wherever you interact, wherever your product, your logo, someone associated with you touches a shopper, that is some form of micro moment. And if you go, what actually ends up impacting a consumer's likelihood to purchase with you? It's probably 20 or 30 micro moments over a span of time and you don't know where they're going to be. One will be with their friend who bought the leggings, one will be with someone who had to return and said it was the greatest return ever. One will be online, one will be on an app, one will be in store, one could even be if you are a brand that sells through other brands, it will literally be, "Hey, I got this experience at JB Hi-Fi with Samsung." And it actually ends up being a positive experience for JB Hi-Fi and Samsung.

So yeah, I do think it's going to end up being this one morphed experience and it's not going to be like, "Hey, how do you feel about the brand online or in-store?" It's just going to be like, "How do you feel about Blue Bungalow? How do you feel about Oz Hair & Beauty? How do you feel about Brand X?" You won't even say online, in-store, it'll just be a generic term.

Amie Larter:

What do you think are some of the friction points then for people being able to provide this continuous loop?

Michael Tutek:

It's going to be forced upon brands at some point. At the moment it's still a nice to have and human beings are not the best at actioning nice to haves unless there's a very, very, very good, very, very warm culture on let's have innovation. So some bigger companies will have a team of innovation or some bigger companies will actually allow additional budget or additional resources to try extra things. Often we get caught up in, "Oh we need a new replatform." Or maybe you do, maybe you don't, I'm not sure, but is that more important than the overall experience? And I think part of it is looking at it going, "Okay, this is the overall experience we would like, what do we need to tick those boxes?" Is it a replatform? It may not be, it may be a new [inaudible 00:12:31], it may be a new widget, it may be a new refund platform, it may be just a new general strategy, it might even be a restructure of the team. Maybe we actually need the retail team and the online team to report into the same person.

Now it could be, there's so many things there, but I think generally speaking, I think part of it is as a society we're just not there yet, because we're not forced to be, but as online slowly creeps up, in the States, it's a lot more than Australia, but as it creeps up to 20%, 30%, at some point if it ends up getting to 40%, you'll start to go, "This is one [inaudible 00:13:06] the same experience." And if I don't do a good job online, my stores are suffering and if my stores aren't doing a good job, my online is suffering. And it'll be one of those things where [inaudible 00:13:17] I remove the nut on the left wheel and the spoiler falls off, and then eventually over time you start to realize that there are all these complex connections there. And then when that happens it'll be clear, but I feel like we're still a while away from that.

Amie Larter:

I think so, I had an experience yesterday where I click and collect, so online journey was, it was great, it was fine. Press click and collect, paid, and then a couple of hours later I got an email to say, "Oh, not in store today, got to get it from the warehouse." And it's just those little things where you're like, "Hmm."

Michael Tutek:

Yeah.

Amie Larter:

You should know, and it does change, that's a retailer I love. When we talk about a great customer experience, we could say omnichannel, we'll just say great customer experience. One of the key sticking points, which is one of the key sticking points often is providing the same level of customer service online as you get in-store, you've just mentioned that. One of the cool things you guys offer is the guided shopper experience. For those that don't know, what is it? And what's the benefits to customers?

Michael Tutek:

We initially started off with just looking at in-store, so I worked in The Good Guys when I was 17, 18 and always loved the in-store experience, and it was always just how many people buy in-store versus online? It was very simple, it was 40% of the people in-store buy, 1% online. And it's not delivery, it's not like I need to look and feel because no one needs to look and feel lots of products. You don't need to look and feel if the kettle's right, it's a kettle, or the microwave is right. So part of it was just hey, there is a lot of product here and I don't know how to navigate it, so I need to speak to Sally, the sales assistant or Tanya or Bob. So the idea here was really simple, it was just get that in-store sales experience and bring it online. And we do it through interactive quizzes, so you plug a quiz on your site and you answer a few questions. And based on all that, it recommends products that are right for you based on the questions that you've answered.

Amie Larter:

Okay, and so from a customer experience point of view, I'm assuming there that there's a lot of advantages in terms of it's easier to find what you're looking for, it sort of decreases the amount of time you spend on site because product discovery is, it's just a completely different experience, talk me through that.

Michael Tutek:

The way we see the whole journey is you need to find a business, you need to have awareness, so your ads, your stores, organic SEO, all these things, you need that. If no one's coming in the door, then it doesn't matter what you do on the site, but at the same time you can have amazing organic search, put tons into marketing, you get people on the site and all of a sudden the experience is let down. So the way we see it is think about walking into a store like the JB Hi-Fi and just having no salespeople and just being left to your own devices as to how to find stuff. There's no real filtering, there's no real advice, there's a couple banners and that's kind of where online is and over time it will progress because there is, not just us, there is visual merchandising, brands like Searchspring are doing awesome work. There is things like [inaudible 00:16:26], who we partner with to bring in the data to do more post.

There are all these tools that the idea ultimately is really simple. How can I help you get a great experience there and then? So if I walk into The Good Guys or JB, and I say, "Hey, I'm looking for a TV, it's for a bedroom." That is completely different to, "I'm looking for my brand new home theater." And that's very different to, "I'm looking for a TV for the beach house." And all these little experiences, so it's all about understanding all that, and then just going back to the basics honestly. Think about the basic in-store experience, you need salespeople, you need people to help, you need people to navigate, it's really the same thing. And then depending on how brands want to use it, it all just comes down to it's just an experience, so with us alongside all these other amazing tools like Searchspring, like [inaudible 00:17:21], like Refunded, it all just comes down to making the shopper feel respected.

I'm giving you my time, I'm potentially going to give you my hard-earned, so help us either save time, spend more on the site, reduce bounce rates, all these things all add up to several of those little micro moments that mean, "Hey, I'm more likely to buy because I feel like there's more value in your brand."

Amie Larter:

You've mentioned making people feel respected in a way-

Michael Tutek:

Yeah.

Amie Larter:

... and I think one thing that I wanted to add into the mix today is really around loyalty. We both know very well that customer loyalty is, it aids in customer retention, I think it's more important now maybe than ever before in the high stakes market that we find ourselves in. And I think retailers know this but still seem quite focused on acquisition over retention. I for example, have had a recent experience with a brand that I love, big brand ambassador, advocate of this brand. However, I came across the launch of their new collection on Insta recently. You could sign up to an exclusive VIP preview, no email heads up to existing customers, no comms, the only way you could access the preview was by resubscribing almost, and aside from that being a terrible journey, but it just made me feel like the loyalty that I showed them wasn't there in return and that my loyalty didn't matter almost. What do you think customers are actually looking for when it comes to that loyalty side of things?

Michael Tutek:

I think you basically nailed it on the head, for example, let's just take this to another product, mortgages. How many times have you seen or spoken to a friend where they've said, "Hey, I've been with X bank for 10 years and my rate is 6% now."? And then you speak to a friend that just signed up with the same bank and their rate is 5.4, and you're just like, "Why?" Or it's even insurance, I actually did it recently with insurance, my insurance went up, my home and contents, to two and a half and I could almost get a cheaper rate by going on the site and putting in my details and the rate was actually less. So I think one part of this is people do these things, they know these things, people are going to check and they're just going to know. So one is I think just understanding this and then effectively putting yourself in their shoes and going, if this happened to you for a brand you love, how would you feel? And I think with that it's about just understanding that and tailoring it.

I am an advocator of net new because you always need to, but I feel, and you touched on it, I feel like the split between both resource, effort and budget to net new and loyalty probably needs to be reassessed. And even to the point where we actually built a product that is post checkout to cross refer brands on the basis that it needs to be a continuous thing. The idea isn't, I bought from you, that's the end of it. The idea is, I bought from you, cool, what's next? What can you do for me? How can you make me feel special right after? And then what happens in a week? What happens in a month? What happens if I come and buy from you? What happens if I spend $1000 with you over a year and I buy from you four times and spend $250? What do you do?

So I feel like there is a lot here and it can be everything from just being really tailored in your responses to people, it can be all the way from offering them offers from other brands you think they might love because there is cross partnership there, it could be just incentives for repeat purchases. For example, you go on a site and you go, "Hey, I'm a loyalty customer." And then you see a popup that says, you get 15% off for being new. So you're like, "All right, cool, I'll just buy this under my partner's email." You know what I mean? It's the same person.

Amie Larter:

We've all been there.

Michael Tutek:

We just got to be [inaudible 00:21:17]... we understand you need to do it, and there's an element where people are also clever, they clear cookies so you don't even know they're new. And I do and I use it on my mobile versus this, I feel like a lot of times we feel like we can solve this through technology, but ultimately unless Google owns everything and you're only a Google person, if I use it on my laptop versus my phone and all this, it's going to be hard to know. So I think you just have to take a more pragmatic approach to scalability and then just treat people with the understanding that these things happen, and then when people buy. And I think [inaudible 00:21:54] is a good example, I did a bit of a crash course on their software and it's cool, you can see what people are doing, you can treat them this way, you can put them in this bucket, you can say, "Hey, thank you for this, you spent $1000 with us over the last 12 months."

When they buy the next product, "Here is an extra $100 gift." That's 10% of all their budget, that's less than giving someone 20% off for some Black Friday sale. So I think it's just having a chat about this and then making it a continuous thing and making them... almost shocking them into, "I didn't expect that, didn't expect that." And I think [inaudible 00:22:30] did this really good in the early days with just simple things like Tim Tams and they did all these really cool things. And that's another example of founder led business, all these little things that made it feel so special at the start, like a little Tim Tam in the box or this or some little free samples that you just didn't even think of. Hello Fresh and Naked Wines, what they do with the... and Pet Circle with the boxes and things like that. I remember that was really cool when I first bought from Pet Circle, I went, "Whoa, I actually bought Hello Fresh [inaudible 00:22:59]."

Amie Larter:

It's so interesting how some of the most simple interactions or engagements from a loyalty perspective can be so memorable and some of the most convoluted initiatives can really hit and miss. I do find a lot of people spend a lot of time on loyalty, but it's not necessarily translating into making the customer feel that sense of loyalty.

Michael Tutek:

I think this is really interesting, so I feel like we need to almost define what loyalty is. My view if I had to define it right now, is someone who has purchased more than once in a 12-month period. If you go, "Hey, there's a loyalty program." Because I bought from you and now I message you and I email you, that's more like... that's retargeting. Loyalty is hey, there's a small subsection of people that actually spend a lot of money or we are their choice of women's fashion or we are their choice of homeware, or I buy all my stuff from Kitchen Warehouse, so I end up spending 8, $900 a year, subset, small section and it's cool, that's loyalty. But if I bought from you two years ago or 18 months ago or nine months ago and I'm on your email list, email marketing and loyalty is not the same thing, it is different. If I haven't bought from you for 12 months, I'm basically net new. If I'm buying from you once a year and you're Oz Hair & Beauty, I'm buying all the time from someone else.

Amie Larter:

That's true, one way sort of feels transactional, the other has some level of emotion when it comes to you or the customer feeling as though they have had some kind of moment or connection from a brand that they're very loyal to. We've done some research from an Inside Retail perspective and I found their findings really interesting. This is more so looking at loyalty from what people think, how we would get their loyalty, so how retailers could claim their loyalty. So 53% of customers would be more loyal to retailers who let them buy online and return in-store. Going back to continuous that it just seems like a no-brainer there. 56% would be more loyal to retailers who enable the purchase of an item that was out of stock in-store and have it shipped directly to their home, and I think that goes back to your JB Hi-Fi example earlier.

32% of customers would be more loyal to retailers who enable shoppers to shop in-store and finish shopping online or vice versa. We've covered this off quite a bit already, but are there any trends you see coming through that you think retailers need to start considering now that you believe are essential to maintaining customer loyalty? Not necessarily now but further down the track.

Michael Tutek:

I think there just needs to be more emphasis and buy-in for what it means, so I think just going back, we need to just define it. For example, I buy all the time on JB Hi-Fi, they're a customer of ours, love supporting them, they're great and their experience is world-class, just this search, everything about them is world-class. You go online and you buy something, it's in your email, they know everything, fair. But when you go into store, I'm not sure, do they actually go, "What is your email?" Maybe, maybe not, sometimes you just get the receipt, so it's cool, it's almost like you need to ensure you get buy-in from retail and stores. So it's, hey, when someone buys, it's like it is a condition of the purchase to ask them, "Are you comfortable to put your email in here so we can connect this to your online profile?"

It's not hard to ask every single person that before you actually... If they go, "No, don't want to." Sweet. If they go, "Yeah, actually I do." Because how many times as a shopper you're like, "Yeah, I would actually want to, I just forgot. I just went in there and bought the game. I just went in there and quickly got the vac and I forgot all about it." So it's just all these things that you go, firstly I think it's buy-in and then from there I think it's just about being clever with how you do it and why you should do it. No one's going to want you to connect all this information if it's just like, "Oh, we just want to connect it because we are just going to retarget you." That's not attractive in any format as a shopper. Okay, that's cool, that's almost creepy.

It's not, it's more like, "Cool, hey, as we build up more about you and we get to know you, we partner with say the Nextbuy Network to give you exclusive offers you can't get elsewhere." Or, "We offer you free shipping on this or free goody bags on that." It's just about having some incentive, or as your example before, new collections come out, you'll be the first to know. So it's literally, it's so simple, your collection comes out on the 8th of June, cool. Loyalty customers get notified on the 4th of June, it's simple, but that small subsection of people, especially if they find out, if they get that email and then they go on Insta and they find out four days later that's when it got released, they will be like, "Wow, I saw this a week earlier, how cool is that?" So I think part of it is being really clear what the value proposition is and why? And then from there you need the real buy-in from online.

If you want people to buy into whatever you are trying to get them to buy into, you need to be very, very clear on why. So like, "Hey, when you put in your information, you get X, you get this." Some brands do this exceptionally well. And then from there you need, for example, let's call it Frank, who's working in a store, physical store in Matchbox, you need Frank to go, when Amie comes in and buys something, "Hey Amie, before I transact, are you happy to give your email? Do you shop online with us? Let me put it in so it connects it and it will actually let you know if you get some more perks." Now these are simple things, but they require some thought, but they require buy-in and they require explicit, really clear communication lines. So I think you do all that, you'd be good.

Amie Larter:

When you say buy-in and clear communication lines, sometimes I think people are tempted to, I need a program that does X or I need to use this technology. And there's often not the purpose or the intentionality behind it in terms of that overarching experience, it's just one thing that they've decided that they need to do. Is there not that intentionality behind it? Is that's what's missing? I struggle to see where the gap here is for retailers.

Michael Tutek:

I feel like too many people feel like they need to get a hundred things perfect before they go out to the market with something. I actually take the opposite approach, as long as the experience feels reasonable, 99.99% of shoppers will probably find it excellent if you, as e-commerce manager think it's decent. We've got such higher expectations because we're the ones building it. So my view is I feel like it's good, if you have a widget like us doing this and that doing that and you're capturing some stuff with [inaudible 00:30:13] here. You don't have to make it all perfect, you don't need one massive Salesforce behemoth to get it all running smoothly. And on that basis, I feel like the disconnect is one, retailers aren't pushing the agenda hard enough because they feel like they need this $2 million tech stack to get all this right, you don't.

From there, I feel like the buy-in is articulation to actual shoppers. We actually did research recently with shoppers, not brands, and one of the stats we found was that 69% of Australians found it was very appealing to receive offers as incentives post checkout. So this could be free gifts, could be X percent off somewhere else, part of what we did with Nextbuy. So the idea is as a shopper, you just need to understand that there is this value there. When we get emails and we send the email, we've got an 85% open rate because it's expected. And then beyond that you just need to roll with the same kind of story. "Hey, because you did this two weeks ago, we thought you might be interested in this now."

Just referencing things that you know about them, it could be a size, we do size finders with Lorna Jane and whatnot. Summer's coming up, here are the best ankle cut leggings in your size. How cool is that compared to, here is the top summer leggings for you? It just feels a little bit personalized, you just need a size or just very basic things.

Amie Larter:

What is personalization to you then? Something that you can't find out otherwise?

Michael Tutek:

I'm probably biased because I've built a product all based on pre-purchase and now I've built a product all based on post-purchase. I feel like personalization is listening, usually pre-purchase I think is better than post-purchase, so our quizzes, understanding what it is you are here for and why you want it. So that example before, "Hey I'm looking for a TV for a theater, I would like something over 85 inches and I'm happy to spend more than five grand." Okay, cool, so that is great, if they have not bought, email, "Hey, check out some really great options for theaters that are over 85 inches." That's personalization, it's more about not understanding what you bought, why are you looking? And what are you looking for? That's a lot more impressive. So a quick example, I've been talking to Blue Bungalow alongside [inaudible 00:32:47] and it's imagine you go to Blue Bungalow and you're looking for a dress for a wedding.

The wedding is next Saturday and you're looking for something that is below the knees, bamboo, non-iron, whatever it is. So you know that your delivery timeframe is... and you know the person maybe is in a certain state, but you know, hey, I can deliver Australia wide in four days. So let's say it's you, Amie, I have until Monday for Amie to buy something otherwise she's not buying from me and she's buying from somewhere else. So all of a sudden email, "Hey Amie, have you found that perfect dress for the wedding on Saturday? Check out our best options that we found from the quiz and these can all be delivered to you guaranteed by Thursday." How cool is that? That's going to have the highest conversion rate you're ever going to get, so that's what I think is personalization.

Amie Larter:

What advice would you give to businesses aiming to create the perfect omnichannel experience for their customers?

Michael Tutek:

Let's say there was no such thing as online and there was no such thing as in-store and some being came in and just said, "We sell things and we sell them on these screens and we sell them in stores, create an experience for the business and it can be anywhere." What would that look like? And how would I structure my team and my budget on that? So I actually think it's rethinking how we think about it, rethinking how we structure teams. There are definitely specialist skills, you need to be a specialist in digital, you need to be a specialist in merchandising in-store, that is 100% required. But I think it's rethinking how we ask the question about what is customer experience and almost pretending there is no such thing as in-store and online and then just going from there.

Amie Larter:

You mentioned teams a couple of times and the culture piece and teams and the structure of teams, and I think you're right in the sense that a lot of businesses are likely built up channel specific. What would the ideal mix look like? And what does a shift look like in your eyes?

Michael Tutek:

I feel like the ideal team structure is masters of specific regions, but I feel like there needs to be ownership of the total experience from a single person or a single group. So if you said to me, "Oh, you can't just combine online and retail." Yeah, of course you can't, because there is a huge skill in being able to deploy a Preezie widget and understand the analytics because A/B testing is super complicated if you're not doing it right. If you're doing it wrong, it is really dangerous, so that is a skill that you need. Same with in-store, having the ability to train salespeople in how to speak, but I think with that, I feel like we actually need to have customer experience sit on top of both. So for example, I have digital experience and I have retail experience, and those two are actually the same as sales and marketing in companies, sales and marketing are one [inaudible 00:35:59] the same.

They're left and right arms and then they report into almost a brand experience person. And it's like, "Okay, hi, what are you doing in store?" "Oh, we're doing this." Okay, why is that not being articulated to the online team? Because that's clearly in their domain. Or the online team goes, "Hey, I'm actually going to bring in a bunch of tech screens, QR codes, all this stuff online and it should almost be one blended team." So that's kind of where I see it, I think it needs to be reporting into almost one person. You still need your skills and your specific masters, otherwise I think you're in trouble. I think we're using the term omnichannel now because there is clearly defined lines between in-store and online. I feel like at some point we're going to look back and go, "I can't believe we used to actually call it omnichannel."

It's going to be, it's just experience, can't believe we used to separate those two things. I actually think a good example, at one point there was a phone and a camera separate. And now you could imagine when you have a camera, it's almost professional, and when you have a phone that is a phone and camera and it's like, "Oh, do you remember the days where I had to carry a phone and a camera separately?" I feel like that's almost going to be online and in-store and it's just going to be one blended thing.

Amie Larter:

A special thanks to Michael Tutek from Preezie for joining me on this episode, it was a fun chat and I'm sure you'll agree that there were some really valuable points made. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you subscribe [inaudible 00:37:34] your favorite podcast app and don't forget to rate and review this podcast.

Speaker 3:

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