Overheard: 5 Themes Heard Over and Over Again at Shoptalk 2019

[This is a joint post, previously published by Jeff Richards, Managing Partner at GGV Capital and Mike McCarron, VP of Customer Success at Gladly]

That’s a wrap on Shoptalk, the annual retail conference that ran from Sunday through Wednesday this week for more than 8,400 brands, retailers and more. The four-day event was chock full of large-scale panel sessions, one-to-one meetings, and smaller roundtable events, including a joint lunch between global venture capital firm GGV Capital and Gladly, the customer service software company that’s helping to put the customer back at the heart of the customer experience.  

At the lunch, we caught up and shared some of the interesting themes we’d both overheard in our conversations at Shoptalk. 

Here are our key takeaways:

1. It’s all about the experience. Customer experience was a universal thread that ran through the conference. This includes every part of the journey that consumers experience with a brand - from their very first encounter, to how they use a product or service, as well as their interactions with the brand, whether that’s in-store, online, over mobile, or through customer support. The most successful companies, it seems, will be those who can embrace and optimize the entire customer experience journey and ensure that information sharing and insights from one aspect of the customer experience are shared across the organization.

COO of Stitch Fix, Mike Smith, shared a great example of how they’ve optimized the experience for their customers as they go through their style preference process. Stitch Fix pairs their ‘Fix Stylists’ (Stitch Fix’s team of personal stylists) with data scientists to ensure that consumer behavior, as well as data about how customers interact through their web and mobile experiences, are driven and optimized by insights gathered through AI and actual data.

2. Personalization is a priority. Personalizing the customer experience was a big theme at last year’s Shoptalk, and continues to be one in 2019. Companies today want to deliver more personalized, tailored experiences to their customers, based on what they know about them, both from their explicit behavior (what they say or do) as well as implicit (what is observed or inferred from analyzing the data from customers). With all the technology that exists today, companies are trying to replicate that highly personal experience that you might get from your favorite boutique or regular coffee shop in a scalable, cost-efficient way.

“Personalizing the experience for their customers is a big reason why top brands are looking to Gladly," according to Mike McCarron. "By prioritizing the customer, knowing and surfacing as much as possible about their preferences, buying behaviors, recent interactions, and overall engagement with a brand, we can help them deliver the kind of personal service their customers have come to expect from them."

"At the end of the day, the companies we talk to realize that they want their customer service experience to be about relationships, rather than treating every interaction as a transaction.” Mike McCarron, VP Customer Success, Gladly

3. The retail and online experience must work together. Another interesting point that came up in several sessions was the inextricable link between a company’s digital and in-store experience. To be successful, companies can’t afford to devise their online and in-store strategies independent of each other, but understand how the two can work together to provide the customer the best experience across the board, however they choose to shop with them.

For River Island CIO, Doug Gardner, the popularity of their online strategies, like their ‘click and collect’ strategy, led to them reevaluating the layout of their physical stores, making more room for collection stations. And for Old Navy SVP, Blair Dunn, it meant rethinking how their store managers were measured on performance. Rather than focusing on sales at the store (i.e. did the customer purchase anything before leaving), it’s about ensuring the customer had a great experience while there, so they’re more likely to go on to make their purchase online if they choose to.

4. China is still big - but extends to outside of China itself. The Chinese market is a huge draw for brands and retailers not only within China but, increasingly, outside of it too. In 2018 alone, China had upwards of 100M outbound travelers—travelers who flex their impressive purchasing power wherever they go. Companies today are putting a focused effort towards targeting and trying to capture a share of this lucrative market.

“Brands and retailers today are worrying less about how to reach Chinese consumers within China itself. Instead, they’re starting to focus their efforts on how to reach them as they’re traveling.” Jeff Richards, Managing Partner, GGV Capital

5. Speed + agility + innovation = success. Perhaps it’s more a byproduct of being at a tech-focused conference, but there were a lot of examples of how smaller and more nimble companies were disrupting the established players by being willing to move quickly, learn, adapt and innovate to find the right product or service offering for their customers.

It goes without saying, of course, that the bigger companies know they need to do this too. But it’s admittedly a much more difficult exercise given the fact that these companies have entrenched within them a certain established way of doing business.

“I think the winners, both large and small, will be the companies who can embrace the ability to move faster and learn as they go, rather than be focused on the downsides of change.” - Mike McCarron, VP Customer Success, Gladly

Shoptalk continues to be a great avenue for retailers and innovators alike to share ideas and trends in the industry, and the microcosm we were lucky enough to be a part of last week produced themes we’ve heard throughout many of the conversations that we’re having across all industries, not just retail. As lifelong learners, we’re excited to apply these learnings to our ongoing work in helping companies establish a customer experience that puts people at the center of it all.