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The FODcast
In the FODcast (The Future of #DigitalCommerce) we explore the real career stories of the people who have made it to the very top of the sector and those who are working at the cutting edge of innovation and change right now. Listeners to the podcast gain insight into the journeys industry leaders have taken to be where they are today, the challenges they are facing now and their aims for the future.
The FODcast
Revolutionising E-Commerce: The Role of AI and Personalisation with Roxy Couse
What’s driving the next wave of e-commerce innovation?
In our latest podcast episode, we sit down with Roxy Couse, Bloomreach’s new Director of Community and Content Marketing, to explore how AI and personalisation are redefining the customer experience.
From seamless shopping journeys to innovative strategies like returnless returns, Roxy shares the tools and techniques brands are using to stay ahead in a competitive digital landscape.
💡 What’s in this episode?
- Insights into the role of AI in creating tailored customer experiences that build loyalty
- Strategies for overcoming omni-channel challenges and unifying business operations
- A look at how real-time data and user-friendly tech are transforming the e-commerce landscape
🎙️ Roxy also reveals how Bloomreach has set the standard in personalisation, enabling brands to guide customers effortlessly to the products they need.
Her practical advice on integrating AI strategically offers a roadmap for businesses looking to enhance their digital offering.
🎧 Ready to explore the cutting edge of e-commerce? Tune in now!
#ECommerceTrends #AIInBusiness #CustomerExperience #Innovation #Leadership #DigitalCommerce
Simply Commerce is the leading supplier of talent into digital commerce across technology, digital marketing, product, sales, and leadership.
Find our more about our approach and our services within digital commerce recruitment here: https://simply-commerce.co.uk/
Welcome to the latest series of the Fodcast where we bring you the latest insights into the future of digital commerce. In Season 6, we continue to interview some of the most respected professionals in the industry as we broaden the topics to cover what it takes to build a business within e-commerce, navigating through business change, as well as the future of technology within digital commerce. As we continue our journey to have one of the best podcasts within commerce, we ask you to like and share within your network if you enjoy our content. Hello and welcome back to the podcast the Future of All Things Digital Commerce. Today, I'm very pleased to welcome Roxy Kaus, the newly appointed Director of Community and Content Marketing for Bloomreach. Thanks for joining me, Roxy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm so excited to be here.
Speaker 1:Excellent Now. Before Bloomreach Roxy, held a variety of roles within retail, all focused within customer experience. Now over to you to give us a quick 60 second summary of your career to date.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks, thanks. So, yeah, Hi everyone, roxy Kaus, I, as James mentioned, I am director of community and content marketing at Bloomreach. Formerly I was director of our customer experience group and, for those who might not be aware, bloomreach is a tech SaaS company that plays in the marketing automation and product discovery space. We make shopping experiences more personal by unifying the real customer data and product data so businesses understand what customers really want. So a little bit about me. I have been in e-commerce for well over a decade and in that time I've led digital merchandising strategy for several Fortune 500 companies. I also have a background in UX and have led product design and UX strategies as well. So I love all things customer experience, all things e-commerce, and I'm really excited to dive into this discussion today.
Speaker 1:Very good. Well, I'm really pleased that you've taken some time out to join us. I know you're in the middle of a busy schedule, flying around the States, going to different events and conferences and what have you, but it's safe to say you've nailed your Bloomreach elevator pitch. So there we go, love it. Let's jump straight in. So the term customer experience, then what is it?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So from my perspective, good CX or a good customer experience, it's invisible, because consumers expect a good customer experience. They want to have a positive interaction with your brand, your products and your services. And I mean even us, like we're in the industry but we also come from, but we're also consumers and we may not say, like, walk away from an experience, like wow, that was, that was really great. But if we have a bad experience, we know, and what happens in organizations I feel like that leads to poor CX or a lack of a CX vision is that no one is owning it, and I think we'll get to this in a bit. But yeah, so yeah, to me that's CX and it's invisible when it's done right.
Speaker 1:Nice. I mean, you make a very valid point there and I feel as though I mean I heard so not long ago. I think it's like five times a customer is five times more likely to leave a review if they've had a negative experience and a positive experience.
Speaker 2:And that's just crazy. Yeah, absolutely, I agree. So what is your opinion on the current state of play in the industry then? So I think there's a lot of opportunity, and I do feel like retailers and brands are testing the waters and also really trying to see what resonates with their shoppers. So, in terms of how CX is going, I do think that it's a journey, and I can't say with confidence that anyone's necessarily doing it the best or doing it right, because CX is personal to the brand, to the retailer that is doing the work, and it all comes down to what your customers want, what their desires are, what their needs are and how you help them to complete the task that they have when they're engaging with your brand.
Speaker 1:And I think that's the hard part as well, given it's unique to the brands and to its customers, and you have to look at other factors like their locations and everything else that goes into the sales process. And what I find interesting is how technology in this space has just grown so much over the last five years. I mean, look at take bloomreach as an example right the the offerings that your product has have grown substantially since the time you've been with the business yeah, absolutely, and I um I didn't talk about my history with bloomreach, but I am a um, a bloomreacher, I would say for life, almost.
Speaker 2:My first interaction with the brand was back in 2014, 2015.
Speaker 2:I was a merchandiser and actually I was very early in my career, but Bloomreach came into my organization and they were talking about AI, which a lot of people they're just grasping AI as a concept and are like, oh, this is new, this is happening, but Bloomreach has been doing this forever and that was my first as a merchandiser on the business side.
Speaker 2:That was my first experience with AI 10 years ago when Bloomreach came into our business, but I joined the organization about four years ago. But I think, as someone who's been in e-commerce for a very long time, bloomreach has always been this huge player in this space, especially if you're looking for marketing automation or product discovery and we're talking about CX and I think, from an e-commerce perspective, it's impossible to ignore the product discovery journey when you're talking about customer experience, because, at the end of the day, especially if you're doing e-commerce, the goal is to connect the customer with the right product that they're looking for or with the right services that they're looking for, and to help them go on to convert with your business. So the customer journey is so critical as we think about, like the full customer experience and like removing any friction that we can to help that customer achieve their goals.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I mean again, that's something that's changed dramatically over the last, well, five years, 10 years, years, even more. So we've gone from going on on websites like amazon, for example, when having one click buy um, which is obviously super, super easy, right and you go back. You go back a few years and it was uh, you look on a site and you get some images load. They're probably going to be the wrong sizes and yeah, god knows where else right exactly it.
Speaker 2:It's also very interesting to me how, um, um, you know, e-commerce is. We're so much more sophisticated now, so it's like, for I'll take an amazon, for example there are certain products on amazon that have a very high return rate and amazon calls those out like this product has a high return rate because, um, if we think about, like, the shipping costs and all of the things that go into getting that product to the end consumer, the customer should be cognizant of that. Like you know, read the reviews, do all the things before you purchase this product, and as a business, you're trying to like protect your margin, your profitability, so it makes sense. But there's so many things that have happened with the customer experience and like when Amazon, for example, has like everything that they do has become table stakes for e-commerce, like two day shipping that years ago that felt like that was a luxury, like not everybody could do that, but now we expect that and that's what's. That's what happened.
Speaker 1:And like the as someone does like creates this really good customer experience, it raises the bar for others to also follow suit yeah, I mean, I speak a lot about that, about how the impact Amazon's had on the industry and obviously you've got the quick shipping, you've got the easy returns and like even looking at things like one one click pay or apple pay or shopify pay I find really good as well.
Speaker 1:If I go on a website now and I have to find my wallet to input my card details, I'll probably just go on another website and hope that I can sync it up with apple pay rather than walk around my house to find my wallet because I probably know where it is.
Speaker 2:It's crazy, exactly.
Speaker 1:But look you, obviously the role that you've in some of the roles you've had with Bloomreach over the time, I imagine you're at the forefront of customer conversations and around kind of where they're at and what they're looking to do. We've spoken already about the like how the technology has grown over the last 10 years and obviously it's far more sophisticated now than it was beforehand. But what's the appetite of brands to to be investing the right amount of money in this space in your opinion?
Speaker 2:I. So there's a lot of opportunity, um, and we are seeing brands, um, they are investing, um because it is a competitive advantage to invest, and so there, as we think about like and maybe we'll get there, we'll talk about like, what should brands be doing? And right now? But some of the things that we see is that for a brand so I'm just talking about like a direct to consumer's a lot of brands that connected e-commerce and their capabilities during COVID to have a presence, e-commerce presence, and you're starting to see in that brands want to own their relationship with their customers. So you're saying, these loyalty programs come into play, or these differentiated offerings, because the brand wants to bring customers in. So, like, customers are investing in, like their CDP so that you can collect that first party data, because you should be the person that, as a brand, you should know your customer better than anyone.
Speaker 2:We're also seeing a lot of businesses investing in their their product discovery journey where, like, search used to be a thing, where like, um, yes, we have a search box, you can, you can use it Um, but now we're seeing this like, not only like just having a search bar, like the. The bar is on the floor, but it needs to be driven by AI. Like you need to be able. Like if a customer were to search for a product on your site, you need to serve them the most relevant products. But as a business, where we know that just relevance is not enough, you also need to make sure that those are performing. So there needs to be conversion data backed in that how are these products going to show up?
Speaker 2:If I were to search for white t-shirt, what's the differentiator? Show up. Like, if I were to search for, like white T-shirt, like what's the differentiator? And as a brand, like if something's selling well, I want that to be the forefront, and so businesses are being driven by this need to grow, the business have that top line revenue, but also like margin profitability, and all of those require like, like a good partner, um, a partner that is advanced in ai, um, advanced in marketing automation, has a cdp, can help you to connect those dots um, and so I I just see this like continuing um as as we go forward okay, and do you feel as though that they're cut?
Speaker 1:I mean, obviously, generally, obviously, generally speaking. Again, I mean it's going to vary by organisations and a number of different factors, but is there the the knowledge we have inside these brands to really make the most of what some of these tools can do?
Speaker 2:now, so I there is a lot of sophistication I mean coming myself just coming from in-house digital teams like I don't recall having a data understand, like how we utilize that data to improve customer experience, but like I do think that there is.
Speaker 2:The brands are becoming more sophisticated or retailers are becoming more sophisticated and building those, their teams, around these capabilities, building those, their teams, around these capabilities. But so one of the things that we see at Bloomreach and actually I, like I said, I used to manage our customer experience group, which was comprised of industry experts, like we all came from in-house digital teams, we're consultants, we can help you. That was a. That's a competitive advantage for us because we can go into a business and be like you know, we've setting your seats, we've we've done the same job and that helps because you also want to be a trusted advisor to um, the, the customer who is trying to connect these dots, like um as a business, like you don't know what you don't know. So you do need a good partner, um, to help fill the gaps, the gaps in your team and your staffing and capabilities as well.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's interesting. You mentioned about the data science teams and what have you. I mean we are seeing some companies invest huge amounts of money to really get to grips with their data because, I mean, obviously the data is king. If you've got accurate data across your customers and your products, then you're going to set yourself up nicely for success in the future. But it's not cheap.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and it also like we have a lot of retailers that have a data science team, one of the if I, if I think about, like, the profile of like, where this actually works very well, like those enterprise customers who you have, like, a physical footprint as well as a digital footprint, for so long those were siloed, like you know, the store does what the store does Sorry, my hair got caught the store does what the store does, the digital team does what the digital team does, but there is this need to have, like, this omni-channel orchestration and all of those things have to be working together to create this cohesive customer experience and customers.
Speaker 2:They interact in different touch points. I mean, I've been on teams where, like, we know that customers would come to the website for product discovery, they'd go into the store to actually buy the things. But, like, we want to be consistent in our customer experience and make sure that they have all the things. But, like, we want to be consistent in our customer experience and make sure that they have all the things that they need to make that informed purchase decision. And you also can bring that, like offline data into the digital experience to make it more richer and to create that better experience for the customer.
Speaker 1:It doesn't really matter what I speak about at the minute, but it seems as though the general theme across most conversations is how businesses need to collaborate better and and work together across the units. Um, historically, we know a lot of brands retailers in particular have have had very much a single unit approach like it's got it, you have marketing, you have finance, you have business, whatever it might be. But actually these units need to come together and work cohesively, like you say, in order to really make the most of whatever they're doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and that's also where, like that's why some of these like these conversations around like optimizing or modernizing your tech stack is your tech stack is it's complex because there are so many people involved.
Speaker 2:You know where?
Speaker 2:Before I felt like there was like a single buyer, like the IT team wanted to do this so they do it, or like the merchandising group wanted to do this so that they do it.
Speaker 2:And actually, if you look at it, it has become sort of like, and I think brands are like assessing this is like what's happening today is like there's this Frankenstein of a tech stack, and, because sales can be challenging and everyone wants to drive towards profitability, you're also questioning the value of all of these things that you have available. So there is this, always the conversation of, like total cost of ownership, like we have all of these tools, like which ones actually moving the needle, and so what I see brands are doing. They're like they want user friendly, they want real time data calls, they want personalization, they want tech built with the newest AI models, fast implementation, short time to value, Like you can see how complex it is. And then there's also making sure that, like, the business, users and the people actually doing the work are also involved in the conversation, so it just becomes very complex.
Speaker 1:I was going to say nice and straightforward then. Huh, so I mean it's clearly complex. I was going to say nice and straightforward then. So I mean it's clearly complex and, as we touched upon, it's not cheap either. So if there was one thing that you felt brands could be doing at the minute that maybe isn't going to be, isn't going to come at a huge expense, what would you say? It would be?
Speaker 2:So I my my number one thing is going to be start leveraging AI, but not in, not in a test or like a side project type of way. Like it. It needs to be super intentional and like very forward thinking. And actually I was just talking to you before we jumped on the podcast about Edge Summit, which is where we bring together these industry professionals and we're having this conversation about AI in the future of e-commerce, and our CEO, raj De Dada, talked about consequential AI. And you know thinking about AI and like your initiatives as like it needs to fit within certain criteria to really be consequential, so like it needs to move your key metrics by at least 10%, it needs to deliver a differentiated customer experience and then it also needs to boost your team productivity significantly.
Speaker 2:And one of the things I really loved about the conversation was when he talked about for AI to be truly consequential, it must go beyond just like a supportive co-pilot and step up as the pilot. And I think a lot of businesses and actually practitioners think will this like take my job and it's not going to take your job, but it does allow businesses to scale, and that's like a differentiator, differentiating factor as we think about the future, and so that's my take and we, and just also, like you said, like if it's like a low hanging or like a low lift, or maybe you said like a low cost or something I can't remember exactly what you said, but like Raj actually also talked about how AI is like, like like electricity used to be very expensive to to have, Electricity used to be very expensive to have, but now it's like it's a lower cost if we think about it, and that's how AI is. It's like these, the economies of scale.
Speaker 2:It's like coming down but, it's more accessible for brands to take advantage of.
Speaker 1:It certainly is. I mean, I don't think I'd go a day about AI coming into a conversation. In fact, it's involved in almost all of them. Right, and and interestingly I touched I had a quick scan of your uh, of your post or your blog that you did about a year ago now about no, ai won't take your job if you're merchandising and it's the same in every industry, right, I think don't get me wrong there will be some jobs that could be at risk for ai. Look at like customer, uh, customer service and support, for example. Uh, just last week I had someone on the podcast and they've managed they managed to solve 55 percent of their inqu, of their queries, via their chatbot. So that's obviously impacting their customer support function in terms of heads, but it's improving their customer experience because they're getting answers to their their queries and they're not having to sit on hold for a long time um yeah.
Speaker 1:However, in general, I do believe that, uh, a lot of majority of jobs won't be impacted negatively by ar. You're gonna have to learn to incorporate it into your, into your day-to-day, and then work on how you can then use that to improve your offerings right it's.
Speaker 2:It's gonna enhance the way we do work, um not replace the way we do it definitely.
Speaker 1:You summarize it a lot better than me, um, but look, a big part of customer experience is, um, it's personalization, um, we kind of touched upon it at the start and I know that's where a lot of brands are investing a lot of money at the minute. Yeah, um, so there's there's. There's probably a number of good and bad examples in the market, particularly ones that you've seen on a daily basis, but let's talk about doing personalization correctly and the impact that can have on a business as well as customer experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so a big part of what we do is personalization and because I've worked directly with our customers on their personalization journey and what I've worked directly with our customers on their personalization journey and what they're looking to achieve. But if I look at like what? If you do personalization correctly, what's going to happen for your business? One, it'll reduce the reliance on discounts. So a lot of times when the business is not doing well, we don't know what to do, but we need to have a sales boost. We'll throw a discount code out there. Discounts might not be necessary outside of sales events. If you can personalize the experience. There is a customer who will always go for the sales. But you also have, like, you have a loyal customer base as well where, like, they're incentivized by different things. If you're able to personalize based on the different segments of customers that you have, that's going to make your business more profitable. You also, with personalization, when it's done right, you can reduce the rate and the cost of returns, like I talked about. Like how Amazon has, like this has a high return rate item, but like that there is, you do have the ability to even think about, like, if an item is a high return item. Maybe as a business, maybe that item is like deprioritized, like the sort order of where that shows is different. Based on that and like maybe if you segment your customer base and you have this group that is more likely to return items, maybe then those items that are highly returnable don't appear top of mind for them.
Speaker 2:But I do think there's different strategies that you can deploy to reduce your rate and the cost of returns. And then also there's marketing profitability. So there is a lot of things that you can do to better understand the customer and use those behaviors to execute certain things. So like your band and cart emails, your paid media optimizations, any type of like personalization at scale, contextual personalization, things of that nature. It does allow you to personalize that experience better. And also, I feel like consumer expectations are like they want everything now. But as a business, personalizing in real time is definitely better than like customer needs to come back to the experience before they see something that's more personalized. So I think when it's done well, those are the things that happen, and it's becoming more table stakes as businesses look to gain that competitive advantage.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's an area that's improved a lot. Definitely, in my opinion, it's still an area that's got a long way to go, though. I look at the amount of emails I get on a daily basis and I would say probably less than 10% of them are personalized to me beyond my name and what have you. And actually something that's really powerful that I find is when you order an item and then they email, you say we saw you ordered this, this looks great with it, or whatever it might be. I get very few of those, yet. I find they have a really positive impact on me and I'm sure they do with other customers as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and yeah I. Personalization is a long way from being perfect, but not personalizing the experience. Like you're behind, you know others who are doing it and I guess also another thing to add is a lot of one thing that I've seen historically from brands is personalizing one part of the experience. So like maybe the email that you get is personalized, but like the site experience is not. If you're thinking about doing personalization and doing it well, like you do have to factor in the entire customer journey. So like from the time they engage with your brand to when they're in that middle stage where you're trying to inspire them with like content and other things to get them to convert, but then also post the transaction where you're trying to retain them, you're trying to nurture them, you want them to become a customer for life. So just that full customer journey is so important it was about a year ago.
Speaker 1:So now I spoke to somebody and they said, in the not so distant future, they, in their opinion, every, every individual that went on the website would have a different experience going on the website, the home page would be different, the products would be different, they would all be relevant to stuff that you spent a long time looking at or that you bought, for example. I mean how? I mean, to my knowledge, that isn't happening right now. Um, how, how near that do you think we are? Roxy?
Speaker 2:I. So I don't know if one-to-one personalization should necessarily be the end state. Okay, in my opinion, and from what I've seen in customer data and like the different segments, there are groups of customers that behave similar, that you can create a differentiated experience for them. So, for example and you can get very sophisticated with this so, so, for example, like I've seen customers use their loyalty tiers, I feel like a lot of times when we come out with like, like a brand is like customers who spend this much, they're silver, this much, they're gold Like, but sometimes that's not actually baked in like, let's actually look at, like our customer data, like what's the average spend of a customer in their lifetime with us and let's base our tiers on that. But if you were to take those different loyalty tiers that you have and you create this personalized experience for this, you're probably going to push some customers up into the higher tier and we want that. Like we want to increase your average spend over your lifetime with us.
Speaker 2:I think that that's a better way to think about where we're headed with personalization and not necessarily the one-to-one. Yeah, like, there are some interactions that need to be personalized. So, for example, online shopping is going to become more personal in the future. It's a conversation. It's not just about like this product or this product. As a consumer, you're navigating. You want to have that conversation with the brand, thinking about different segments and like your high value segments and trying to personalize based on that feels more in reach and like where we should be thinking about personalizing.
Speaker 1:Okay, interesting, and that's why I love these conversations, because everyone has a slightly different view on where we are and and where we're headed along that journey. There'll be a number of different like pilots that take off, and obviously some could go really well and and some just don't, uh, don't, kick on basically, um, yeah, I agree, but do you do you feel as though the technology we have available to us now is capable of doing that, or is it still going to be advancement that needs to be made before we can get to where you see it going?
Speaker 1:it's here so yeah, you can do all that now, yeah yeah, we can.
Speaker 2:We can do all that today and it's very it. It feels like this is future, safe, but like. This is. This is the reality of like, where we are, and this is what we do at bloom, reach um like. We're all about personalizing experience, making having those conversations, allowing the customer to have those conversations with the brand. That's critical and also I talked about segmentation and personalization. In that way, we do that today. We're working with our brands and retailers to do that work today.
Speaker 1:So getting personalization right, then, is going to be a big factor to increasing your customer loyalty for your brand. Um, as you touched upon earlier, though, there are uh customers that will, um, just shop with uh certain brands when the sales come on, when the discount codes come out, etc. I know that I do that myself, but what can what, as I'm sure I'm not alone, right, um, but what can brands do to try and keep customers or to turn customers away from those that are just driven by cost?
Speaker 2:Um, I would say that your value prop is everything. There are certain brands I mean just thinking of myself as a consumer there are certain brands that I shop with that, regardless of if you have a sale or not, like, I'm going to engage with you because I feel like the experience is good and I always have a positive interaction with your brand. So I think value prop is so important. I actually was talking about it a few weeks ago about removing friction, but sometimes it's more seamless, like there are brands right now that they have like returnless return policies, so I didn't like this item, um, and they, they issue your return without you actually sending the the, the product back.
Speaker 2:And we know that, like returns are negative, you're having a negative experience, um, but if you have to package something back up, go somewhere and ship it like, that only enhances that your experience and that's friction in the shopping journey. But if the brand says no, uh, we just issue your return or like, do you? We just issued your replacement, um, that creates a more positive experience. People are more likely to come back and shop with you because you took care of them, um, and they know that um, shopping with you means that there's going to be some friction removed from their experience. So those are the types of things that drive.
Speaker 1:That's a really interesting point and I don't want to go too off topic here, but returns has come up a lot, not just in the podcast but in general conversations and at events. In the podcast, but in in general conversations and at events. And uh, I was listening to a podcast recently and, um, I think it was 11 percent of returns get uh counted towards fraud, um, which I felt was a crazy high figure. I would have expected to be two or three percent, but here I am sat as hearing that this, this brand, whoever they are, will accept a return without having to return the item. Is that not just encouraging people to say I'm going to order a product and then going to say I don't like the product and I'm going to keep the product and I'm going to get my money back? Whilst that's great for customer experience, that's going to create other problems within the business, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do think that that's also where you know you have to be very in sync with your customer data, because if a customer is, if they're a frequent returner, that might not be an option Like maybe there's, especially if you're trying to test this out like is this a valid option that we should be offering and you do this with? If you were to like segment and like, do a beta with like customers that do not return frequently and see if like well, do they buy more after this Like, does this increase their like spend with the brand or like they more likely to engage with us after the fact? If we offer to like, I do think a value prop has to be tested and like what you offer has to be tested, and the best way to do that is to um de-risk the situation by segmenting customers, and we talked about personalization, but that's a prime example of like offering differentiated value props based on those different customer um personas, I guess yeah, yeah, no, it's, uh, it's.
Speaker 1:It's really interesting and I feel like that at the minute is a very, is very much a hot topic and we're going to see brands come up with a variety of innovative ways in which they can enhance the customer experience and the return experience, because I think, it's safe to say, returns at the minute is probably the part that's lacking. I mean, it's come a long way, right, you look at, I don't know what it's like in the minute is probably the the part that's lacking. I mean, it's come a long way, right. You look at, I don't know what it's like in the states, but in the uk we've we've got multiple like lockers. You can just drop things in and it takes like 45 seconds from start to finish they're. They're almost on every corner now.
Speaker 1:So it's beginning, it's coming a lot easier, but um, yeah is that um is is that for every brand there, or no, not at all, not at all no, um, no, this, I mean it's for a lot of a lot of brands, um, but um, certainly not every and certainly not every brand by any means, and I mean it probably will get to that point at some point in the the next year or so, I'd imagine. I can't see why a brand wouldn't want to offer that um, but hey, I don't know the cost behind it all yeah, I agree and I, um, you know it also.
Speaker 2:I think the reason why brands are really trying to focus on those returns and like their policy is that, like, returns eat at your margins, um, they hurt your profitability. Um, there's a lot of uh, I don't know where I saw this study yet, but like, um, it makes sense. There's a lot of times the the cost to return an item sometimes costs more than, like, what they sold the item for, especially if it's on sale, especially if it's fast fashion, um, and so you are seeing, I, I'm seeing, like, some optimizations of return policies because of that, um, I've seen that.
Speaker 1:I've seen that somewhere as well, yeah yeah and so I think what's good when we're looking at, uh, loyalty and also looking at personalization, a lot of that stems down to to knowing your customer and then and then that's going back down to data, which we've spoken about a lot during this conversation today. Data's tough right. There's a lot of companies have been trying to get more data on their customer for a long time. However, in in my opinion and by this is purely my opinion I don't believe they do enough with that data yeah what would?
Speaker 1:you're far more, far more educated in this space and I am, and you speak to these brands about this specific subject. So what's your kind of educated opinion on how companies are getting and then using that data to their benefit?
Speaker 2:yeah, so um, I it it. Brands should definitely be investing in their like I think I mentioned this earlier but investing in your CDP, investing in your first party data? Um, because you need to know who. You need to know who your customer is. But in order to effectively create marketing strategies around your customer base, you need to be collecting the first party data, and it goes beyond just like oh, we know our customers are more likely to use an iPhone versus like an Android, like. It goes far beyond that to understand their preferences and the different ways that they shop. Like you know, for example, if you know that certain customers are engaging with these categories more often, or any of those things that you can glean from getting an understanding of that customer that allows you to market to them more effectively the type of products they see, the things that you recommend to them, those all help to create those unique journeys for the customers, and that you know there's so many different use cases you can deploy.
Speaker 2:If you are leveraging your first party data to understand that customer and their intent a little bit better and I do see, I think that those who do it are collecting that first party data it can be overwhelming because it's like, what do I do now? Like, I have all this data, what are some of those use cases? How do I best implement these? And so, like, we're seeing a lot of like at Bloomreach. We have so many different use cases based on, like, what you're trying to do. Like, if you're trying to reduce your return rate, there are so many different strategies you can leverage within our platform to do that. Like, if you're trying to reduce your returns costs, there's so many things you can do there. If you're trying to optimize for customer lifetime value, there's a lot of things that you can do in that respect. So, collecting that data is important, but where we at Bloomerage help is, like we help you to understand, like, what do you do Once you have all that data? What should you do with it? Like, based on your, your strategy and your business goals and kpis yeah, no, I think that's where I was going with.
Speaker 1:the question is is do you, do you see brands doing enough with it, like if the competition that you have are you are you happy with kind of what's coming, what's being presented to you and and where they want to go and how they want to use that data, and then actually doing it as well? Because it's one thing saying hey, we want to do this and this, but then it's another thing actually doing it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean the brands who are investing in their CDP, especially the ones at Bloomreach. They are either curious about what to do with it or they're doing a lot with it, and that's cool to see, because you know you want customers to be utilizing the. You know your features and your functionality but, like you, you want it to also be driving results for for their customer and, at the end of the day, that's what's most important. Like we want your business to be successful, um, and how you do that is making sure that, like you're leveraging your customer data, um in the best way possible to drive results for the business and for your customer experience nice, all right.
Speaker 1:So at the start of the conversation, we started off by asking what is customer experience? I'm now going to ask you. At the start of the conversation, we started off by asking what is customer experience. I'm now going to ask you what the future of customer experience looks like.
Speaker 2:OK, yeah, yeah, so I, the future of CX is personalization. We've talked about this. It's also omni channel orchestration, which I've mentioned. It's unifying your customer data from all of those different channels so offline, online and really using that to personalize and deliver relevant experiences that make the most sense for your customer. So I just see that as the future of CX. Like there's a lot of things we can say, like reducing friction, all those types of things Like at the end of the day, like reducing friction, all those types of things Like at the end of the day, what we're trying to do is deliver the most relevant experience for your customer that makes sense. And that's why we also mentioned that CX is personal. It's like based on the individual brands and your business goals and what your customers need from you. So that's my take.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right, I like it. I mean like, like you said, it's very broad, but it'd be where it's where it's, where it's a personal to, to brands and customers is very hard to not be broad, because every business is gonna involve a slightly different process and a slightly different tweak in different places, and what have you?
Speaker 2:absolutely bro.
Speaker 1:All right then. So um final question, then. Let's wrap this up with a little bit of fun. Um, so I'm interested to get a prediction from you. So something a little bit, a little bit out there which may seem unlikely or a little bit far-fetched now, but you believe we could be seeing at some point in the next five years um I.
Speaker 2:My prediction is that uh social commerce will take the number one spot um as the top channel for shopping um okay it's growing crazy amounts at the minute yeah, it is, but you know you, um people still are. I mean, the top channel is like amazon, for example, amazon marketplace. But I can see social commerce taking, taking over with the rapid growth um, that's happening there okay, I like that.
Speaker 1:It's uh, I don't know if I've actually bought anything via like, via social commerce yet. I get enticed into a lot of ads that come via socials. But I don't know if I've actually gone through and bought something yet. But just last week I saw a tiktok shop pushing some crazy discounts on products. So they're really trying to promote their, their, own shop, so so, uh, yeah, that wouldn't. That wouldn't surprise me. I like it, it's a good one. I've not had that one yet yeah, oh, good okay there we go.
Speaker 2:The time will tell eh yeah, we'll be in five years. Let's, let's.
Speaker 1:I'll put it, I'll put it in the calendar now roxy social commerce, and I'll be in five years time I'll be like what's this, what's this note all about? Lovely, no, um, wicked um. Thanks for joining me, roxy. That was cool. I really enjoyed that conversation and, yeah, I mean we covered a bit of everything right from uh, from anything and everything that's involved in customer experience, and I really appreciate your insights, thank you yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2:I really enjoyed, enjoyed this discussion.
Speaker 1:Lovely, well, brilliant. I hope all of you guys listening enjoyed it as much as I did. Thank you very much for joining me today, as always. If you did enjoy the session, please do like, share, comment, spread it across your networks. It goes a really long way and we appreciate your help very, very much. So we call it a day for now and I'll see you next time, thank you.
