What Makes In-Store Shopping Great With Sylvain Nigra

April 19, 2021

 

Summary

Our special guest, Sylvain Nigra, brings decades of experience at some of the most successful brands in the world to talk about what it takes from a technology perspective to create the best customer experience possible. What are the main technologies retailers should be adopting in-store to be successful? What should be the first step in the project rollout? What tools do store associates need to best serve customers?

  • We ask these questions and more of our special guest, Sylvain Nigra, founder and co-CEO of Retail Performance 360 and former retail director for top luxury brands including Prada, Ralph Lauren, and Michael Kors. Sylvain brings decades of experience at some of the most successful brands in the world to talk about what it takes from a technology perspective to create the best customer experience possible. He is confident that there’s no time to waste, and that the right technology needs to be in place to enable and empower store associates.

Conversation Rundown

[ 10:30-13:24 ] Three levels of technical tools to attract people to stores.
Three levels that definitely are the future. Level one is Click and collect and real-time inventory visibility. Level two is to sell products through social media. Level three is live stream shopping. But you still cannot replace interaction with personnel from the brand, physically.

[ 14:39-15:17 ] Engagement with stores is now a basic necessity.
Retailers can still use the old KPIs, UPT, average basket value. Because it's that magical moment, the moment when the customer enters the store. If you provide a seamless experience in-store the customer may end up buying more than he originally intended to. This little moment in your physical store is the key to stabilizing your turnover.

[ 15:37-17:14 ] Store associates should be able to engage the customer in the virtual world.
Your store associates can be social media influencers. They could engage with customers online via social media, video chat, or live streaming. They could also embed the link to shop the product during these interactions. Also, the store should have eCommerce capabilities to support these activities. This way your store associates can become a brand advocate, an influencer and an ambassador of your omnichannel capabilities.

[ 21:19-22:49 ] How can we value retail stores more for the employees, internally?
We definitely need physical stores or you risk becoming irrelevant in the future. But how to be more focused on customers? Start with the store associates. Store associates get swamped in the multiple tasks. As a result, they are unable to connect with the customers. Retailers need to invest in technologies, incentivization, and training of store associates in order to bring back the passion in them.

[ 31:55-33:14 ] How to save on the increasing online customer acquisition costs?
Motivate your store associates to interact with the customers, deliver a brand experience, and in that process enroll them in the brand's loyalty program. Essentially, create a database. If not, then capturing this data online is super expensive.

Meet the Experts

Our special guest, Sylvain Nigra, founder and co-CEO of Retail Performance 360. Also, former retail director for top luxury brands - Prada, Ralph Lauren, and Michael Kors, joins us to share his experience of the most successful brands in the world.

Retail Tips & Tweetables

The brand’s network of stores must be profitable. It should be a flagship just for the sake of being nice.

A Brick-and-mortar store is a bridge between the eCommerce sphere and the customer.

Technology is there but something you cannot replace is personal interaction with someone from the brand.

As a consumer, I need to see the benefits of the loyalty program not just receiving emails from the brand.

We need to bring more KPIs that are not transactional and are more qualitative such as the capture rate.

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