New ecommerce battleground is over emotional intelligence

In phys­i­cal retail stores, the shop assis­tants worth their weight in gold were the ones who sized you up and tai­lored their sales pitch. They knew your habits through basic pro­fil­ing and with a bit of prompt­ing your needs as they observed you brows­ing. With the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic this process has shift­ed online at a speed that’s tru­ly unprece­dent­ed.

“Since the lock-down, shop­ping habits have accel­er­at­ed into the future. Dig­i­tal is now king. Even though it’s been forced upon us, the coro­n­avirus has done for ecom­merce, what Apple’s iPhone did for mobile phones; it’s been a real par­a­digm shift. Online shop­ping is fast becom­ing the norm for all demo­graph­ics across all retail ver­ti­cals,” explains Mark Adams, chief exec­u­tive at Attraqt, a glob­al tech­nol­o­gy leader in deliv­er­ing excep­tion­al shop­ping expe­ri­ences.

“Some major brands have seen a 300 per cent growth in web traf­fic, real­lo­cat­ing resources to man­age expand­ing dig­i­tal chan­nels. With­out a phys­i­cal pres­ence or avail­abil­i­ty in-store, there’s intense pres­sure on brands to cre­ate inspi­ra­tional shop­ping expe­ri­ences online.”

The pan­dem­ic has also seen mar­ket­places such as Ama­zon or Aliba­ba thrive as they pro­vide con­ve­nience, price and speed of deliv­ery to cus­tomers. In response, retail brands, rather than com­pete on these touch­points and just pro­vide a trans­ac­tion­al expe­ri­ence, have had to offer more. For these com­pa­nies, the oppor­tu­ni­ty will come from invest­ing in deep­er con­nec­tions with cus­tomers, enhanc­ing brand expe­ri­ences and inspir­ing prod­uct dis­cov­ery.

“For a long time, deliv­er­ing a more per­son­alised shop­per expe­ri­ence has been the bat­tle­front. But most brands have done this with­out the con­text of what the shop­per is seek­ing to achieve at any giv­en moment. They’ve real­ly had a mass cus­tomi­sa­tion approach. More has to be done to engage cus­tomers on an emo­tion­al lev­el. For that you need to know each shopper’s true intent and know why they are there, and where they are on the buy­er jour­ney,” says John Raap, chief strat­e­gy offi­cer from AIM-list­ed Attraqt, which works with some of the biggest names in retail from adi­das to ASOS, The Kooples and FNAC Dar­ty.

The issue is that most data for cus­tomer jour­neys is dis­con­nect­ed. It exists in silos. His­tor­i­cal data on its own isn’t enough; con­sol­i­dat­ing this with real-time data across an organ­i­sa­tion, sys­tems and teams is vital. The pan­dem­ic and com­pe­ti­tion from mar­ket­places is forc­ing com­pa­nies to pool data sources, boost col­lab­o­ra­tion across depart­ments and in the process under­stand con­sumer intent at every moment of a customer’s jour­ney.

“With COVID-19, shop­ping behav­iour is unpre­dictable. Brands need to be agile. This chal­lenge can only be met through an orches­trat­ed approach pulling togeth­er con­sumer psy­chol­o­gy, mer­chan­dis­ing and machine-learn­ing to under­stand the cus­tomer, their moti­va­tions and to pre­dict the best next action at every moment in real time,” says Raap of Attraqt, which works with more than 300 brands glob­al­ly.

“It’s not just about look­ing at clas­si­cal dat­a­points, such as pur­chas­es and clicks, but also data that infers emo­tion­al needs like what val­ues are impor­tant to cus­tomers, what is their emo­tive state right now and what moti­vates them? Under­stand­ing cus­tomer intent is vital as it evolves from moment to moment dur­ing shop­ping jour­neys. Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence can now make sense of the data, with the right cock­tail of algo­rithms to solve each prob­lem.”

Nudge mar­ket­ing, which has been used in con­sumer psy­chol­o­gy, can also be used on a one-to-one lev­el to enhance the indi­vid­ual shop­per expe­ri­ence and prompt the cus­tomer to make an informed choice. While human exper­tise is still need­ed to help facil­i­tate high­ly curat­ed shop­ping expe­ri­ences.

“Attraqt’s plat­form allows retail­ers to eval­u­ate the emo­tion­al and log­i­cal needs of the shop­per and to orches­trate the cor­rect response to indi­vid­ual moments on the cus­tomer jour­ney. Devel­op­ments in neur­al net­works allow us to do this at speed now. Brands can boost cus­tomer con­ver­sion and improve aver­age order val­ue, while at the same time win­ning the loy­al­ty of shop­pers,” Raap con­cludes.

Con­nect more with your cus­tomer now at www.attraqt.com