The in-store luxury experience brings curated, white glove service to mind, but replicating that feeling online can be a difficult task.
Swarovski is putting an emphasis on channel-agnostic customer journeys to bring the luxury experience to online shoppers, according to Lea Sonderegger, Chief Digital Officer and CIO at Swarovski. The jewelry retailer achieves this by carefully listening to customers and constantly testing and adjusting every aspect of the digital experience.
“Obviously, the luxury experience must be reflected for our customers in every touch point,” Sonderegger told CX Dive. “You cannot claim you’re [a luxury brand] when you're not providing a luxurious experience.”
Key elements of a luxurious customer experience include leaning into the joys of self-expression and self-indulgence, according to Sonderegger. This makes offering proper inspiration an important aspect of the online journey.
As a result, Swarovski aims to deliver curated search results and suggestions that can inspire customers without making them feel like certain products or styles are being pushed on them for no reason other than making a sale.
“We try not to overdo it,” Sonderegger said. “Our goal is to really bring across this luxurious brand experience and to do as much personalization as is helpful for the customer."
Getting the amount of personalization right is a matter of understanding customers on a deep level, according to Sonderegger. Swarovski taps into voice of the customer software, collects direct customer feedback and talks to its customer service agents for a fuller view.
“We want to really look at who our customer is,” Sonderegger said. “We also look at how we can curate the experience for our customers. We try to bring in technologies that are valuable and not imposing things on the customer.”
Understanding customer demands is only the first step in a larger optimization process, according to Sonderegger. New technology and features, such as its AI-powered search and recommendation engines, need to prove useful to customers before they become permanent fixtures.
"We are constantly auditing,” she said. “We are constantly testing. We are constantly benchmarking. It's very, very important to do trials and see if something is not appreciated. If so, we are not clinging to it.”
This approach isn’t limited to major elements of the experience like its search engine. Sonderegger noted that Swarovski regularly analyzes smaller aspects of the online experience like the length of paragraphs and how it feels to browse through imagery to ensure a luxurious digital journey.
All of Swarovski’s data is connected through SAP’s product suite, which gives the retailer a complete view of the customer no matter where or how they shop, according to Sonderegger.
The luxury retailer has also connected its store and digital operations by equipping store associates with tablets, which lets associates check out shoppers anywhere in the store and place digital orders from the sales floor. The strategy has also proven to be a customer satisfaction driver.
"The secret of our experience is that we put the human in the center," Sonderegger said. "We put a lot of effort in our store assistants, but we accompany this with great technology."
