Elevate your CX (with people who aren’t your customer). Wait, what? — JAMES MCCORMICK

For those unfamiliar with the term CX (Customer Experience), may I welcome you home from the deserted island you’ve been living on for the past 5 years. My condolences to your friend Wilson. For the rest of us, this industry buzzword has been hard to avoid, and its mere mention may by now be enough to induce a wearied little eyeroll. Don’t feel bad if that’s you; like most buzzwords its been overused and misappropriated to the point of exhaustion.

Anyone who wants to survive in retail for longer than the next tik tok trend cycle, will by now know that curating the best possible experience for your customers should be high on the agenda. There’s no shortage of inspiring and innovative CX success stories out there, and certainly no shortage of people willing to share them (just spend 30 seconds scrolling your Linkedin newsfeed). My point is, the last thing anyone needs (or wants) is another smug reminder that CX is bloody important. We get it.

This may (rightly) prompt you to ask the question ‘why on earth are you writing about CX then, pal’? Well I’m glad you asked that actually, because I’ve recently been doing some travel through Europe (not so subtle brag) where I’ve encountered what I believe to be something fresh to add to the discussion. To cut straight to it, I observed several instances where CX had been materially elevated with a deliberate effort to cater to people who weren’t the target customer of the retailer. And I don’t mean branching out to try and reach new audiences or pull from a broader demographic, I mean literally providing an experience for people who aren’t your customer, and as an outcome, enhancing the experience for your actual customer. Go and read that sentence back, because it might not make sense the first time you read it. I’ll wait.

Now let me explain what I mean with the following examples.

Selfridges - skate bowl

London retail institution Selfridges needs no introduction. Like most department stores it’s seen some ups and downs and ownership change in recent years, so who knows what the future holds for them. Nevertheless, on a recent visit to its London flagship, something that puzzled me about the store was the presence of an enormous (albeit beautiful) timber skate bowl occupying a sizeable portion of the floor area on the designer streetwear level. Surrounded by concessions from the likes of Kith and Supreme that feature some seriously expensive luxury streetwear, the dichotomy between the skateboarders using the bowl and the products that surrounded it couldn’t have been starker. It just didn’t make sense. But after spending some time perusing the racks that were dripping with designer pieces (well out of my budget), it started to make some sense. The skate bowl wasn’t for the Selfridges customer to use, its was purely there to create an atmosphere for them while they shopped. The sound of the wheels rolling over the plywood; the metal trucks grinding on the coping of the ramp; and the mellow hip hop beat soaking through the air combined to create an experience for the Selfridges customer that makes them feel cool (even though there’s not a chance in hell they’d ever consider dropping in on that skate bowl themselves). Creating ‘theatre’ in a retail store is nothing new, but doing so by creating an experience for people who are likely never going to buy a single thing from your store, is pretty damn out of the box. And sure, most of us don’t have the sort of budget that Selfridges does for this type of thing, but you’d have to think this philosophy could work on any scale.

Colors of Surfing - specialty coffee

*Image credit: Colors of Surfing (Facebook)*

Next stop is the annoyingly trendy coastal town of Biarritz, France. Not like Byron Bay annoying, just enough to make you take a second look in the mirror to confirm whether the fit you put together is indeed edgy enough to blend in with the beautiful Biarritz brunch crowd. At the height of this annoyingly cool scene, sits the Colors of Surfing store. There’s no shortage of surf shops and board rental places in Biarritz, but the aesthetic that Colors of Surfing have created in their store and through their branding is just on another level. I didn’t care that it was going to cost me 4 times as much to rent a board for the week, I wanted to flex (and I genuinely wanted to check out their store). What surprised me on arrival though, was the half dozen café tables full of latte drinkers who didn’t look like ‘catching waves’ was high on their agenda for the day. The store was split in half between surf shop, and specialty coffee café. Sure, some of the surf customers would leave with a takeaway coffee in hand; but the majority of the coffee drinkers sitting in the café were not your typical surfer. So why cater to them? The old restaurant industry adage of ‘people attract people’ applies here. By creating an experience (and product) for people who weren’t traditionally their customer base, it enabled them to sustain an atmosphere that was always buzzy and vibing. Instead of being a quiet, boring, beautifully aesthetic showroom reserved for the narrow niche of surfers who could actually afford to shop there, they created a meeting place for people to be seen, and feel part of the scene. And for anyone familiar with the surfing ‘scene’, you’ll know that this type of inclusivity is something that rarely exists. In this example, the retailer was able to create an additional revenue stream (which is always nice) but at the same time, derive an arguably bigger benefit from the vibrancy it created in the store.

Apple, Milan - water fountain

I know, yawn. Can we stop patting Apple on the back already? Hear me out - the reason I include them here, isn’t because of the beautiful design of their Italian flagship in Milan, it’s because of the unorthodox thing they did outside of the store. You see, they completely omitted what is considered to be the most important piece of real estate in retail; the storefront. Instead opting for an elaborate, immersive glass water feature at the centre of a piazza, which customers have to walk through in order to enter the store (which itself sits below-ground, beneath the piazza). It’s genuinely impressive, beautifully designed and probably on a scale that is achievable for only a handful of retailers worldwide. So why mention it here? Because it represents the idea that you can attract people to your destination with more than just product, or experiences that drive direct commercial outcomes. The amount of people who visit the Apple fountain in Milan just to take photos has to be seen to be believed. Many of them probably don’t even own Apple products and won’t venture into the store – but some of them will, and therein lies the value. The ROI is immeasurable, but the impact is very real. The thing is, these don’t necessarily need to be expensive or elaborate to be impactful. If you scroll back through your social media feed to the early 2010’s, how many photos will you see of your friends posing like dorks in front of (usually poorly) painted ‘wings’ murals splashed on the side of a café? This was a cringy craze for sure, but it succeeded in a) attracting people to places they might not have otherwise visited, and b) potentially spending their time and money there. Fast forward 10 years and the ‘selfie wall’ or the ‘instagramable moment’ is a staple in every marketing team’s bag of tricks. To loop this back to the Apple Milan example, the point is that sometimes it pays to invest in things that don’t necessarily give you a direct return on investment, but instead encourages people to interact in some way with your business. Who knows, they might just hang around long enough to become a new customer. More importantly, their mere presence will help to create a vibrancy and energy that elevates the experience of your customers who are there to spend.

Hopefully some useful food for thought here (or a warning sign that I’m spiralling into a maniacal retail obsession, to the point that I spend my Friday nights writing blogs about my observations). I’d like to think it’s the former, but either way it’s fun to put my thoughts into some (mostly) coherent sentences.

If you’re a Retailer, Landlord or Developer, check out the list of consulting services I can offer you here.

JM.

Retail Property Consultant