Managing emotions through omni channel Strategies

Tanja Valcic, Head of IFG Luxury Attitude, went to the Monaco Symposium 2018 to participate to the panel discussion ”Managing emotions through omni channel Strategies ».
Emotion was the red underlying theme “fil rouge” of this Symposium!.

The main topics discussed:

Designing and enhancing the luxury shopper’s emotional journey in the “phygital” sphere
Becoming a “Love Brand” by creating unique interactions with consumers
Digital emotions? Or emotions through digital channels?
Power and influence of the social media on brand value
Emotion is the engine of Luxury as well as beyond rarity what are the level of desire? …emotions.

Emotion is one of the three components that drive luxury consumption, dream and desire being the others. A visible consumption of beautiful, tasteful, well crafted products delivered with caring services and exclusive experiences are the main hedonic, social and symbolic benefits to drive desirability in Luxury.

The evolution from Multichannel to omni channel strategy is linked to the fact that Luxury starts beyond necessity, and the challenge for Luxury Brands is to use omni channel touching points to create emotion with customers.

Today, here are the 4 main omni channel hot topics:

• Future of shopping
• Modern retail organization
• Power of omni channel stores
• Modern retail supply chain

The omni channel journey: 3 RULES to build a modern retail organization.

Rule #1: Be a silo buster—build cross-channel and cross-functional capabilities.
Example of “buy online, pick up in store”—or “click and collect.” This capability requires coordination and quick decisions across e-commerce, supply chain, brick-and-mortar stores, as well as across planning, merchandising and marketing functions, among others.

Rule #2: Go beyond structure—devise new ways of working.
A company aiming to differentiate on shipping speed and reliability will have different answers than one aiming to excel on in-store experiences.

Rule #3: Have bold ambitions—and be deliberate about how you get there.
Retailers at the early stages of building digital capabilities should have greater functional and channel separation to foster innovation, yet phased evolution toward a more integrated operating model is essential to becoming an omni channel retailer.

First of all, we are focusing on the Brand ; the history, the founder, the materials, design, the know-how. Then, we are discovering what is the Brand promise to his customers. Finally, the design, product shape, the service is essential to create a desire a dream for the customers.

In the omni channel strategies, the brand will communicate the same brand image through all channels.

The followers of the brands are aware with the brands universe; they know the brands, and the services or products. It can be on or off line.

To create emotions, we are focused on the off line interactions between customers and the brands. In the retail industry, the sales team have few chances to interact with the brands (for 30 seconds to 1,30 min in the retail segment) so during their interactions with customers they need to create this emotional connection with the customers. This is based on their know-how, their wording, and their attitude. They will deliver to the customer this extra experience that the customer can’t have on the on–line channels, on Internet, smartphone, tablets.

The digital handmade emotion: with the social networks, we are sharing emotions with experiences in dream shops, dream restaurants, dream places, virtually driving a dream car. In the retail, we use the emotional stimulation by holographic experience, as in Tokyo a Chanel Coco Game Center, to virtually experience fragrance cosmetics. For brands, without emotion, you don’t have people buy!

“Luxury is…when Emotion overrides Reason“. In the Luxury world, delivering a powerful Emotional Experience should be the intention guiding Employees whenever they interact with their customers and the challenges that faces the brands that we worked with. To create a “whaou effect”, the essence is in human relation in the services. The most valuable customers are engaging with the brand across all channels: store, mobile, social and online. Omni channel customers spend two times to five times more than customers who buy in only one channel.

To generate emotions for customers in the digital world through omni channel strategies, there is some key success factors:

• Integrate digital channels with brand’s heritage
• Put collective emotions at the center
• Combine the best of digital technologies and physical stores to profitably create a seamless and consistent customer experience across channels

The Expertise of IFG Luxury Attitude is to help customers to improve their service in order to achieve emotional experience through the design of service, and to create an extraordinary experience. Over the last 20 years we trained more than 75 000 people worldwide. To achieve this goal, we are using the methodology the design of service. We design service based on human dimension. The red underlying theme “fil rouge” is to work on the Brand Promise and to empower customers’ teams to design service signatures. Our end objective is to delight our customer customers’. We worked keeping in mind that the brand needs to provide within the omni channel distribution strategy the same service to his customers respecting the same Brand universe. To achieve this omni channel experience, we scenarise customer journey and design service around this customer journey. This all together, allows us to create service beyond customers’ expectations. We are working on the personalisation of each exchange with the customer. The finality is to achieve the operational excellence based on emotional experience that will bring the value creation for the company with staff members having the high expertise that are welcoming the customer with enthusiasm and passion.

Here is a business case of IFG Luxury Attitude on how to create the omni channel customer experience in hospitality, and how the digital tools helps us to design the customer journey and how to measure the customer experience for a Brand.

In conclusion: the emotional customer experience is achieved when we anticipate customers’ needs, with the personalised approach in service with the know-how will bring to the memorable « Whaou experience »!

Tanja Valcic
Head of IFG Luxury Attitude