Argos CX Strategy & Transformation
CONTEXT
It became commercially and strategically important to carry out a dispassionate and diagnostic review of the Argos customer experience. To ask ourselves how does it feel to shop Argos? What is it famous for and does it live up to its promises?
APPROACH
I led a transformation programme to answer these questions, define a strategy and create a clear proposition to differentiate Argos against it’s competitors.
Design researchers
Service Designers
Product Designers
Marketing & Brand Proposition
Store Design
Product Managers
Huge credit New Commercial Arts (NCA) who acted as an extended team and were key players alongside internal teams with research, consultation and design.
DIAGNOSE THE EXPERIENCE & DEFINE THE PROBLEM
We set out to help establish this incredible heritage brand - in the modern world - in a distinctly Argos way. All against the backdrop of an intensively competitive general merchandise market.
I led a team to research the current Argos customer experience, against the brand ambition of being affordable, desirable and convenient.
Key research steps:
In-Person service safari’s
Qualitative ethnographic research
AS-IS Customer Journey Mapping
Competitor Benchmarking
Digital and commercial analytics
HERE’S A 2 MINUTE VIDEO SUMMARY:
What were the key headlines?
1.
OUR MODEL: POINT OF DIFFERENTIATION DEGRADED
Our store model is unique. But it’s been diluted and complicated - it is no longer a notable asset.
Layout, navigation and communications suffer from a scattergun approach in which we add complexity to customer understanding rather than simplification. Our model should be a key asset and differentiator. We cannot afford to waste what assets we have.
The design of our experience needs to accentuate the benefits of our model.
TRADITIONAL RETAILING
Customers browse and interact with products on the shop floor.
THE ARGOS WAY
Small front end that customers use to access our large warehouse
A model unique enough to penetrate culture
A magical warehouse that holds everything you could want
Extreme convenience that was meaningful
2.
A FRICTION-LADEN USER EXPERIENCE
Our product page should be our best asset, celebrating our excellent choice of amazing brands, highly convenient fulfilment and immediacy.
Instead there are inconsistent images, poor quality images and far too many calls to action. With users demonstrating cognitive overload evidenced by drop-out. This is all compounded with highly confusing flow, leading to failure and poor conversion.
DISTINCTLY FORGETTABLE
We used to have real points of differentiation, but these have been eroded over time.
We’ve designed out the distinctive assets and we’ve become just another collection point. Today, the best-case scenario is that we work for customers - at worst customers have no reason to choose us over a competitor.
We need to design distinctive assets to reinforce our brand.
3.
LIMITED BRAND COMPARED TO HERITAGE
Our distinctive assets today are our mascots, digital screens and logo.
Is this enough for National Brand that needs to compete with the likes of Amazon and specialist general merchandise Brands?
4.
PERCEPTION OF LOW QUALITY AND CARELESSNESSS
The perception of value and quality is affected through low quality touchpoints and presentation.
Stores can feels empty with space underutilised.
Customers found in-store browsers uncomfortable to use and browse
“I found myself sort of stood there for an hour on my feet, which just I'd much ather been in the comfort of your own home.”
STRATEGIC REDIRECTION NEEDED
We are:
• …no longer unique in the market
• …no longer a part of British retail culture
• …no longer convenient enough
• …no longer remembered for famous parts of our experience
• …no longer desirable
We recommended fundamental change and a new strategic direction
We worked with Market Data, Strategy experts and went through a co-creative process to identify strategic options and establish:
What are the foundations of the experience?
Strategic Advantages on where we might best invest for value
Differentiation of we want Argos to be famous for
ILLUSTRATIVE & GENERIC RETAIL MOCK DATA ONLY - FINAL OUTPUTS CONFIDENTIAL
RECOMMENDATIONS
Throughout the co-creative process we focused on addressing pain points balanced with reimagining Argos for the future. We created a set of recommendations for a new path and vision for Argos. This included:
Full redesign of key customer journey’s like Click & Collect
Technical vendor comparison to identify how best to enhance of our shopping and collection experiences
Set up a dedicated Omni-channel Delivery Programme with work-streams dedicated and assigned to key journeys
New Companion app to help facilitate the whole experience through a key channel
New approaches to adding depth in range and support availability
New Store Design that enhances desirability and browsing experience, as well as deliver effortless simplicity
New digital media capabilities to showcase desirable brands
ILLUSTRATIVE MOCK UP IMAGE ONLY - FINAL OUTPUTS CONFIDENTIAL
ILLUSTRATIVE MOCK UP IMAGE ONLY - FINAL OUTPUTS CONFIDENTIAL
IMPACT & RESULTS
PROGRAMATIC GOVERNANCE & INVESTMENT
Although anecdotal and foundational, the biggest impact of this programme was to influence C-suite and board level colleagues that iterative change will not suffice to change our trajectory. A fundamental shift in strategy, proposition and targeted investment on key journey’s was required. This led to:
New strategy adoption with clear points of differentiation
New Programme set up aligned to key strategic pillars and core customers journeys vs traditional functional ‘siloed’ set up
Significant CAPEX investment in key focus areas of the strategy like Digital & Choice
New leadership set up to focus delivering experiences with an Omni-channel focus
This programme has defined a future direction for Argos for the next 3 years, to help define where to divest and where to invest to deliver differrentiation through customer experiences and in turn commercial success.
FIRST YEARS WINS
To compliment the new strategic direction, we took an agile approach delivering quick wins along the way, as well as building foundations for the future:
New Post-Order Communications Journey - Reducing Contacts Per Order (CPO) by 10% with significant Opex savings through reduced contact centre costs
Introduced self-returns - This increased ‘Returns Experience’ CSAT by 10% YoY as well as a Retention uplift of 3%. A before and after adhoc survey showed a significant increase sentiment of ~23% ‘intention to return to buy’ in the future
New Made to Order User Experience - This included a new user experience on app and web with higher quality lifestyle images and personalised shopping Increased conversion by 8% YoY
New App PDP & Checkout design - with reduced higher quality images, enhanced description but with a simpler and elegant design. This helped users make buying decisions with less cognitive load increasing performance Conversion to Basket, AOV, and Check-out conversion with ~3m project annual benefit
New Store & Brand Design - To establish a new standard for Navigation, Decor, layout and store flow. This has been implemented in 3 stores that were due to be refitted and has increased the store CSAT by on average 10%, and improved sales volume with a total estimated benefits 1.6m annnualised