Conversational Commerce

FARFETCH

Contact Strategy:

Unlocking new channels

CONTEXT

The best customer service is not needing it. If things do go expected customer want answers fast, in a way that suits them in the context of their day-to-day lives. Not all customers have the same preferences and different circumstances warrant different responses.

My ethos is that retail brands need contact strategies and bespoke channel design. Contact needs designing. To deliver luxury, seamless and market-leading customer experiences that transform engagement with customers needs thoughtful orchestration.

THE PROBLEM

Contact centres costs are increasing and customer feedback shows there is disconnect between the luxury service they expect from FARFETCH and the realties of the experience . We identified the need to understand what channel work best for customers? How does ‘the moment’ they are in shift the needs they have? How might we deliver better experiences and more commercial success?

GOALS:

  • Growth - Delivering personalised experiences , styling advice and providing knowledge and guidance (GTV, GMV and Repurchase)

  • Operational Efficiency - Channel selection, touchpoint placement and market appropriate customisation and case management (AHT, productive , Contact Rate)

  • Service Efficiency - Automation through intuitive self-serve, targeted automation and robotocs

Customer and business rationale behind strategy.

APPROACH

  • We made sure had clarity in purpose and goal.

  • How it aligns our business strategy and how our brand needs to expressed.

  • Carried out Ethnographic Research

  • Contact centre data analysis

  • Leveraged secondary research

  • Co-creation with Market Lead UAE, China and USA

ROLE & TEAM

My role was overseeing leadership as part of governed programme with a blend of my team and key stakeholders to create a virtual team of:

Customer Service Operations

  • Digital Customer Service Product

  • Customer & Business Analytics

  • Content and UX Design

  • Service Design

  • Technology & IT

SOLUTION:

Contact Strategy

We implemented a contact strategy that structured our approach to handling contact with different degrees of human intervention, proactivity and automation. We first structured our rationale with decision criteria based on value, cost & benefits to trade-offs between channels. This was then crashed against human need. Through research we understood what circumstances benefit from things like human-touch, speed and autonomy to self-serve. This was key to unlocking the best possible experience for customer whilst also delivering efficiencies.

SERVICE CHANNEL ECOSYSTEM

We implemented a service channel ecosystem that that allowed us to tailor the solutions with integrations with WhatsApp, Instagram and WeChat. This allowed us to leverage a portfolio of integrations and tailor the proposition based on the market needs.

This capability unlocked styling services, contact centres services, loyalty programme communications and overall gave our customers and clients the means to get in touch, or not get in touch, based on their preferences.

KEY INSIGHTS

  • There’s opportunity beyond reactive support and problem resolving for customers

  • Messaging channels, especially asynchronous, can help build relationships with customers and provide a low cost opportunity for contact centres to become a revenue driver not just a cost centre

  • There significant variation in desirability of channels by market for example WhatsApp in the UAE vs WeChat in China

  • The synchronisation of My Account features and messaging channels is key - Customers need to see consistent information related to their orders irrespective of channels - Inconsistent information degraded trust of all channels

Conversational e-commerce

Instead a looking a contact and demand as a cost - we leveraged contact as a means to build and enrich relationships with customers. Across the global we designed and implemented needs based selling services:

  • Retrained customer service agents to establish needs beyond surface needs and have more exploratory conversations that heighten the chance to exceed customer expectation

  • Surprise and delight and meet all the needs of customers - needs based cross-sell and upsell

  • Automation and integrations to be able to answer key high volume demands like Order Tracking, Refunds and Exchanges

  • Incredible conversations enabled by smart ‘canned responses’ that befit luxury and the FARFETCH tone of voice

Conversational e-commerce

  • Quick buttons for automation

  • Engaging dynamic content

  • API Integration with CRM

IMPACT & RESULTS

To launch New channels like WhatsApp, Live Chat and WeChat:

  • Improved Customer Service NPS (Bottom-up) by 12ppts across the trial markets - Customer feedback showed demonstrably showed customers appreciated asynchronous channels that are widely used in their native market

  • Improved Average Handling Time (AHT) by 22 seconds by handling lighter touch queries through self-serve automation functionality diverting transactions with a global value of ~500K (Opex)

  • Increased GMV by ~100k as Customer service had opportunity to up-sell and cross-sell with image and video functionality.

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