Luxe Retailers Look to Connect Payments, Data — and High-Touch Service

Luxury consumers accustomed to highly personalized experiences still expect them regardless of where and how they shop and buy. Data shows those insights today, but retailers with legacy systems face an uphill climb when modernizing channels to reflect a new digital reality.

With so much commerce moving online and the draw of physical shopping returning with pent-up force, harmonizing omnichannel for high-end consumers is all about experience and choice — with a dose of sales associate interaction in the mix to preserve that prized human element.

What merchants need to realize is that “customers are not seeing different channels. What they do see is the brand and the brand experience. They want a seamless, connected experience, whether they’re in store, online or in mobile,” as XY Retail CEO Susan Jeffers told PYMNTS’ Karen Webster.

At that point, “It’s a matter of keeping that level of service with the customer to have the customer keep coming back,” she said. “A big central point of this is the fact that I need to have data because sales associates work, but they come and go.”

Jeffers said that since the consumer journey is no longer of the traditional linear variety, stores, mobile apps and websites need real-time access to customer data.

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And whether they’re paying $900 for a pair of loafers online, on Rodeo Drive or at a pop-up trunk show, customers should expect a retailer to remember things like birthdays, anniversaries and brand and style preferences — things that are the baseline for good customer service in the luxury space.

How to go about delivering this effectively in an omnichannel world is what Jeffers called a billion-dollar question, and connecting 30-year-old business software to modern front-end applications is a recipe for keeping data confined into siloes. What’s needed, she contends, is smart centralization that connects everything from the point of sale to customer relationship management to enterprise resource management.

The Optimization Mind Shift

Getting to that point requires a mind shift for retailers, and though she conceded that the current economic climate might not seem like the best time for this kind of investment, Jeffers added that “optimization should never go out of fashion.”

It’s a lesson that many retailers stuck with on-premises systems at the start of the COVID-19 panic won’t soon forget. Jeffers said they’re looking for cloud-based point of sale systems connected to online channels that allow them to scale and adapt to new challenges.

“Retail might change tomorrow. It may not be that I walk out of the store with a bag,” she said. “I might have everything delivered and it’s more of an Apple Store concept where I’m showrooming. At that point, I just need to have a digital plus a physical experience where I can experience the products that the brand has to offer.”

Related: Adyen: Platforms Help Online Merchants Borrow the Best of In-Store Experience

Digital Pathways and Payments

Payments need to move in the same seamless way as selling, which is why XY Retail built its omnichannel platform to allow retailers to decide what systems best suit their operations. Noting that the XY Retail platform itself has virtualized payments, Jeffers said, it’s all about giving the end customer choice.

“It’s just a simple interface, but all the complexities are sort of hidden underneath,” she said.

The conversation revealed just how much work remains in reinventing retail tech for digital anywhere, anytime commerce, and while much has been accomplished, much work remains.

“Working with brands for the last 10 years, I have met very few people from the digital side who really understand the needs and the requirements of the physical stores, and stores are not easy,” Jeffers said. “There is a need in the market for this sort of office to come in and understand the needs of the business at the same time, realizing that there are security and infrastructure concerns of IT and brings the two departments together.”