Retailers top digital study, but there’s still room for improvement
By Chris Moss, a Senior Manager at BearingPoint
Even before the coronavirus pandemic hit the UK and revolutionised how businesses and their customers interact, digitalisation of the customer journey was the top priority for many companies.
However, this year’s BearingPoint Digital Leaders Study offers a deeper and more intriguing insight into the progress made by UK companies on their digital journey, and in particular, which retailers are winning as the high street remains closed during Lockdown 3.0.
The wide ranging study, reviewing 79 leading UK firms across seven industries, shows that digital transformation is clearly happening, but with the top ranking organisation (Ocado) only achieving a rating of ‘good’, there is still a huge amount of opportunity for improvement.
That the top five businesses (and nine of the top ten) are retailers, and the top three industries are the retail powerhouses on non-food, fashion, and food - is encouraging - but there are areas for improvement which all retailers could benefit from.
In all areas, they are leading with the basic requirements; great products, well displayed, on a clear website, but you don’t have to scratch too far below the surface to find opportunity.
Extending the communication with customers seamlessly through social media and allowing them to review and comment on products isn’t offered by all players and is an opportunity to add the traditional rounded experience of a store especially in conjunction with online chat functionality.
With only 24% of businesses utilising chatbots to enrich and personalise the customer experience there is plenty of room for growth as this technology continues to evolve.
Whilst it’s no surprise to see Asos, boohoo and Ocado as pureplay operators featuring in the top ten, and therefore being at the forefront of the UK market, our assessment is that there is still even more potential for them to take their performance to the next level.
For example, Curry’s PC World’s ShopLive is a great example of leveraging technology to bring the best of the in-store experience to an online transaction by connecting customers at home to trained product experts.
Innovations such as these have allowed Curry’s PC World to pivot from a 70% bricks and mortar business to a pureplay when lockdown required this through 2020.
Diving down into the key drivers of digital leadership, retailers led the way in digital product experience and e-commerce but in e-CRM, leading banking and insurance providers, Barclays and Admiral were at the forefront.
Creating a seamless ability for customers to manage their relationship with retailers becomes even more vital in a world with fewer stores.
Retailers should look to take the opportunity to engage directly with customers to build brands and offer different customer experiences such as personalised online shopping with a sales assistant.
In a mature digital market such as the UK it is no surprise to see many industry sectors displaying a level of excellence in their customer interactions.
What is most exciting is that there is still room for improvement across all key elements of digital mastery, creating seamless, immersive, customer led experiences driven by agile Big Data.
