Retail sector outperforms in customer experience

Despite the impact of the pandemic, the retail sector has held its market-leading position in driving customer excellence.

A recent report by KPMG reveals that seven of the top 10 brands leading this metric across industries fall into the retail category. 

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The industry saw massive challenges in supply chains, store management, customer behaviours and expectations, and rapidly shifted its focus to meet growing demands.

The report found that retail categories such as food, beverage and liquor remain consistent with the previous year’s report, while health, beauty and wellbeing saw a strong acceleration in performance compared to prior years.

Beauty brand MECCA topped the report's charts, linked to its accelerated digitalisation across communications, operations, and delivery on brand integrity.

Utilising its loyalty program Beauty Loop, the brand leaves discounts in favour of relying on its large customer base to share data to aid the company in large scale customer personalisation.

“At MECCA we have always been customer-obsessed but have really used the last 18 months to codify this and embed it in our strategic thinking and frameworks much more than it being an assumed or organic part of the way we operate,” said Sam Bain, chief digital officer at MECCA Brands.

(Image:Sam Bain, chief digital officer, MECCA)

“The biggest change is probably the extent to which we now use customer feedback and data. We use a lot more quantitative data to drive decision making today, whereas we used to rely more on anecdotal insights.”

According to Lisa Bora, partner in charge of management consulting corporates at KPMG Australia, the benefits of prioritising personalisation extend beyond customer loyalty, and improve revenue, retention, reduce marketing costs and see an uplift in engagement metrics.

“Retail as an overall category sees personalisation continuing to be the lead customer experience driver,” the report says.

“This level of personalisation moves beyond just personalised communications to one incorporating the involvement of loyal customers, personalised offers and services and, where relevant, personalised range suggestions.”