Company Name: Accent Group

Company URL: https://www.accentgr.com.au/

Your Name: Anil Umachigi

Your Title: MarTech - Data Architect 

About Accent Group 

Accent Group Limited is the leading digitally integrated retail and distribution business in the Apparel and Footwear performance and lifestyle market in Australia and New Zealand. With over 750+ stores, 35 brands and 40 websites. In addition to exclusive distribution rights for 15 international brands across Australia and New Zealand.

The Business Challenge 

The changing customer experience Paradigm  

Customer experience in retail or any industry in fact have had a paradigm shift over the last couple of years, while there has been focus on customer experience however these were in silo’s dedicated to certain channels.  

While we offer wonderful experience across all of touch-points for our customers, there is always a need to better understand, relate and personalise experience for our customers across our various divisions both in digital and brick & mortar channels.  

Some of the business challenges we were addressing were  

• Move data out of silos, integrate to provide a full view of our customer across various divisions.  
• Provide Exceptional customer experience across all touch points 
• Analyse data to understand missed opportunities, not enjoyable experience and patterns which may lead to poor experience 
• Help Customers with relevant and personalised info at moments that matter 

• Reduce time to value across our datasets

The Solution, Architecture & Integration  

The Connected Experience Framework 

The idea of Integrated & connected experience solution came from this amazing post i read a while back, the idea of Connected experience as easy as it sounds can be tedious to set up especially when systems have existed in silos.  

Quoting from the Article  

[A connected experience] is all about ensuring the customer enjoys the experience of shopping with you, that you have the right products, that those products are available when they’re looking for them, and that when they have a question or a concern that someone is there to help. That’s across all mediums, whether it’s a call centre, a chat environment online, ecommerce versus in store, or now omni-channel… 

[It’s important to make sure] a connected customer experience rings true end to end, from the time they’re starting to discover the project they need to do or the product they need to buy, to the buying process, to the support process, all the way through to post purchase. 

The connected experience framework is a way to build a full picture of customer with context available in almost real-time. 

The 4 clear outcomes of connected experience framework are  

• Data Insights & Audiences
  • Leveraging actionable analytics & experience data  
  • Create Audiences to address opportunities 

• Relevant Content & Experience 
  • Ensure right products are available when customers are looking for them
  • Someone is available to help when customers have questions, concerns or need help across digital, customer care or store 

• Know thy customer 
  • Consistent information, message, and context available across all mediums 
    • Web, App, Cx Chat, Cx Contact Center & Retail Store 
• Continuous Optimisation 
  • Reach out to customers across consented mode to enhance and personalise experience.  
  • Measure --> Analyse --> Iterate --> Repeat 

Adobe Stack & Connected Experience Framework 

The crux of the solution is to create a unified profile of customers for Enhanced personalisation and enable customer experience team to have relevant and tailored conversation. In addition, measure, analyse and activate communication to consented known customer followed by performance reporting and learnings 

Technical Architecture – Wiring it all up!  

Business Architecture - Customer Journey Map 

Connected Experience Journey  Use-case

1.  Ingest, Validate & Create Unified Profile: Connect customer attributes and events data in silos using adobe experience platform to create unified profile. This can be done in phases to enrich profile as you add more customer and event related data sources.  
2. Analyse, Report & Create Hypothesis: Analyse data in Customer journey analytics to produce list of missed opportunities or areas to help facilitate customer journey. (Example checkout errors, zero search results, out of stock products etc.)  
3. Create and Publish Audiences: Create Audiences and activities within Adobe Target to show customers “relevant help options, next best actions” across digital web properties. 
4. Empower Cx Teams:  Enable Cx Agents across chat and contact centre with relevant customer and context (event) information as it happens. Build an app or integrate with existing Cx tools to consume the profile API.  
5. Enhance Store Visits: Enable Store Reps with relevant and on demand information of interactions and customer preferences.  
6. Communicate effectively: Reach out to consented abandoners and customers who faced poor experience for enhanced experience  
7. Learn & Iterate: Report on campaigns, Analyse and present learnings and next step 

Integration & Activation 

Set up Data Layer, TMS & Analytics 

• Design, Implement and capture digital data  

Personalise Digital Experience 

• Create Report & Publish Audience in CJA
• Activate Audience to Target 
• Create Adobe Target Activities & Use Audience: Example Checkout Error Audience 
  • Audiences: haveEncounteredCheckoutError 
  • Activities: Activities based on time 
  • Business Hours 
  • Non-Business Hours

 Enable Chat & Contact CX Teams 

• Integration of Profile API 
• Build custom app with relevant information required  (see sample app reference below)
• Train Cx Teams 

Reach out to Abandoners via Personalised Communications 

• Create Report & Publish Audience in CJA 
• Activate Segment to Marketing Automation Destination

The Business Impact  

As we add more data sources to enrich customer profile within Adobe CDP, the connected customer experience envisions to  

• Single View of Customers: Create a unified view of customers with all there is to know about an individual customer, from behavioural, Transactional, Loyalty etc, regardless of channel and consistently over time.  
• Facilitating consistent journeys regardless of channel: Enable customer experience teams with relevant message, information and offers giving the Cx agents a complete picture of the customer, including previous interaction, Loyalty 
• Customer Analytics and Insights: Leveraging a complete set of interaction data for actionable analytics & experience data 
• Continuous Optimisation Framework: Create an Optimisation framework using unified attributes to create testing & personalisation programs 
• Data - Time to Value: Reduce time to value by activating data to destinations, internal systems, and third-party vendors 

Some of the outputs of Connected Experience Framework

Sample Performance Report built within Adobe Customer Journey Analytics

Sample of CxApp built using Adobe App Builder & Adobe Profile API