Engaging Customers & Sustaining Success Magento Imagine 2014 Session

This breakout session is titled Standing Out From the Crowd: Innovative Approaches to Engaging Customers & Sustaining Success and features:

• Jonathan Hiltser, Head of IT, Frank & Oak
• Paul Johnson, Sr. Product Manager, Peet’s Coffee
• Paul Kasinski, CIO, Brighton Collectibles
• Gorden Nugent, VP of eCommerce, Harvey Norman
• Matthew Plant, Sr. Software Engineer, Julep
• Ben Pressley, Head of Worldwide Sales, Magento

The only sustainable advantage is deep knowledge of and deep engagement of your customer base.

Retail is changing - you need customer engagement. If you have a store, you need to do things in-store to extend your brand and create deeper customer engagement with your brand.

For in-store experiences, brands are using tablets and Magento instead of a traditional POS system, because it's easier to incorporate social and other customer engagement features.

Loyalty programs that provide real value will create customer loyalty and engagement.

Retailers that are successfully engaging their community are generating and leveraging high quality brand-centric content.

Look at more than just high-level ROI; measure funnel metrics, A/B testing of different experiences throughout the checkout flow. Don't just use automated testing, though - engage with customers and and get their feedback on their experiences with your brand on your website.

Use A/B testing to show the facts to stakeholders to drive decisions, especially when people argue for their personal preferences vs proven improvements. Run at least 1 to 2 tests per week.

Harvey Norman "wouldn't be where we are without Magento".

Closing advice/tips from the panelists:

• Make shopping incredibly easy - customers are online because they want to buy things quickly and easily.
• Don't forget the traditional means of customer service - don't forget customer service. Live chat, reaching out to customers, etc.
• Engage with customers on social media - take negative feedback about your product, reach out to them, replace it and then improve the product going forward and make it clear that it's thanks to their input.
• Every customer touchpoint - email, in-store, on phone, live chat, site experience is a precious opportunity to build your brand - don't waste any of them. Promote brand over channel and all the channels win.
• Remove friction. Look at where pain points are in experiences with your brand and remove friction.
• Engage your customers and really listen.
• Make sure your partners are mobile-ready; don't want users to click over to a partner-provided page and it not be mobile friendly.
• Responsive is more than just mobile and tablet - large-format screens of 23"-30" are becoming more popular, so make sure your site scales up as well.