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CX Education 09: How to manage customer loyalty with Andrew Busby from Retail Reflections

Join Andrew Busby and Sunny Dhami as they chat about the challenges of customer loyalty and personalization in retail.

How to manage customer loyalty with Andrew Busby from Retail Reflections
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About this episode

Retail stores play a crucial role in our daily lives, helping consumers access a variety of products, and they can track customers’ likes, needs, and values to offer relevant and timely experiences.

But how consumers make purchasing decisions has changed dramatically. People stand in stores and use smartphones to compare prices and product reviews; they make purchasing decisions through social media, and when they’re ready to buy, they have a growing list of online retailers at their disposal.

In this episode of CX Education, our host Sunny Dhami welcomes Andrew Busby, the founder of Retail Reflections. Andrew describes his retail journey and gets into the changes the retail industry faces. Andrew and Sunny discuss customer loyalty to retailers and brands, the future of brick-and-mortar versus online stores, and personalization in retail.

Image for Andrew Busby, Founder | Retail Reflections

Guest Speaker

Andrew Busby, Founder | Retail Reflections

Retail writer, global retail influencer, former Forbes contributor, and Amazon best-selling author with his book ‘Harry Was Right All Along’, Andrew is the Global Industry Senior Director for retail at Software AG and the founder of Retail Reflections. One of the most high-profile figures in retail – regularly featuring in the top 20 lists of global retail influencers, Andrew is constantly in demand for both writing and speaking and is regularly quoted in the media – on TV, radio, and in the national press.

In a retail career spanning over 23 years, Andrew held senior positions at Kingfisher and Superdrug. In addition to writing his own retail blog, Andrew is a member of the IORMA Advisory Board, a member of REAN, Advisory Board member at Retail Week, Founder of the Retail Advisory Board, and also an editor at large for Retail Technology magazine.

Image for Sunny Dhami, VP Product Marketing | Sinch

Host

Sunny Dhami, VP Product Marketing | Sinch

Sunny Dhami is a product marketing leader with 12+ years’ experience in Marketing and Product Marketing roles across the CPaaS, SaaS, communications, and technology industries. In this time, he has held responsibilities within global product marketing functions and has been fortunate enough to have worked in high-growth organisations like Sinch and RingCentral, where he has supported triple digit revenue growth.

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Key insights

In today’s global economic situation, finances are tight, inflation is affecting nearly every country, and there is a cost-of-living crisis. As Andrew says, it affects customer loyalty, and only a few brands can manage that customer loyalty. “Retailers and brands like to think that their customers are loyal. With certain exceptions, I think they’re loyal in the moments of the transaction, but I don’t think they’re loyal. I’ve been saying for quite some time that the customer experience, whether online or in-store — but particularly in the store — is the number one thing.”

Modernization, the internet, and all things digital have changed people’s habits and expectations – the retail industry needs to move with the times. Customers today are looking for an elevated customer experience, both during the purchase journey and afterward, and based on that, they choose which retailer to shop at. According to Andrew, the average consumer doesn’t think and look at things the same way as those working in the retail industry. “Even though somebody perhaps can’t articulate — in the way that we might be able to — why they either had a positive, good experience or a negative, bad experience, they’ll certainly know it. They’ll feel it. They’ll feel something about it. They’ll say, ‘I didn’t like that.’ So I think this is extremely important for all retailers.”

As a result of the pandemic, we’ve turned more and more to online avenues, and many high street stores have closed. On the other hand, there are many stores where you can see and try their products, but they still encourage you to buy online. Andrew notes the convergence happening now; and that people want to see the digital experience extend to the store. “If I’m buying a big-ticket item — let’s say it’s 500 quid for a widescreen TV — I might just go online and click buy, thank you very much. But I’m only probably doing that because I’ve done my research. I’ve done my research online, but I might have gone into the store; I might have looked and felt and touched and watched, and all the rest of it. They don’t know that; the retailer doesn’t know that. All they know is that we bought it online. But if the store hadn’t been there, would we have bought it from that brand? Maybe yes, maybe no. So I think what we’re seeing, which I think is a good thing, is that convergence.”

Episode highlights

Andrew’s retail journey

“My retail journey started with my first job. I lived down in Bournemouth at the time, and I was a hardware storeman. In those days, we didn’t have barcodes, so I used to have to take the goods in, check them in, price them up with a pricing gun, and then get them out on the floor. But the journey really started over 20 years ago, in 1999. I joined Kingfisher, and I was running IT operations which is a great business to learn retail. It was fascinating.

The importance of customer lifetime value

“I’m just in the process of buying a watch. I’m buying it online from a dealer that I know, and so they said, ‘Well, can you send us your wrist measurement?’ So, in Sussex, near me, there’s a very good dealer who I’ve done business with before. So the other day, I walked in there, and I said, ‘Well, look, do you mind if you do it for me because you’ll do it properly, accurately, and know how much slack to allow. They didn’t want to help me. And I’m like, ‘Why would you not? It’s a simple thing to do.’ But, no, they didn’t. Is that going to be the first place that I return to next time I want to buy a watch?”

Personalization in retail

“If you think of personalization as Mount Everest, I don’t think we’re even yet to base camp. And the reason why I say that is, do we ever see any proactive, relevant marketing? Because let’s face it, we all use social media to grow to a lesser extent, and we’ll have our favorites — from TikTok through to Instagram to Twitter and all things in between. And if somebody is able to take all our content, all the output that we put out over the last maybe a couple of years, they would know pretty much everything there is to know about me that’s relevant for them.
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