Expanding the Luxury Customer Experience
The quality of customer experience is paramount for luxury brands. These organisations have redefined the concept of the personal touch in recent years but, like any other retailer, the challenge is to recreate that consistent, high-quality experience irrespective not only of customer channel – in store, online or mobile – but country.
With demand for luxury products rising fast in countries such as China, brands must deliver a seamless, optimised experience in any location, across any channel, in a way that is both secure for the customer and compliant with different global data protection regulations. This part of the retail model is now too complex and too important to be developed in house – the onus is on retailers to leverage proven technologies such as Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) to quickly and effectively create the perfect customer experience.
The good news is that this is not just technology for luxury brands. By opting for a proven CIAM technology with a presence in all the major markets globally, including China, any retailer can deliver luxury level customer experience, explains Jérémy Dallois, CEO, ReachFive.
Consistent Experience
The luxury market was hit hard by the collapse of global travel during the pandemic - but it has bounced back fast with sales predicted to rise from $257.26 billion in 2020 to $352.84 billion in 2027. This sector has benefitted from the improving Chinese economy, its biggest growth market, with demand reinvigorated by rising disposable incomes across Asia Pacific and pent up demand for travel.
This bounce back has compelled luxury brands to look closely not just at creating a high quality, consistent customer experience across multiple channels but also global strategies. Hyper personalisation, based on detailed, accurate customer data, has become a core component in any luxury brand customer experience strategy. With a unique customer identity, brands can ensure every customer receives the same, consistent, known interaction whether they are in store, online, via a mobile app, even on the phone.
With global travel back on the agenda, luxury brands must now look to scale these Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) solutions across every location to ensure a customer in China receives the same perfect experience at home in Beijing as they do when on business in New York or holiday in Paris. And that throws up a number of critical security and data protection compliance challenges that must be urgently addressed.
Secure Customers
No retailer can afford the reputational damage associated with a security breach, but for luxury brands the impact is even more severe. Trust is at the heart of a customer’s relationship with a high value retailer and it is therefore essential to safeguard every customer interaction. Of particular concern is the sharp increase in credential stuffing attacks – where attackers collect stolen account credentials and use these usernames, email addresses and passwords to gain unauthorised access to user accounts on other systems.
The practice has become so widespread that, in some countries, this traffic now outstrips legitimate customer login. And with so many passwords to remember, customers more often than not use the same password for multiple sites – making these attacks ever more successful. Technology innovation is reducing the reliance on passwords, with tools such as passkeys, multi-factor authentication and biometric identification completely transforming the level of security available to protect the customer experience.
Of course, not all customers will change to the new approaches simultaneously, which is why identity fraud protection is also a core component of a secure customer experience. Continuous monitoring of activity on the CIAM platform can detect and block abnormal activity from a malicious IP address. By automatically suspending compromised accounts the process prevents attackers from accessing personal information or performing a transaction. Customers are immediately informed about suspicious activity – and bad actors deterred from future attacks.
Global Compliance
Another key component of a safe customer experience is ensuring compliance to the ever growing list of data protection regulations across the world. From GDPR in Europe to the Data Security Law (DSL) and the Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) introduced in the People’s Republic of China in 2021 and the Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL) in Saudi Arabia, retailers need to be compliant within each geography to ensure long term success.
Indeed, while there are commonalities, each regulation has distinct requirements and implications. PDPL applies to the data of Saudi residents, irrespective of where that data is located or processed. Serious violations of China’s PIPL could lead to fines of up to 50 million yuan ($US7,225,000) or 5 per cent of annual revenue. CIAM platforms have a vital role to play in ensuring retailers are complying with all local regulations, including user control of data. Allocating a unique identifier to each customer, irrespective of point of contact, allows the collection and management of customer consent to comply with every local requirement. Further, proof of consent and traceability of consent are built in, allowing brands to both track customer information and respond to requests from both customers and regulatory audit.
Speed of Development
The priority is, of course, to leverage unique customer data to deliver a perfect, consistent customer experience - not only over a retailer’s own channels, but also the different global shopping platforms, from Shopify to Alibaba. Furthermore, with technology continually evolving the way customer experience can be delivered, luxury brands need to be at the forefront of innovation. One leading retailer is using AI-powered chatbots to provide customers with personalised product recommendations, for example, while a global clothing brand has introduced virtual try on feature that uses AI to show customers how items will look on them.
Attempting to not only develop customer experience solutions in house but to stay up to date with security and compliance changes is simply too much for any retailer – however expert the IT team. The risks – to the quality of experience, to security breach and regulatory compliance – are too high.
Without access to a globally reliable, secure and complaint CIAM platform, opportunities for customer experience innovation will be constrained as the IT team will be distracted by day to day security and compliance demands.
Conclusion
Today’s luxury is tomorrow’s mainstream – and while luxury brands are setting the expectations, a consistent, secure, omni channel experience is the goal for every retailer. With the right approach, and a global CIAM platform, any retailer can deliver that same level of optimised personal experience to an increasingly valuable but demanding worldwide market.
