Personal care retail chain, The Body Shop, is adopting an omni-channel approach to cater to the young and old generation alike
TARUN BALI
THE BODY SHOP
We are working hard to become an omni-channel enterprise and take initiatives for enhancing brand experience with consistent customer touchpoints in a more personalised manner than ever before.
With the advent of e-commerce in the country, retail brands have found themselves stuck between the devil and the deep sea. While stores in marketplaces are required to give an experience point to the consumers and to cater to the older generation which is still reluctant to buy online, they are getting increasingly cost prohibitive to operate in cities where volumes are low and rentals high.
On the other hand, e-commerce does not let consumers try before they buy, often resulting in their reluctance to buy personal care products as you cannot return if you do not like them after use.
The Body Shop, one of the largest personal care brands in the world, is trying to solve this dilemma by adopting an omni-channel strategy in India. Digital culture needs to be built on one ecosystem that should support anytime everywhere accessibility of resources without any working boundaries and time limitations for internal and external customers,” feels Tarun Bali, Head -IT, The Body Shop.
The Body Shop's tech initiatives are centred on re-envisioning customer experience, focussing on operational efficiencies and process automation. This not only requires change in technology architecture but extensive revamp of business processes and company policies with collaboration-driven culture without any process barriers for seamless connect within all the departments. This, however, cannot be done overnight with a big bang approach.
The Body Shop started its e-commerce channel in 2013 to tap Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities which were beyond its reach due to restricted properties, uncertain demands and low retail penetration.
Digital loyalty app, in-store rating and a review app are under development to empower customers with self-service and help us become a content rich enterprise benefitting higher visibility and higher rakings among search engines organically”. We are also developing a virtual assistance app to assist customers in making shopping decisions based on their demography, age, lifestyle and product consumption patterns,” explains Bali.
E-commerce channel is now one of the major revenue-grabbers and traffic-pullers for The Body Shop already as webrooming is more prevalent with new customers and showrooming for the existing ones. “We are omni-present and serving 500-plus cities as compared to 48 where we have brick-and-mortar stores. In line with the current wave of becoming an omni-channel enterprise, we are connecting all channels seamlessly for shopping, CRM, logistics, customer care and social media,” shares Bali.
As the retail chain moves further along its digital transformation journey, long-term business plans are likely to revolve around content, community and omni-commerce. Creation of a digital ecosystem with consistent brand experience driven by data analytics will act as the bedrock for this change. “We are building culture where every individual in the company, from the backend support team to a front-end employee shall be able to collaborate in one direction to make the end consumer happy,” puts in Bali.
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