Fashion stores will mix human with digital customer service says iAdvize

By

Barbara Santamaria

Published
Oct 25, 2019

In a bid to meet the demands of today’s connected consumers, UK fashion retailers are prioritising investment in capabilities that blend human and digital touchpoints, such as conversational commerce and product reviews.

According to the new research of over 50 UK retailers, 35% of fashion brands want to start using store associates for digital conversations when footfall is light, essentially giving them online capabilities to interact with e-shoppers.

Indeed, capabilities like these are becoming increasingly important for fashion retailers, with blended customer service functionalities making up four out of the top five investment priorities for retailers over the next 24 months.

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The report, from iAdvize, a conversational marketing platform, found that almost two thirds of UK fashion retailers plan to invest in live messaging capabilities with customer service agents.

In app customer service agents (45%), independent product experts (25%) and online brand ambassadors (20%) also emerged as key priorities for those surveyed.

“Retailers realise that store staff need access to quality customer, stock and order insights in general, but even more so if they are going to make a valuable contribution to the online customer journey, successfully closing the customer experience gap,” said Stuart Gordon, UK country manager at iAdvize

“There is a growing realisation within bricks-and-mortar retail – particularly for fashion brands and retailers - that physical stores need to focus on what pureplays cannot do, rather than trying to compete on their home territory of price, friction-free convenience and ease of delivery. And that means unlocking human capital to offer quality insight, delivered with ‘emotional’ human interaction," he added.