Published by: Rebecca Wooters, Chief Digital Officer
When I joined Signet last April, one of my first priorities was to establish agile development teams organized around the customer journey. These teams are at the core of our Connected Commerce strategy, part of Signet’s overall Inspiring Brilliance strategy to establish the company as the growth and innovation leader in the jewelry industry.
We define Connected Commerce as seamless interaction through digital experiences that carry our customer through any and all touch points – whether you start online and end with a virtual consultant, or you buy online and pick up in store.
We aren’t a company that just added a digital department; we are now a digitally focused company committed to exceptional customer experience. What is unique about our strategy is we are implementing digital beyond a self-serve experience that is limited to our websites. Rather, we have combined the power of technology, the intersection of virtual consultants, and the ability to put the “human” into our digital ecosystem.
Here are three key characteristics about the way we’ve structured Signet’s digital teams that I believe will allow us to be successful in Connected Commerce:
- Follow agile methodologies to deliver value to customers faster and with fewer headaches.
- Intentionally kept small to be nimble and empowered, able to react quickly due to the iterative nature of how they deliver features.
- Pursue two-week sprints to develop, test, implement, and continually improve customer-facing iterations. This accelerated cycle allows us to deliver quickly, test, and coarse correct if we need to.
To put the customer at the center of everything we do, there are three areas of focus for our team:
- The shopping experience
- This spans many areas, from the ability to instantly message a virtual consultant, to visual search and even early testing of virtual try-on. We’ve also implemented a number of enhancements that drove both higher traffic and higher conversion rates compared to the prior year.
- The purchasing experience
- Once a customer has made their selections, the purchase should be easy and allow for the customer to choose fulfillment options that suit them best. Similar to our shopping teams, the purchase teams were critical to our back-half success by providing improved checkout experiences, as well as the launch of crucial fulfillment options such as Curb-side pickup and Ship from store.
- The customer experience after purchase
- These teams are working to support the way Signet offers services that build customer loyalty and trust. This could be customer care, warranties, repairs, or any interaction that supports building a lifelong relationship. We want every interaction to be special, regardless of whether it will involve an immediate purchase.
We have combined the power of technology, the intersection of virtual consultants, and the ability to put the “human” into our digital ecosystem. While some online retailers fail to make the human connection and smaller independents may lack the supply chain and customer fulfillment options, Signet is able to deliver both. We are delivering innovation at a personal level at every step of the customer journey. In addition, we are using data driven insights to connect online and in-store experiences.
We know our initial efforts are creating convenience, trust and ongoing relationships in a richer, more rewarding and connected experience, furthering our competitive advantage.
Offering customers a simple, personalized and connected digital experience is what they’re coming to expect more and more, in any retail environment, which is why Signet aims to be at the forefront of this change in the jewelry industry.
Editor’s note: This post is taken from Signet Jewelers’ Investor Event in April 2021. Learn more about how our strategy, Inspiring Brilliance, is designed to establish Signet as the growth and innovation leader of the jewelry industry, inspired by our Purpose and committed to building customer relationships that last a lifetime.