How 7 Smart Brands Are Making New Human-To-Human Connections
For many years now, the retail industry has been rife with talk of personalization. Usually, the term has referred to digital features and functionality. Within physical store strategy, some type of personal service often has been embedded in discussions about customer experience. But, aside from fee-based or loyalty-driven services and personal shoppers in some apparel and department stores, one-to-one appointments haven’t been commonly promoted.
When the U.S. shut down this spring, that changed. Brand after brand used store closures, shelter in place policies and - more recently - store openings that come with restrictions, as a forcing mechanism to connect more personally in organic, human-driven ways. This has proven to be a winning trend across product categories and services.
Within days of b8ta’s stores closing in March, the self-described retail-as-a-service company launched virtual appointments. b8ta’s stores rely heavily on consumer electronics product demos and while much of that wasn’t possible as retail staff conducted appointments from home, some team members own - and therefore were able to showcase - several of b8ta’s most popular products. Now that stores have begun reopening, the team has been conducting these video-based appointments from stores.
Notably, the option to book an appointment is just as prominent as the buy button on every b8ta product page and these virtual visits are compelling. “Our business model doesn't exist without demos so it's really critical for us to find ways to get people some semblance of the b8ta experience at home; virtual appointments have been one of those efforts,” said Vibhu Norby, Founder and CEO, who also shared it’s likely they’ll continue indefinitely.
If b8ta’s products seem ripe for virtual showcasing, skincare and makeup could be considered harder to explain and sell from afar. But that hasn’t stopped at least two companies from seizing the opportunity to service customers who are missing professional skincare services and the ability to sample makeup in stores.
Heyday, a provider of facials in 11 treatment facilities that are co-located with skincare retail shops, was co-founded by Michael Pollak and Adam Ross in 2014, “with a mission to make skincare advice more accessible, not just during an appointment with a professional aesthetician, but for the following 30-60 days,” said Pollak, Co-founder and Chief Experience Officer. The fact that interaction between visits was always part of the vision has ended up being instructive as facial customers and aestheticians have found themselves without in-person access to Heyday’s services this year.
While heydayskincare.com was still open for business with products for sale, that wasn’t enough, as Ross, Co-founder and CEO, explained: “Skincare is often just a lot of products online and has remained unchanged for years, except for the product assortment expanding. We wanted to create a different online experience that’s more engaging and representative of what the customer wants, which is less transactional and more consultative.”
In early April, less than three weeks after its locations were forced shut, Heyday sent an e-mail to monthly facial members offering “Virtual Skincare Check-Ins” with its “Skincare Educators.” Fifteen minutes and complimentary, these were one-to-one video consultations that later expanded beyond members.
While enhancing the experience outside of treatment rooms was always part of Pollak’s and Ross’ vision, it was the pandemic that compelled them to flex in this direction sooner, both to support longtime employees and to allow customers to talk about their evolving - and sometimes mask-induced - concerns regarding skincare, which Pollak cites as a rare growth category in recent months.
Now, Heyday is giving its aestheticians another way to bring a human touch to digital interactions through the company’s pilot with HERO, a messaging app that facilitates conversational commerce between retailers and customers. Allowing its trusted professionals to influence product purchases outside of the treatment room has paid dividends for Heyday, which is seeing a 20% conversion rate through the platform. “The response shows how valuable professional expertise is to customers and how little it typically exists,” confirmed Ross. Added, Pollak, “ [As our locations re-open], the ability to connect digitally between visits will remain important to both the customer and aesthetician. If a customer thinks of us between appointments, that's a win.”
While skincare professionals don’t often have public personas, makeup artists do and IL MAKIAGE, a makeup brand, is hiring ones who are out of work due to the pandemic to conduct virtual sessions. Not all artists were previously employed by the brand, which has four boutiques and historically has done 90% of its sales volume online. The goal of the initiative is to support professionals during this period, with the expectation that once stores reopen, they’ll return to their previously-held retail jobs. More than 200 makeup artists have provided “thousands of” free, 45-minute, one-to-one tutorials to IL MAKIAGE customers, according to a company spokesperson.
One of those makeup artists is Kirsten Jordan, who said, "Being able to work with IL MAKIAGE has been an experience of a lifetime. This company took an initiative to bridge a huge gap in the beauty industry and community by providing virtual classes for people all over the world… What IL MAKIAGE is doing for the beauty community means the world to us. [That] these classes are free is also incredible. Beauty can be an escapism in the midst of the chaos going on around us. Being able to take even just one person through the journey of our virtual classes as they conquer their makeup fears are moments that help us both. I get to watch people from all over the world smile.”
While virtual fashion appointments may not sound like a completely new offering, introducing them this year has yielded results for Tamara Mellon, for one. Alexa Grandolfo, a company spokesperson, said the footwear and handbag brand used Calendly and Zoom to roll out the option quickly once shelter in place order took effect in March.
Grandolfo reported an average order value on virtual appointments that’s 70% higher than on average orders. Tamara Mellon also merged two different marketing strategies, making an influencer available for virtual appointments. And consumers responded, shared Grandolfo: All appointments with Lucy Hernandez were booked in three hours, with a waitlist that doubled the appointment roster in length.
Urban Zen, A Philosophy of Living By Donna Karan, sells apparel, footwear, jewelry, artisanal products and home furnishings, and wasn’t conducting video consultations pre-pandemic, when customers wanted to see higher-priced items in the brand’s store before purchasing. But now the company is and Helen Aboah, CEO, said, “We have learned that providing a luxury digital experience is possible with technology that wasn’t available a couple of years ago, in addition to [seeing] more customer willingness to embrace a new way of shopping.”
The affiliated Urban Zen Integrative Therapy Program (UZIT) and Urban Zen foundation immediately focused its efforts on developing a complimentary digital healing package created specifically to address the unique challenges hospital and frontline workers are facing during the COVID-19 crisis, partnering with large and smaller hospitals. “For the first time, UZIT was offered digitally, which allowed us to make the program more accessible and catered to the individual needs of frontline workers, whether that meant at home on their mobile or in a hospital setting with staff members,” said Aboah.
Virtual consultations aren’t a strategy to be employed only by national brands; they carries unique advantages for local stores. While the wedding business is having its own struggles given social distancing mandates, Chelsea Goss, Founder of bridal boutique OffWhite, hasn’t giving up on selling wedding gowns: "I have taken the opportunity of COVID-19 to pivot into a position that I think will better suit me in the future... I am finding that people out-of-state are excited about shopping [virtually] with OffWhite Bride because I have been able to introduce my personality into my brand more... it's exciting for me to see the positive feedback I have received from my followers online."
Goss looks ahead, sharing, “I think our future includes a lot of meeting virtually so we might as well get used to it now and embrace the technology we have available... I am still good at being a bridal consultant even if you are located halfway across the country and are chatting with me via your laptop or phone."
Like bridal, swimwear is a category with historically low e-commerce penetration. From its inception, Andie, has been digital-only but, since the pandemic struck, has uncovered a new opportunity to provide increased human interaction in the way of one-to-one virtual fit sessions. “Beyond the need for technical fit help, during COVID, more than ever, we found that people really craved human connection, whether related to swimwear or not — so sometimes people would call with a small question and then stay on the phone with one of our fit experts for hours,” explained Founder and CEO Melanie Travis.
Travis said her team can handle 20 sessions per week and they fill up almost as soon as they’re made available. Based on the extent to which Andie’s business has grown in recent months, she hypothesizes that Andie is gaining market share. “While we didn't expect our virtual swim fit sessions to take off to this degree when we first concepted them, the program has turned out to be a really important piece of our business as COVID wears on, and likely one we'll keep offering indefinitely,” shared Travis.
b8ta is leveraging its in-house product evangelists, Heyday and Urban Zen are serving different populations’ challenges in different ways, IL MAKIAGE and Tamara Mellon are providing some aesthetic pampering and OffWhite and Andie are forging new, digital paths in harder-to-fit categories. 2020 has accelerated digital commerce in every way imaginable. It’s also a year that, despite keeping the world at home, has opened the door to human connection in many ways.
This article was original posted on Forbes on 7/21/20.