Personalization: The Heartbeat Of Customer Satisfaction
Valerie Legat, E-commerce and Digital Experience Director, and Miguel González, Global Chief Technology and Data Officer, Carrefour [EPA: CA]
Valerie Legat, E-commerce and Digital Experience Director, and Miguel González, Global Chief Technology and Data Officer, Carrefour [EPA: CA]
Happy customers with true personalization
The question is on everyone’s lips: Personalization is trending topic for retailers.
Using modern approaches, one could reach a better personalization, addressing customers in a more targeted way. For instance, you can think of ordering the products of an e-commerce site according to navigation patterns. Bulk mailing, when powered with dynamic content, sees click-through rate increase. Lastly, the progress in analytics makes it simple to present specific prices or promos to selected customer segments.
While these techniques are fundamental to enhance the satisfaction of customers, none of them can be considered true personalization.
In Carrefour, we strive to make our customers happy. For this, we spare no effort to gain their trust, ensure the best service and provide a distinctive experience. These principles -core valuesof our company- make it easy to understand what we mean by true personalization: Listening to our customers, getting to know them very well and then acting with empathy to propose 1:1 interactions, through the channel, content and frequency of their choice. Besides, the commercial equation must be tuned with specific products, prices and promos respecting the unique wants and needs of every individual. And all this, when it happens in real time… even better!
We think of true personalization as a win-win-win situation. Good for customers, since they get what they need. Good for consumer brands, which understand their shoppers in greater depth. And good for us retailers, with a better return on investment when compared to traditional “mass” actions like paper catalogs. We see it everyday in our Carrefour Links data platform.
The large majority of retailers are not yet there: Everyone talks about it, but few have really done it at scale. While in Carrefourwe acknowledge we still have a long way to go, our DigitalRetail ambition pushes us to try extraordinary things to better serve customers, activating all digital opportunities. Inspired by personalization champions like Starbucks, Nike or Netflix, we are working hard to propose truly personalized experiences leveraging new technologies.
An extraordinary playground of data
In less than two years, we have built the biggest retail data lake in Europe, with more than 8 billion (!) shopping transactions coming from nine countries all over the world. We started with the core business, collecting store receipts and product details and putting them in Big Query. We are now integrating more data, embedding additional information like supply chain datasets or financial insights.
Our lake helps our data scientists to experiment with new ways to engage with customers, powers our growing library of data algorithms -recommendations, assortment optimization, forecasting. - and provides a solid foundation for data collaboration. It is a key asset to accelerate our digital transformation and a must to grant each of our 80 mn+ customers with strong chunks of personalization.
Our data lake growing with transactions
Unique e-shopping experiences
Did you know that search is the #1 mechanism used by customers to complete their basket? It explains ~1/3 of add-to-carts and ~50 percent of the e-commerce revenue, well above other factors like navigation or promotions.
Thanks to the richness and quality of our data, we are able to offer our customers a personalized search experience on Carrefour.fr. For example, if a customer enters "yogurt" in the search bar, his/ her favorite brand, style and flavor will appear at the top of the results. Finding one’s favorite products is getting easier and faster, feeding the overall purchasing process.
Valerie’s yogurts
Miguel’s yogurts
We didn’t stop at search, exploring personalized product categories. Imagine that you are walking in a store and the articles on the shelves are adapted in real time to your profile and your expectations. This is not “Inception”, this is how we think about e-commerce at Carrefour! We organize the products based on the purchase history of every individual customer, among other factors. When scrolling the "fruits" category, his / her favorite berries and citruses will be suggested first. For example, the oranges of Carrefour's Quality Lines our customer loves to have for breakfast. What makes our experience unique is that the relevancy of the product proposition weighs more on our merchandising strategy than any other “retailer” criteria like margin or stock level. This is part of the trust we want to build with our customers.
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Imagine That You Are Walking In A Store And The Articles On The Shelves Are Adapted In Real Time To Your Profile And Your Expectations
Innovative digital services with personalization
Yes, we are using data to personalize the traditional shopping experience. But we went a step further, crafting end-to-end personalized services.
We know every grocery shopper dreams of a 5-minute shopping experience. It is now possible onCarrefour.fr. Just login to your account and head for your “Frequent purchases” to discover your recommended basket for the day. Based on shopping history, season, but also best deals and repurchase frequency, we select the best cart recommendation for you.
Next to this cart completion accelerator sits our “personalized lists” service. Typing the generic name of products (“milk”, “bread”...) leads to a personalized selection of SKUs. Quick and easy, it is the ideal service for those of us who are afraid of forgetting something or complete their cart in multiple sessions.
Personalization is moving really fast. In a few weeks, we’ll be launching a new service, based not only on your habits but also on purchases from other customers who have a similar profile or on more healthier, sustainable alternatives. We help our customers discover amazing products they would have never thought of!
Our ambition: personalization in an omnichannel world
At Carrefour, we aspire to deliver the best personalized e-commerce experience. But our customers do not only buy online. They should shop the way they want, from where they want, and when they want. This means bringing personalization to ~13 000 stores.
If you have not heard about it, we are revisiting our ~67 000 (!) cash desks. Our ambitious SmartPoS project is developing a cutting-edge in-house point of sale system. SmartPoS will bring important benefits for our cashiers and customers, and personalization will be a big part of it: We see the cashiers of Carrefour greeting our customers by their name, proposing a small gift on the day of their birthday or addressing highly specific offers during check-out.
SmartPoS prototype
Re-inventing shopping also means a perfect continuity between the digital and the physical worlds. Because we believe in a future of true personalization, we will use everything we know about our customers to help every one of them juggle between online and offline.
Our mobile applications will play a key role here, enriching in-store experience with our knowledge of preferences, habits and objectives. Should you be strolling around or visiting our store to get that incredible TV deal, the app will act as a real “buddy”, showcasing specific inspirational content (hot news in your store, product innovations, events…) and services (in-store deal locator, alternative fulfillment options, price checks...).
To close, let’s recall that the scientific approach to retail management, mass marketing and hypermarkets changed the history of retail in the previous century, making shopping accessible to all. Likewise, we believe that digital and data are revolutionizing retail again. True personalization is one of today’s major shifts and we intend to make it a reality for our customers in Carrefour.
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