Customer Experience

WBR Whitepaper: The New Rules of Holiday Readiness

October 14, 2018 by Johnny Russo Leave a Comment

If you work in Retail, Holiday Readiness is not just any event, it’s the event. It’s the retail version of the Indy 500, a marquee event that overshadows the rest of the year (or all the other races). It usually makes or breaks a year for a retailer, and without knowing it, it’s also the most exciting, yet stressful time for even consumers and shoppers alike. All the research, discounts, searches, add to carts, and waiting to pull the trigger on the best deals you’ve waited months – or the whole year – for.

Amplify that by 100 when you work in retail. You have at least 6+ months of planning and strategy, while analyzing previous years and current trends, watching your competition like a hawk, and then the daily, precise execution that takes place through November and December. All in the hopes and prayers your customers will love your deals and offers, and buy, buy, buy!

I was asked to take part in a Worldwide Business Research feature on Holiday Readiness, in conjunction with Etail East and ShipStation. This go-to Whitepaper, The New Rules of Holiday Readiness, can help retailers gather insights, strategies, and expectations for the upcoming holiday season. In total, 167 retailers took part in the Whitepaper, which also includes a valuable 2018 Holiday Readiness Checklist.

Click below to see the entire Whitepaper.

The New Rules of Holiday Readiness

Customer Contact Week Speaker Series Q&A

November 4, 2017 by Johnny Russo Leave a Comment

Customer Contact Week gathers leaders that span the customer journey, from Marketing to Operations to Customer Care. CCW talked with me and two other leaders speaking at CCW NoLa to discuss some of the keys to delivering great customer experience, challenges on the journey, and the personal meaning of world-class service with speed and efficiency.

Download the entire Customer Contact Week Speaker Series Q&A or you can also find it on the Customer Contact Week Digital site.

Here is my interview in its entirety:

Question: Our CCW New Orleans theme this year is focused on delivering world-class service with speed and efficiency. In the context of your work, what does speed and efficiency for the customer mean to you?

Answer: For me, it’s about speed and agility in servicing the customer’s needs. That could come in the form of how quickly we respond to an issue; how efficient we are at solving it at first touch – while remaining consistent with our brand tone, yet still with a personal human touch, independent of channel (stores, online, social, call center, etc); it’s also the speed of shipping out an order as quickly as possible.

On the Digital Marketing side, we like to try new things. We don’t love mass communication (who does?) we like relevant communication. From the digital media we buy, to the preference center we launched (enabling newsletter subscribers to opt down in frequency of email received), we don’t want to inundate our customers with our shopping messages. We’re also trying to be better at communicating non-sale messages, and focusing more on pairing up looks, new site features that make the browsing experience better, or our Click & Collect solutions.

Q: Tell us a little more about your speaking role at CCW New Orleans and how it relates back to your current focus areas. What makes you passionate about this topic?

A: This session might be a bit different, since my title or position is not necessarily Customer Service or Customer Experience. However, leading the Digital Marketing and Ecommerce team for one of the largest apparel retailers in Canada, we obsess about customer needs. So I believe my session will touch not only how to do things for the buying customer, but also your internal team members (think about it, they are your customers as well), not to mention our external vendors or agencies; they are an extension of our team, and so we refer to them as our partners (again, they are customers as well in the broader sense).

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My Digital Transformation Keynote Session at the SOCAP Conference

October 28, 2017 by Johnny Russo Leave a Comment

I usually attend and speak at Marketing, Digital Marketing, and Ecommerce Conferences, at Retail events, or at general leadership sessions. So a few months back when I was asked to speak at SOCAP, my first reaction was ‘what’s that?’ Well, I quickly learned that SOCAP International (The Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals in Business) is the organization for Customer Care professionals. SOCAP was established in 1973 to help shape the business community’s response to changing consumer needs and expectations.

So why did a Customer Care organization want to hear from a marketer like me? Well, I’ll get to that in a moment. But Lisa Oswald, Senior Vice President, Global Customer Care at TravelZoo, who also happens to sit on the Board of Director at SOCAP, heard me speak at the ForeSee Summit in April 2016. Soon after, she connected me with Marjorie Bynum, who is SOCAP’s Vice President if Strategic Learning, Leadership, and Communications.

When Marjorie and I spoke for the first time, we instantly hit it off, as we shared a passion to help our respective industries learn and improve. She then asked if I would be interested in keynoting the afternoon session on Day 1 of the SOCAP Conference. I was thrilled to do so.

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Customer-First Retail – a Whitepaper by DAC Group

July 20, 2017 by Johnny Russo Leave a Comment

In April 2017, DAC Group, a prominent global Marketing agency, asked if I would like to give my thoughts on their upcoming Whitepaper. The topic: what is customer-first retail, and how do you even try and achieve that while staying relevant and driving business results in today’s ever-evolving retail landscape? Great topic and I was also impressed with the other people I would be giving opinions with. Here is a list of the people that were interviewed for this Retail Whitepaper:

Diane Brisebois, President & CEO at Retail Council of Canada

Indar Chanicka, Director of eCommerce at The Body Shop

Pat Duncan, SVP Marketing & Chief Digital Officer at Party City

Tom Giacalone, Digital, eCommerce, Omnichannel Retail and Operations, CRM Executive at Vera Bradley

Johnny Russo, Associate Vice-President, eCommerce and Digital Marketing at Mark’s (that would be moi)

Jennifer Spencer, VP Marketing and Corporate Responsibility at The Body Shop

Jan Steck, Chief Marketing and Digital Officer at Helzberg Diamonds

Diane’s name attaches immense respect and retail authority, and she is someone I follow very closely. Thanks to DAC Group for putting out this Whitepaper, and for asking me to be a part of it. I love being a part of advancing retail and helping Digital Transformation journeys.

The whitepaper explores how retailers can reinvigorate their approach to digital in order to overcome immense challenges, unlock opportunities, and drive measurable ROI in a competitive space. The main topics include:

The necessity of shifting to a customer-centric approach
The paramount importance of the personalized customer experience
Omni-Channel strategies driving brand success
Mobile and Ecommerce continuing to grow exponentially
The “Amazon Effect” heavily influencing consumer expectations

“It’s evident that people think the retail apocalypse is happening. However, it’s equally apparent that some brands are responding to changing consumer demands, and those that do will ‘win’ at the end of the day,” says Lynn Duffy, DAC Group’s Senior Manager, Strategic Insights. “It seems like such a basic concept, but keeping the consumer at the forefront in all decisions that impact how brands interact with the consumer will pay off in the end.”

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Align the Core – My Presentation at Etail Canada 2017

July 15, 2017 by Johnny Russo Leave a Comment

Etail Canada 2017 took place from May 16-18 in Toronto at the Hyatt on King Street. The yearly event brings together top retailers in Canada, as well as some of the brightest Digital Marketing and Ecommerce minds in the field. It was the 6^th edition of the Etail Canada event, part of the WBR events series, and was one of the best. (Disclosure: I am on the Etail Canada Board of Advisors).

For the 4^th year in a row, I got to speak to the Etail Canada attendees. The name of my talk was Align the Core: How a day in July Turned Vendors Into Partners and the talk detailed some steps Mark’s and L’equipeur have taken on our Digital Transformation journey. (It was a similar presentation I gave at the ForeSee Summit in Phoenix a month prior, though I altered it for the Canadian audience)

A few months before the ForeSee Summit, our former Account Executive, Jennifer Macintosh, asked me if I’d be interested in speaking at ForeSee. I said absolutely! And then she said she had the perfect topic. In July of 2016, Mark’s had organized a Digital Partner Summit, and ForeSee was invited as one of our core partners. Many partners in that room said it was the first of its kind that they had been a part of. It was an amazing day, and I felt our partners and internal team were more aligned than ever. It was also intricate, as some of these partners were indeed competing for a share of our budgets. However, we have fantastic partners, and the day went perfectly.

Anyhow, back to the Connect Conference. As I got to outlining the topic and preparing my slides, I started noticing something: the Digital Partner Summit we held at Mark’s was only a part – albeit a big one – of what we were accomplishing. Mark’s was on a Digital Transformation journey.

From company-wide education sessions, to using ForeSee and analytics data to tell our story, which netted us more budget and resources (i.e. we doubled our budget and our team), these were pieces of the transformational framework coming into place. As we started putting more and more pieces together, we were realizing these pieces were part of our Digital Transformation.

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WBR Whitepaper: The New Rules of Holiday Readiness

My Digital Transformation Keynote Session at the SOCAP Conference

Align the Core – My Presentation at Etail Canada 2017

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