Clienteling tools have become increasingly popular in recent years as retailers look for ways to personalise the customer experience, build relationships with customers, and enable staff to cross-sell and upsell. Customer brand loyalty is lowering as customer acquisition costs rise, and the competition for retaining customers is heating up.

According to Business of Fashion’s report, building customer relationships is more important than ever before because of “rising costs of digital marketing as social media platforms become more crowded and competitive, and new privacy regulations restrict customer targeting across digital channels”. In this article, we delve into how retailers can get ahead of these issues by deploying Clienteling tools in their stores.

Defining Clienteling

Clienteling tools enable retailers to improve the shopping experience by giving Sales Associates a single customer view across all channels, and by personalising the interactions they have with customers.

What can I gain from deploying Clienteling?

• A single customer view across all in-store and online interactions to be used in providing a more personalised omnichannel experience (feed valuable in-store customer behavioural data back out to CDP/CRM)
• Re-market in-store customer visits through e-commerce, and vice versa their online behaviours into store
• Improved conversion rates and basket sizes as a result of personalised service and recommendations, powered by insights on past preferences
• Create tailored talking tracks to start remote selling conversations via email or WhatsApp 

Integration with Remote Selling

Clienteling and Remote Selling tools work seamlessly together, enabling Sales Associates to directly message customers from the store via SMS, messaging apps such as WhatsApp, or Email. Sales Associates and HQ have the option of creating lists to reach out to customers using pre-built templates or bespoke ad hoc messages from previous interactions, wish lists, or purchase history. In turn, Sales Associates can build ever-important Lifetime Value (LTV) by utilising their Clienteling history to offer customers personalised looks, customised baskets, or bespoke invitations to encourage another visit to the store.

How Clienteling can work with Assisted Selling and Digital Styling

By utilising interactive styling tools, Sales Associates can mix and match different products, creating new outfits and combinations based on a customer's previous liked products online, previous purchase or abandoned baskets. For Sales Associates using Assisted Selling, Digital Styling, and Clienteling, this combination is a powerful cross-selling tool which helps customers to see the potential of the products and be inspired to try new styles and looks.

How do I choose the right Clienteling provider for me?

Look for a solution that is undermined by the principles of:

• Smart logic for optimal data use and distribution
• Consolidating different data types efficiently, ensuring that no key data stream (such as in-store behaviour and purchase history) goes unseen
• The ability to start actions from a specific product, catalogue request, or customer 
• Putting UI/UX at the forefront, making it as easy as possible for Sales Associates to use and access relevant customer data
• A flexible and adaptable app which can have more data omitted or added on later

Ready to explore your Clienteling options? Head over to our dedicated Clienteling page to learn more about our solution. Or if you'd like support on choosing your Clienteling solution, download the Buyer's Guide to Clienteling here.