Contextual commerce: Shane Lenton on the next chapter of retail

Contextual commerce is the game changing idea that people can transact the moment they have an urge to buy, instead of forcing them into a traditional purchasing channel. It’s the future of retail with massive opportunities to capture new audiences and incremental transactions.

I spoke with Shane Lenton, CIO at Cue Clothing, to get his thoughts on contextual commerce and advice on how to make the move. Shane is a retail leader who has transformed Cue with innovation and technology to give customers personalised and frictionless experiences across physical, online, mobile, concession and call centre channels.

At Sydney’s 2019 Online Retailer conference, you won over the audience with your assertion that contextual commerce is the next big thing in  retail. What’s your definition of contextual commerce? 

SL: Contextual commerce is the idea that we can seamlessly implement purchase opportunities into everyday activities and natural environments. In other words, customers can buy anything, anytime, anywhere, with the click of a button. Or even just their voice. It’s a purchase made in the moment, with no need to stop what you were already doing.

That means thinking well beyond the boundaries of the traditional physical store and our current digital channels.

It has been talked about for quite a few years now, but few retailers have capitalised on the opportunity. As the technologies that support it have become more available and the social media platforms and messaging apps have evolved, it’s becoming more relevant in the Australasian market and there'll be far greater adoption.

It’s a game changer for retail because it creates new opportunities to create a frictionless experience for the customer and foster loyalty. Retailers that are willing to move early will benefit from higher conversions in new places and increased sales. Those who don’t keep up will be left behind very quickly.

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What’s an example of contextual commerce?   

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SL: Shopping on Instagram is one example that many people will be familiar with. It was a big moment for retail when it was introduced in early 2018. We were one of the first retailers to tag products in organic posts, which customers can then tap on to find out more information and make a purchase.

However, today customers are still required to add items to a cart and transact in the traditional way by logging onto our website to enter payment info and delivery details. With Instagram’s proposed new ‘Checkout on Instagram’ feature (currently in beta with a select group of brands in other markets), shoppers will be able to buy items without leaving the app. They will only need to enter their name, email, payment information and shipping address the first time they check out. 

This ability to allow the consumer to transact in the moment, within the context of the Instagram browsing experience, really hit home with the Online Retailer audience.

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What’s driving the adoption of contextual commerce? 

SL: There are three things triggering its growth. 

One: Consumer behaviour is constantly changing and people's attention spans are shortening. Everyone's busier and we’re being overloaded with content across every part of our lives. People now want to act on their impulses and buy at the time and place of their choice, with as little friction as possible. As the lines between shopping, buying and browsing blur, commerce is happening wherever consumers are and however they wish to interact.

Two: Contextual commerce is going to happen in retail because the social media platforms are going to ‘own’ the customer. Social networks like Facebook and WeChat know what we implicitly want and have the potential to take us from discovery to purchase in a few microseconds on their platforms. This shift to social commerce could be one of the biggest disruptions in retail, and threatens the dominance of Amazon and Google. That also means you're not going to have a direct one-to-one relationship with many of your customers, and you won’t receive insights into their needs and behaviours.

Three: The availability of new technologies that support contextual commerce. These technologies range from smart speakers and messaging apps that can be used to make a purchase by voice command, through to facial recognition such as ‘smile to pay’ and immersive VR and AR platforms with hot spots that customers can click on to purchase items.

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What are the different types of contextual commerce? 

SL: The first is conversational commerce – a way of shopping or purchasing products through chat interfaces that ‘speak’ to people in natural language. This includes the messaging platforms that people already use every day, such as SMS, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Apple Business Chat and WeChat, along with messaging services on your brand’s website or mobile app, like live chat.

Voice commerce is still in its early stages but over 25% of US adults already own a smart speaker that they can use to make purchases by voice command. And smart speakers will soon outnumber tablets, with one study predicting that they will grow by 82 percent, from 114 million units globally in 2018 to 207.9 million in 2019.

Even though smart speaker adoption has been slow in Australasia, the opportunity is massive. An Adyen and 451 Research global study says that while more than half (53 percent) of smart speaker owners have used these devices to shop, only 13 percent of retailers currently enable purchases on them. 

The second big opportunity is ‘click to buy’, which removes the shopping cart form and allows people to purchase with one click. It’s included in digital wallets with ‘buy now’ capabilities using common payment apps such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, and social media platforms where users can purchase within the app itself (and not on the retailer’s website), like shoppable Instagram. 

Today, 44 percent of consumers already use social media to shop, however, only 18 percent of retailers currently enable purchases on social media (according to the Adyen and 451 Research study). And two in five consumers aged 18-24 say the ability to make purchases via social media would increase their online shopping frequency.

The third opportunity centres on the immersive VR and AR platforms that enable consumers to make a purchase from within the virtual experience. The technologies supporting this include search engines that offer reverse image capability such as Google and TinEye, image recognition technology such as Google Lens, and mobile devices with native support for AR and VR.

AR and VR also improve the online and offline shopping experience, from the pre-purchase phase where people are looking for information, through to purchasing in the store or online, and post-sales services where augmented reality can become an ‘immersive’ assistance service for the user. 

Finally, there’s the Internet of Things (IoT), where consumers can shop through connected devices like smart appliances and smart TVs. 

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Have you introduced any other contextual commerce services at Cue?  

SL: While it’s still early days for Instagram shopping, the opportunity is massive. We’ll add the new ‘checkout’ feature when it becomes available.

Instagram reports that over 130 million consumers tap on a shopping post to learn more about products each month, up from 90 million in September 2018.

We’ve led the market with digital wallets and will continue to add new options as they become available. Cue was the first brand globally to launch Afterpay in stores and one of the first online. We were also the first fashion brand to accept mobile payment platforms Alipay and WeChat Pay in stores, and now accept ApplePay online. 

Style Finder is another example of how we are making commerce fast and easy. We worked with Alibaba Cloud to become the first Australasian fashion brand to give customers a visual search tool using images uploaded from their phone.

The uptake and response to all the new options has exceeded expectations. And the customers who use these new services are spending more and shopping more frequently.

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What are the implementation challenges retailers can expect? 

SL: Contextual commerce is all about getting your retail fundamentals right. Make sure your inventory, feeds, connections and data are all in good shape when you're connecting to these upstream platforms. Create a single source of customer data and inventory, and automate as much as possible.

You’ll need to use APIs to expose data and functions and easily plug in and deploy new services, channels and devices. That will let you implement the new payment options and capabilities as soon as they become available.

And you always have to be thinking about how to provide the best customer experience. It’ll require new processes and solutions to manage the end-to-end process, particularly in a complex, multichannel environment, with services like endless aisle, same day delivery, 30 minute click-and-collect and multiple shipping options.

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What tools or technologies do you recommend?

SL: Fortunately, many of the tools retailers need to create a contextual commerce strategy already exist. The contextual commerce ecosystem ranges from payments across different platforms and new delivery service partnerships through to smart device integrations and geolocation capabilities.

For example, there are conversational commerce platforms (such as Live Person) that can speed up your deployment and ensure you can connect to a growing mesh of customer touchpoints, now and in the future.

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What’s your advice for retailers wanting to know where to start?

SL: You first need to understand how and where your customers want to shop so that you can give them the tools to engage and transact anytime, anywhere.

Look for where you can seamlessly implement purchase opportunities into your customers’ everyday activities, keeping them on their existing devices and touchpoints as they go about their daily activities.

I suggest you start off by focusing on social and conversational commerce, such as live chat, messenger apps, digital wallets and social media platforms to complete the purchase.

If you start now, you’ll capture incremental customers and revenue, generate conversions in new channels and establish a competitive early mover advantage. 

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Cue Clothing is a leader in retail innovation. Read the Cue case study to find out how they’re unleashing seamless new services that deliver extraordinary business outcomes.

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Loyalty case study: how Z is boosting sales and repeat visits with Infinity

Z Energy has been using the Infinity unified commerce platform since 2015 to manage more than 80 million annual sales across 350 Z and Caltex retail sites, as well as in 100 commercial sites.

This case study shares how Z is now using Infinity for its new Pumped loyalty programme to create more compelling offerings for customers, build a competitive advantage and lower customer acquisition and retention costs.

Andy Stewart, Owner of Site Systems Platforms at Z, explains that the launch of Pumped was a huge success: 

“The transaction volume and number of new customers created were unprecedented. Week on week, we have continued to increase our loyalty volume within the Caltex network.”

Dan Coffey, Z’s Marketing Strategy Manager, says that its new  loyalty solution is just the beginning: 

“Infinity is the cornerstone of our future innovation and Pumped has the ability to go much deeper than the first iteration we’ve delivered. We’re looking forward to using our new platform to give our customers valuable rewards that keep them coming back for more.”

A new view on retail process improvement

I recently joined Triquestra as Account and Channel Manager after spending five years with a business process management software company.

Working with customers to simplify their operations and sustain a consistent improvement culture was my goal there. Now I’m looking forward to helping retailers support their processes, culture and innovation mindset with better systems.

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In this increasingly connected world, it should be getting easier for teams to collaborate, share, and learn from each other, but the reality for many is quite the opposite. A growing problem is operation complexity – having a range of web, in-store and mobile channels, and the desire to reduce duplication and operating costs while increasing efficiency and accuracy. All this can actually make it harder for retailers to innovate and improve.

So how do you simplify operations and sustain a consistent improvement culture across different channel requirements whilst staying competitive?

It is not enough to run improvement initiatives and simply ‘hope’ that changes will be embraced and sustained. The right environment and structure is needed so that people are motivated to participate, and are personally invested in sustaining ongoing change and improvement.

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3 reasons why Infinity will give you a process improvement edge

1: Simplify your operations with greater visibility

If you’ve had separate databases for your call centre, or your staff couldn’t see what customers were doing on your website, those frustrations can be a thing of the past with Infinity. 

Infinity connects your point of sale, inventory, order, and customer data in one centralised hub so that previous channel limitations or legacy system incompatibilities no longer get in the way.

By giving your team access to consistent information whether they work at head office, in-store or in your distribution centre, you’ll streamline processes, reduce errors and be able to deliver more seamless, accurate customer experiences across all channels.

2: Building that improvement culture

With the building blocks for a strong improvement culture in place, your teams will feel more empowered to collaborate on improvement efforts. Engaged teams armed with the right attitude and tools can do amazing things for your customers and your bottom line.

The Infinity unified commerce platform is very easy to learn. It eliminates pain points and silos for your staff so they get greater enjoyment out of working together and have more time to think about what will surprise and delight your customers. 

3: Continue to innovate quickly

Because Infinity is a mature platform, your teams can focus on delivering innovation because the core functionality they need already exists. Add the access you’ll have to Infinity’s open API environment, and your developers and third parties can act quickly to create and deploy new services, channels and devices with confidence. 

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Take a closer look at what Infinity can do to improve your retail operations:

It’s the small things that make a big difference in retail

I recently joined Triquestra as Key Account Manager. I have more than 20 years’ experience in sales and marketing across vendor management, business planning, implementing go-to market strategies and partner development. 

My big focus here is customer experience, which got me thinking about what makes me choose one brand over another and how I can help my new clients lead the way in loyalty. 

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It’s not just what you want to sell but how you want people to feel

I fully believe that it’s the small things that create customer loyalty and keep me, as a consumer, coming back for more.

I was visiting a friend and she served a chipotle mayonnaise that was delicious. After searching in various supermarkets, I was unable to find a bottle. I reached out to my friend who gave me a website to try. I found it and decided to order three bottles while I was at it.

When the package arrived, to my surprise, the fourth compartment held a free bottle of mushroom sauce which was equally as yummy and which I will definitely be purchasing again.

Although a pointed, persuasive sales message is important in winning customers, it is the subtler and smaller appeals that create real loyalty and in turn repeat business. 

Instead of focusing only on what you want to sell, consider how you want people to feel. The customer experience is a critically important driver of emotional connection. An emotionally connected customer will buy more of your products and services, visit you more often, exhibit less price sensitivity, pay more attention to your communications, follow your advice, and recommend you more – everything you hope their experience will cause them to do. 

This emotional connection is something that I have grown to expect. I have a wallet full of loyalty cards and my phone is loaded with apps – some belonging to the clients that I look after here at Triquestra. I am always excited to see personalised offers, redeem my points and be treated in a way that makes me feel valued. 

I make my purchasing decisions based on these good experiences, and in turn, I consciously decide not to shop at companies that don’t make an effort. Multiply me by all the shoppers out there and you see how you have to things right from the start.

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Building those opportunities to wow

In my conversations with Infinity clients, we talk about optimising the end-to-end customer experience – every aspect of how customers interact with their brands, products, promotions and service offerings, on and offline. I’m looking forward to helping with both the big picture and the little things that will maximise customer value and build that emotional connection. 

If you want to build a better loyalty programme and get closer to your customers, contact us and we’ll work with you to make that goal a reality. You can also find out more about Infinity Loyalty.

In retail, change is still the only constant

Hello – I’m Scott Lewis, Triquestra’s new Sales Executive. I recently joined the TQ team after working for a 3D company, where I was responsible for launching and selling interactive software across Australia and New Zealand.

Prior to that, I spent 10 years working in the telco sector across marketing, channel sales, partnerships and B2B direct sales. My past retail-related experiences have taught me how consistency across all channels is now the key to the future retail success.

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It’s been an interesting few years

Only a few years back, in go-to-market meetings at the telco, multiple stakeholders from across the business would discuss how we were going to launch the ‘latest and greatest’ smartphone coming to market (you can probably guess the one I’m referring to). 

There was the usual debate around stock allocations between channels and which partners would commit to which volume, and who would get the lion’s share of the marketing co-op budget etc, etc. But then there was also the question of how to drive more traffic to the website so the retail stores didn’t get inundated, particularly in launch week. Because of course we wanted everyone to have a good customer experience. Hang on, what? We don’t want customers going to our stores?

Were we heading down the path where our website or app was going to replace the traditional retail store? Yes, I could see the cost benefit – less rent, staff, monthly trade marketing change-outs, the list goes on… But were we sure that consumers were ready to stay at home and do all their shopping on the couch or from their phone rather than go to the malls and high streets and speak to real people? 

The answer was ‘no’ then, and it still is. Recent studies back this up and challenge those who predicted that retail would go through a paradigm shift to being 100% online. Today in Australia, online shopping is responsible for only 9% of total retail sales. In the US, it’s 10%. While those numbers are set to rise, the in-store expertise is still highly valued.

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Obviously some people are more than happy to order online and wait for the courier or mail. But many want to go to a store and see and touch items before buying. Get face-to-face advice. Have things fixed. Want to physically compare X with Y. Browse for a gift when they’re not sure what they want.

So where to next?

It’s such an interesting time for retail – as well as an amazing opportunity. And the Triquestra team is passionate about complementing the best parts of the traditional brick-and-mortar experience with the online experience, so that regardless of how or where a client’s customers prefer to buy, their  experience is consistent, tracked and personalised to their needs and interests. Especially as we all know that you have one shot to get it right and begin earning customer loyalty, or shoppers will go elsewhere. 

I think it’ll be no surprise to any CIO that to deliver a great front end experience, the back end infrastructure needs to be robust and can adapt and integrate with the plethora of apps and systems that are fast coming to market and re-shaping the retail landscape. 

It’s being part of this technology innovation, combined with sharing the success stories and learnings of our clients that I am looking forward to the most. How they’ve adopted a unified commerce approach within their businesses and how we were able to help them navigate the technological change in order to better anticipate the future needs of their customers – regardless of where and how they choose to shop.  

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If you would like to know how we can help you embrace change and offer exceptional customer experiences, I’d be happy to help out. After all, as they say – change is the only constant.

Welcome to Bridged IT Services, our new New Zealand channel partner

We’re pleased to welcome Bridged IT Services to help us support Infinity customers even better throughout New Zealand. 

The Bridged IT Services team will introduce more retailers and fuel suppliers to Infinity with their end-to-end service that includes Infinity licencing, installation, maintenance and first level support through their 24/7 help desk and agents around the country. They’ll offer a package complete with software, hardware, payments and IT.

“We’ve been working with fuel supply customers for several years now and when I saw Infinity, I was really impressed with its simplicity combined with its level of detail. It’s far ahead of other systems, and as we start to talk to retailers in other industries, we know Infinity will be best for them,” says Gurjit Singh, CEO at Bridged IT. “We’re looking forward to helping retailers unify point of sale, inventory and order management for better customer service and experience.” 

Kelly Brown, Triquestra CEO says, “Bridged IT Services is a well-established company with a track record of great customer service and high-availability support. We’re thrilled with this new channel partnership and how it will help us reach new clients and offer even better support to current clients.”