Joe Megibow, SVP & GM, Omni-channel, ecommerce, American Eagle Outfitters, has been in his new position less than a year, but he realizes the critical mission ahead: Eliminate channel conflict and create a single view of the customer to support marketing efforts and offers.
During his session, “Creating a Customer-Centric Omni-Channel Experience,” on Tuesday during the Forrester Research Forum for Customer Experience Professionals East 2013 at the New York Marriott Marquis, Megibow told attendees he was given a list of four crucial objectives when he started at American Eagle Outfitters: future flagship is mobile; technology-integrated multichannel; single view of customer; and rapid international expansion.
Megibow said he was working with a small online team when he started his job at American Eagle Outfitters.
“We have 30% of our business coming in via mobile devices, but we outsourced mobile, digital marketing, and data analysis,” Megibow said. “There was no common denominator. But if you think of our target demo (15-25-year-olds), that is a very digital audience."
Megibow offered his definition of omni-channel: “It starts with customer at center of everything you do.”
The goal, he added, is elimination of all channel conflict “so customers just look at us as one company. Yet when people bring mobile phones into stores and look at products on mobile devices, we’ve put channel conflict all over retail.”
How has American Eagle Outfitters attempted to stem the tide of channel conflict?
“We started by listening,” Megibow said. “We found that 62% of all our emails were read on a mobile device. We’ve done Voice of the Customer, Facebook surveys, contact center, and research studies. How do we get all of this data in one place?”
Megibow said the company sent out an email blast to its customers, asking them to write reviews about online products. But when this occurred, mobile reviews were not rolled out and consumers who opened the email from their mobile devices were directed to a link that was not accessible.
Following a customer complaint, American Eagle Outfitters resolved the problem and now, Megibow said, the company sees a 20% increase in reviews every day. Due to this, employees across-the-board embraced the goal of creating that single view of the customer.
“Everyone came to party including stores, product design, and product Quality Assurance/technology,” he said. “They all get copies of this customer feedback. And QA/tech is engaging in this and making adjustments. You just had to give customers a voice and listen. We need single view of the customer.”
Megibow said the company has one distribution center in Kansas to accommodate its more than 1,000 stores.
“We’re wiring our stores as distribution centers,” Megibow said. “We want a single view of inventory for the customer. Associates in stores can ship directly from the store when the DC is out of stock.”
Megibow envisions store layout to look drastically different in five years as POS is moving away from its current setup.
“There is still a huge gap between mobile and online, and the consolidation of disparate data, but this is a foundational necessity for everything we want to do,” he said. “It’s a huge initiative for us.”