The Green Bead
I once worked for a Corporate Vice President who I saw stoop to pick up a wrapper on a retail floor. He knew that retail is detail and telegraphed it to those around him.
In this aspect, eCommerce is the same as physical retail. When I led global operations for a $1B+ DTC brand, we tracked and measured errors on each page, and ran corrections of errors when quality metrics fell below (a pretty high) standard in any week. As we uncovered and fixed issues with localization, with QA, and with a whole bunch of other stuff, our conversion rates improved, repeat purchases increased, and our Net Promoter Score improved. Not all at once, but over time.
About a year ago I had a conversation with the CMO of a global consumer electronics retailer, who had a management consulting background and was new to ecommerce. He wanted to hear examples of effective ecommerce digital strategies.
I shared with him the importance of understanding the details of the customer journey, and told him about the excitement I had finding a the correlation between a high product return rate and long delivery windows. (Customers returned products at a much higher rate when those products had a delivery window of over X days). As a result of that analysis, we fixed some low-hanging-fruit issues in our supply chain, changed how we merchandised longer-lead-time products, and improved our verbiage around shipping windows. These changes fixed what most had assumed were minor details, maybe not even worth fixing. But together they had a material impact on revenue growth, cost savings and customer satisfaction.
Doesn't seem too strategic, he said. That's just tactics.
When I thought back on that later, I guess I could have led with something more strategic: I could have talked about cross-company $100MM+ revenue strategic initiatives that fundamentally changed our omnichannel strategy, our merchandising approach, our entire content management platform. However, without a maniacal focus on and appreciation for how the details show up to customers, even the best retail strategies won’t work, can’t work. I led with my example because, in my experience, getting the customer-facing details right is the most important part of any retail strategy. Execution is strategic.
The other day, I was in a company-owned mobile carrier store in Bellevue, WA trying to get an issue resolved with my family’s brand-new cell service. As I waited at a small table by the window for the next available associate, I saw a lone green bead on the carpeted floor. The kind that belongs on a necklace. As I waited, I saw store associates criss-crossing the store and stepping over that green bead at least ten times without picking it up.
I never did get my cell service issue resolved. After a very frustrating (for me) and certainly costly (for them) four days of call center, website, and retail interactions, I returned those 4 devices and cancelled our new service.
I could tell you all the things they got wrong with their retail call center training, website functionality, acquisition marketing, CRM, issue ticketing and technical support. [It really was maddening!] But it all boiled down to one thing. The green bead. The company just did not sweat the details of how they showed up to customers. I saw it on the retail floor, they saw it when 4 phones and 4 plans came back.
In retail, it’s always about the green bead.
This post goes out to all the folks I’ve worked with who pick up those green beads, even when no one’s watching.
