clienteling ebook

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www.escalate.com Escalate Retail Clienteling 1

Up lose

The Evolution of CRM� Most Retailers Are Just Beginning

to Explore the Possibilities

For years, both the corner shopkeeper and the national department store have strug-gled with the same fundamental challenge: increasing the number of customer vis-its and the amount those customers spend with each visit. Certainly, understandingcustomers, having the right merchandise, and delivering the appropriate experienceare levers that can be pulled, but achieving the right setting for each lever can be achallenge. Today’s most successful retailers are learning to integrate CustomerRelationship Management (CRM) techniques as both a strategy and a process to man-age these levers in order to ultimately increase customer visits and spending per visit.

In practice, CRM has existed in retail as a manualprocess ever since shopkeepers first opened theirdoors. For over 100 years, salespeople have recordedshoppers' preferences, activities, and important datesin individual "black books." This pen-and-paperinformation is used to help service the samecustomers on an ongoing basis, and to maintainconnections with those customers through the years.Today, the industry is just beginning to define andcapitalize on the capabilities of technology as anenabler of CRM, not just as a marketing function, butalso as a business strategy aimed at understandingcustomers and optimizing interactions to increasecustomer loyalty, retailer revenue, and company profit.

Instinctively, retailers understand their customers. They certainly know about man-agement. However, applying the "relationship" element of CRM can be puzzling,since most customers want a good retail experience rather than a relationship withtheir retailers. Exceptions to this "no relationship" rule thrive at retailers like Nordstromand Bloomingdales, where sales associates develop high-touch, personal relation-ships with select clients. This is a proven model that drives repeat customer visits andincreases sales per visit. Obviously, this commission-based, highly-paid model is notapplicable to—or appropriate for—all retail organizations. But its essential function—to apply the right touch of service and develop relationships with customers that de-liver a lifetime of value—is one from which any organization can benefit if a way canbe found to use available technology to scale it appropriately and cost-effectively.

...and personal


Clienteling: The Key to Sales Optimization� Delivering the Right Message to the Right Customer at the Right Moment

A blend of technology and business processes termed “sales optimization” is emerging to deliver on the promise of increased sales productivity. Sales optimization enablesan organization to capture, organize, and distribute the collective sales knowledge of the organization to the salespeople who need it at the moment that they need it. Salesoptimization “pushes” knowledge; it is proactiverather than passive. Being proactive is the definingcharacteristic of sales optimization.

Recent advances in technology have enabled EscalateRetail to take sales optimization from theory topractice with the development of Escalate Clientel-ing: a proven sales optimization solution. The keycomponent is an intelligent engine that organizes in-formation and manages how and when to distributethat information.

Escalate Retail’s Clienteling solution delivers a suite ofsales and marketing applications built upon the intel-ligent engine to create product, customer and processmanagement tools that drive proactive sales man-agement practices, and help deliver the right mes-sage to the right customer at the right moment.

Escalate Clienteling sends guidance to salespeople at the moment it is most helpful,improving their tactics and leveraging the best practices of the organization.


Fueling the Intelligent Engine� Consolidating Customer Knowledge From Every Corner of the Enterprise

The “fuel” of Escalate Retail’s intelligent engine is the knowledge thatevery organization accumulates about how to sell. For most retailers,that knowledge rests in the heads and Client Books of their best salesassociates, or in the rich analysis performed by marketers and dataanalysts. Escalate Clienteling delivers value throughout the organiza-tion by sharing this knowledge easily with salespeople across the retailenterprise. This structured methodology for capturing and dissemi-nating the collective wisdom of an organization is then easily leveragedby all salespeople to boost sales productivity and increase the number ofpeak performers throughout the organization.

Record: Sales activity between salespeople and

customers is captured in various forms.

Analyze: Customer data is delivered to

Escalate Retail’s Business Intelligence and Analytic

tools, complete with data mining capabilities suited to

discerning patterns in a large quantity of data.

Plan: Marketers view the results of analytic processing

to draw conclusions about how to best sell to different

types of customers.

Monitor: The intelligent agent manages thousands

of potential actions, and these all work best at different

times. To regulate the timing of actions, a state machine

keeps track of the current state of every monitored event.

Deliver: The intelligent agent retrieves the appropriate

content from a repository and delivers it to the salesperson.

Interact: The salesperson then relies upon the Escalate

Retail’s Clienteling Dashboards for daily guidance.

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With Escalate Clienteling, Customer Information is Processed, Analyzed, andActed Upon throughout the Retail Enterprise to Optimize Sales Processes andPersonalize Customer Interactions.


A Track Record of Success� Leading Brands Leverage Escalate Clienteling to Help Win the Battle for Customer Loyalty

Several of today’s most high-profile and successful retail organizations have turned to Escalate Clienteling to help them achieve higherlevels of sales optimization, salesperson productivity, and share of the wallet. A few examples follow:

180 stores across North America

Installed Escalate Clienteling in June 2006

Goal: Automate best practices of their“Legendary Customer Service”

Result: “The most significant change in theway we communicate with our customersin the 185-year history of our company.”

35 stores in 12 states

Installed Escalating Clienteling v9.0 in 2007

Goal: Reduce promotional pricing andadvertising and increase customer loyalty

Result: As much as doubled sales vs. previous year’s events

100 stores in 27 states

Installed Escalate RM and Clientelingin 2005

Goal: Increase salesperson interaction with customers and raise salesperson productivity

Result: 25% increase in “Peak Performers;” 30% of all sales transactions leveragedpersonal book information and guidance

-- Claudio Del Vecchio

CEO of Brooks Brothers

Activity Management withRelationship Marketing Event-triggered actions to sales associates Synchronization between corporate marketing

and sales associate activities Follow-up associate reminders to suggest

phone calls, email or direct mail System pushes suggested contacts based

on corporate, store, department and personal “events”

Sales Associate Access Personalized dashboards, calendars, action

lists, and reminders Browser-based access at POS, kiosk, PC,

or mobile device Roles and permissions to control data access

levels by different associates Event-triggered dialogs Synchronized, cross-channel dialogs: email, direct mail,

web, call center, kiosk, and wireless device

How Escalate Clienteling Works in the Retail Enterprise� Key Capabilities Drive Access, Analysis, and Action

Client Management Real time client profile access and editing Detailed customer purchase history, brand

preferences and other CRM data Multi-channel customer contact history Holds, service tickets and alterations by clientWish list management

Reporting Actionable reporting on associate activities

and effectiveness, including best practices Comprehensive customer analysis Flexible client query tool



Clienteling helps organizations evolve their sales practices. Customer Loyaltyis closely aligned with the effectiveness of the sales professional.

Sales Professionals

Diamond

Platinum

Gold

Silver

Client Book

Top

Aspiring Stars

Emerging

New & Coachable

Monitor Compliance

Escalate Clienteling: Delivering Tangible Value� Sales Optimization is Now AchievableAs knowledge is shared throughout an entire sales organization, the financialimpact can be substantial. Sales optimization, when fueled by Escalate Clienteling can:

• Increase revenue per customer and per associate

• Increase customer visit frequency

• Increase average revenue per visit

• Enable management to automate best practices across all stores

• Increase conversion rates

• Decrease customer turnover

• Reduce discounting and returns

• Accelerate the learning curvefor new sales associates

Today, companies are not satisfied with CRM investments that simply organize data and provide analytic tools. They are lookingfor a better way to achieve sales optimization. Forward-thinking leaders know that their company’s collected sales experience ispriceless, and they demand that this actionable information drive the daily activities of their sales force. Escalate Clienteling makes itpossible to elevate the entire sales force, boosting customer loyalty – and revenue --considerably.

Customers


Solutions that Simplify the Challenge of Cross-Channel Commerce� Overview

Escalate Retail was formed in 2006 by leading private equity firm Golden GateCapital through the merger of Ecometry, Inc. and GERS Retail Systems, two of theindustry’s most venerable multi-channel commerce solution providers. The combinedcompany leverages a legacy of almost 50 years serving the retail industry with asolution suite targeted to several vertical markets, including apparel, consumerelectronics, department stores, direct marketing, furniture, luxury, and specialty hardlines and soft lines.

Our clients are among the leaders in their markets, with high-profile brands likeThe Home Depot, Williams-Sonoma, Brooks Brothers, Coach, J. Crew, The Buckle,Sephora, and Coldwater Creek among the more than 500 names on our client ros-ter. Our experience serving these 500 retail clients has taught us that those who treatevery customer interaction as an opportunity to enhance their brand are the retail-ers who gain sustainable customer loyalty. We have built our business on a relent-less commitment to delivering products, solutions and services that help our clientsbuild passionate customers at every point of interaction. We help our clients createpassionate customers by delivering a comprehensive set of solutions that simplifythe inherent challenges of cross-channel commerce in the store, on the web, andover the phone.

e-Commerce

Escalate e-Commerce is built on the innovative Blue Martini Customer InteractionEngine and provides an open, scalable cross-channel application that enables re-tailers to deliver both an outstanding web shopping environment as wel as a highlypersonalized vehicle for delivering store, merchandise, marketing and service infor-mation. The complexity of managing multi-brand, multi-national websites presentssignificant challenges for business and IT executives today. Targeting, managing, andpublishing the right content and messages for customers, partners, and sales teamscan be an overwhelming task. Escalate Retail helps retailers address these challengeswith a comprehensive e-Commerce application that delivers timely and relevantcontent across channels.

With powerful and flexible merchandising, integrated e-marketing, embeddedanalytics, and massive scalability, Escalate e-Commerce is a robust solution for re-tailers who seek to drive more revenue at a lower cost through a web-based chan-nel. Combining the most advanced shopping, service and product information toolswith a rich customer history and profile, the application delivers a platform tailoredto the unique requirements of today’s cross-channel environment.

Order Management

Escalate Retail has been helping many of the world’s leading retailers coordinate andcommunicate with their cross-channel customers for over a decade. Our CustomerOrder Solution provides retail partners like The Home Depot and Lamps Plusleverage with real-time tracking of multi-channel orders throughout the entire orderlife cycle to achieve best-in-class customer order capabilities.

As a result, these and other retail partners have maximized revenues through seam-less cross-channel integration, lowered costs by processing orders more efficientlyand ultimately they have achieved greater brand loyalty by improving customersatisfaction levels in every transaction.

Loyalty Marketing

In today’s retailing climate full of choice, it’s becoming mission critical that everycustomer experience is personalized and seamlessly managed in every sales channeland every interaction.

For retailers still operating with disconnected silos of information between theirdifferent sales channels, building a loyal customer base can be challenging, if notimpossible. Faced with a fractured customer view, these retailers are unable topersonalize interactions in any of their channels as they find themselves either swim-ming in a sea of irrelevant, unorganized customer data in one channel or strugglingwith too little customer insight from another.


To help our retail partners address these issues, Escalate Retail’s Customer Loyaltysolution provides a 360° degree view of the customer to build sustainable loyaltythrough consistent, relevant, and timely communication and outreach.

We are proud that our innovative Customer Loyalty solutions help many of the lead-ing brands in the retail and hospitality industries, including Sephora, Brooks Broth-ers, Harrah's Entertainment and Bloomingdale’s. Our solutions help these and otherretailers develop closed-loop multi-channel marketing processes that fostercontinuous dialogues and build customer commitment.

ClientelingAs cross-channel shopping becomes the de-facto method of choice for mostconsumers, it becomes critical that every customer experience strategy incorporatea unified, customer-focused approach to every transaction. And since brick and mor-tar stores still represent the lion’s share of revenue for most retailers, the in-storeexperience is the area that demands the most attention.

The reality for most retailers, however, is that their stores are disconnected from theirother channels and the enterprise, and as a result they are unable to provide tightconnections to critical data and activities store personnel require. This lack of timelyinformation makes it difficult for store associates to provide the level of service thatis only possible when they communicate effectively and frequently with their bestcustomers.

To help our retail partners address these issues, Escalate Retail’s Clienteling solutionconnects the store to the enterprise to break down the silos that often exist betweensales channels. This approach results in a complete 360 degree view of everycustomer in every channel, every time they visit your brand. To fulfill Escalate’s mis-sion to create passionate customers, we have invested heavily in bringing to marketa Store Experience solution that ensures all store personnel have the tools they needto deliver personalized, relevant, and service-oriented interactions every time acustomer walks through the door.

Solutions that Simplify the Challenge of Cross-Channel Commerce� Overview (continued)

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