Elizabeth Canon of Fashion’s Collective wonders why many of the world’s leading luxury brands have shamefully low customer service
DIGITAL
The New Customer Service Means Offering Convenience
This is the featured image caption
Credit: This is the featured image credit
Over the last decade, collaborations between luxury brands and contemporary artists have gone beyond mere artistic partnerships towards a new kind of luxury branding.
PARIS – Art and fashion have always developed side by side, for fashion, like art, often gives visual expression to the cultural zeitgeist. During the 1920s, Salvador Dalà created dresses for Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiapparelli. In the 1930s, Ferragamo’s shoes commissioned designs for advertisements from Futurist painter Lucio Venna, while Gianni Versace commissioned works from artists such as Alighiero Boetti and Roy Lichtenstein for the launch of his collections. Yves Saint Laurent’s vast art collection, recently auctioned at Christie’s in Paris, testified to his great love of art and revealed the influence of a variety of artists on his own designs.
In the 1980s, relationships between luxury brands and artists were advanced when Alain Dominique Perrin created the Fondation Cartier. In the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, a book marking the foundation’s 20th anniversary, Perrin says he makes “a connection between all the different sorts of arts, and luxury goods are a kind of art. Luxury goods are handicrafts of art, applied art.”
The Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemparain building in Paris
Elizabeth Canon of Fashion’s Collective wonders why many of the world’s leading luxury brands have shamefully low customer service
Discussing my luxury industry predictions for 2013, I mentioned customer service as a critical trend for the coming year, adding that “No one in luxury really likes to discuss customer service because the assumption is always that, as a luxury brand, there is an innate high degree of service.”
On the contrary, many of the world’s leading luxury brands have shamefully low customer service. The problem is not that luxury has neglected service, rather they have neglected the fact that convenience is a measure of service and that customers now expect convenience across a multitude of experiences.
Now, people create on-demand experiences with brands that span more platforms than ever, and the result is that gaps in customer service are exposed.
“ The problem is not that luxury has neglected service, rather they have neglected convenience ”
Someone might see a product in a magazine, type it into a search engine, only to see no matching search results. There are many possible reasons for this (the product was not merchandised properly on-site, an organic SEO protocol is not in place, or it may never have been added to the ecommerce site to begin with), but none of them matter to the customer.
There is also the possibility that a customer’s reaction to the editorial may be visiting the brick and mortar store in search of the item. Here, the experience may be disrupted when the sales staff is not be aware of the editorial coverage or the item in question.
All of these scenarios present pain points for customers, and each of these pain points are a matter of convenience.
“ As customers, we seek experiences that make us feel we are using the commodity of time in the best ways possible ”
After all, time is the biggest luxury of all in our modern world. As customers, we seek experiences that make us feel we are using the commodity of time in the best ways possible. This doesn’t always mean completing purchases in the quickest way; sometimes the element of leisure is what feels luxurious.
We might want to spend the afternoon shopping in a boutique, or purchase something and wait for it to be custom made. These are things that some customers deem positive uses of their time. But having to actually work to find a product, gather information or receive good service are all frustrating experiences that ultimately leave the customer dissatisfied.
“ Net-a-Porter changed the ecommerce experience the same way Virgin changed the flying experience ”
What brands today must understand is that an individual’s experience as a customer has evolved greatly. Other industries have improved service and raised the standard across the board.
Think of Zappos or Net-a-Porter, they have changed the ecommerce experience the same way Jet Blue and Virgin have changed the flying experience. The expectation of a luxury customer will be that a premium brand will at least meet the new standards, if not exceed them.
Just as storytelling now applies to all platforms from storefront to pinboard, internal alignment across departments is necessary to provide good customer service. And even when this is not an easy business reality, exposing customers to internal issues has no place in the luxury experience.
To further investigate CRM on Luxury Society, we invite your to explore the related materials as follows:
– 10 Retail Strategies for Luxury Brands to Improve CRM
– Raising Customer Loyalty in the Midst of an Uncertain World
– Do Affluent Customers Value Rewards?
Founder & President, The FC Tech Group
As the founder of FC Tech Group, Elizabeth is focused on leading the customer experience practice across luxury verticals. Her involvement in client work includes bringing research and audit results to life through executive education, prioritized action plans, and developing platforms of internal thought leadership within organizations.
