Empowering Associates, Delighting Shoppers: AllSaints' CIO Talks Global Evolutions in Employee and Customer Experience
Last week, UK fashion brand AllSaints announced plans to introduce a new mobile point-of-sale system in over 200 stores worldwide, marking an expansion of an existing partnership with omnichannel cloud platform provider NewStore. The British fashion retailer had earlier partnered with the tech company to replace its in-house direct-to-consumer mobile app which, since its launch in March 2023, has garnered over 75,000 downloads.
Founded in London in 1994, the fashion retailer now boasts over 280 stores worldwide, along with a robust online presence. AllSaints also employs around 2,400 people across 27 countries and regions including the UK, France, Ireland, USA, Mexico, Canada, Japan, South Korea, and China, making the need for seamless workforce experience all the more important. "By expanding our partnership, we are elevating the overall customer experience and future-proofing our technology strategy at the same time," said James Reid, chief innovation officer, AllSaints.
The extended partnership is designed to empower retail associates and make their jobs easier, streamlining the checkout process and allowing AllSaints stylists to assist customers anywhere on the shop floor using only iPhone or iPad. The new features will also allow associates greater control over and visibility into data customer, order, and inventory data, leading to a higher proportion of unified commerce flows, the company says.
In this conversation with RIS News, Reid discusses how the relationship has enhanced the overall customer experience, how processes have changed as a result of the partnership, and the plans for a more unified commerce ecosystem going forward.
The Unified Commerce Experience
AllSaints embarked on the new partnership in order to give its app experience a refresh following a new website launch in 2022. “We wanted to make sure we enabled all of our customers to get access to our product wherever and however they decided to interact with us. This had to be done quickly and efficiently and needed to be really tightly integrated with our other platforms so that we are being consistent, and it needed to deliver real value to our customers,” Reid shares, adding that the integration has set the right baseline for some “really exciting” additional capabilities arriving in the new year.
At a granular level, a number of processes have changed due to the development of the app. From a UX perspective, Reid says the browsing, product presentation and discovery, and checkout flow capabilities are a significant leap forward. Additionally, internal processes have become much more streamlined now that team members have access to a single ‘back end’ that can drive multiple customer presentations and journeys.
Ultimately, however, it comes back to shoppers.
“Our success is directly tied to the feedback we receive from our customers. The fact that we have an average app rating of 4.9 stars from more than 8,000 reviews across the Apple App Store and Google Play Store means we are seeing great traction among our most loyal shoppers. On top of that, app downloads continue to rise month over month, and the app has become a significant revenue driver for the brand. All of these metrics indicate that we are trending in the right direction.”
The key driver is to bring the company's online and in-store experiences far closer together, Reid says, preferring to focus on “unified commerce” rather than the concept of “omnichannel.”
“It’s a clearer demonstration that we need to have a single common approach rather than multiple components with some degree of integration between them,” Reid shares. “We want our customers to be able to choose to interact with AllSaints however they want and to receive a consistent and excellent level of service at the same time.”
