Staying Ahead of the Game: Behind Foot Locker’s Innovative CX Program to Fit the Modern Athlete
We at Pearl-Plaza have had the pleasure of working with some of the world’s greatest brands—and one brand that definitely stands out on that list is global footwear retailer, Foot Locker. Foot Locker is constantly striving to deliver the most memorable, innovative experiences to their “modern athlete” customers, and they have some incredible exciting initiatives planned for the next year!
Pearl-Plaza sat down with Tyler Saxey, Senior Director of Global VoC and OMNI at Foot Locker, as he shared four innovations that have fearlessly driven their innovative customer experience program. We delve into what those innovations look like and how Foot Locker delivers, then sum it up with four tips you can leverage to drive innovative experiences. Let’s dive in!
4 Tips to Drive Innovative Customer Experience
Innovation Tip #1: Understand Your Audience
Foot Locker punted a traditional view of what an “athlete” is for an all-inclusive approach they call the “modern athlete.” So what is the modern athlete? According to Saxey, the term “modern athlete” encompasses every athlete at any age, stage, and sport.
These athletes are bringing their “A” game to their sport (whether that’s on the field, in their home, or at the gym). When they come into a Foot Locker store, log onto the app, or peruse the website, these modern athletes are looking to “talk shop” on the latest trends and products, and ultimately to take part in a more human and memorable experience beyond basic transactions.
By understanding their consumer, Foot Locker knows its role is to provide expertise with tools, products, and experiences to keep athletes fired up.
Innovation Tip #2: Integrate Flexible Innovation
Foot Locker considers every possible opportunity for the customer to leave feedback. In fact, Saxey says they are “pulling every data point [they] can get [their] hands on!” Social media and social care have been a massive opportunity for the legendary footwear retailer. Also, Foot Locker enables customers to use Apple and Google to message on-call agents as if they were texting a friend.
Saxey shares, “We’ve had success with video feedback, as it helps layer in the sentiment. Interestingly, we initially thought that our younger demographic would gravitate to video feedback. However, it’s such a user-friendly feedback tool that we’ve seen many responses from our older demographic utilizing video feedback as well because it’s so much easier for them.”
“From a company and customer perspective, having the freedom of innovation and the flexibility to simply hit record and share their thoughts is incredible! Sometimes we get three, four, or five-minute-long videos, and the unspoken details in the facial expressions, tones, and mannerisms are invaluable. You could never duplicate that feedback from a single comments box, and these elements add to the powerful integration of unstructured data.”
It is ultra important to the success of Foot Locker and the happiness of their consumers to be an actively listening company that prioritizes the voice of customer at the highest levels of the organization. And that means giving customers the most varied and innovative opportunities to leave feedback.
Innovation Tip #3: Plan for Upcoming Trends & Expectations
Foot Locker has long kept their voice of customer (VoC) program front and center of its organization, and is diligent in amplifying its innovative CX program at every level.
This customer-centric hyper focus (as well as always on technology) detects trends and allows the company to pivot quickly to meet the need. Some of these trends may only have a 2-3 month window of opportunity for Foot Locker to supply its modern athletes with hot ticket items. Saxey shared, “We have to be able to shape our customer experience to meet those needs.”
“How we design surveys is crucial in ensuring we do our due diligence as practitioners to assure they aren’t immediately closed and deleted. Customers don’t naturally gravitate toward surveys, but they appreciate the opportunity to give feedback. We have excellent partners like Pearl-Plaza working to identify trends so we can be precise and agile with limiting time frames.”
Innovation Tip #4: Stay Ahead of the Game
How do you mine through that data to find what’s valuable and take action to stay ahead of the game? Saxey says, “We rely heavily on Pearl-Plaza, and they are a huge partner with us in mining and sifting through text analytics. We like to keep our surveys super short with a primary comment box, and the only way to succeed in doing that is if you partner with the right vendor to help you mine the unstructured data.”
In partnering with Pearl-Plaza, Foot Locker has the tools to make more informed decisions and can pull and consolidate data to get a more complete picture of the customer experience. This integration has allowed Foot Locker to break out of traditional survey silos like NPS and CSAT.
Saxey says, “ We want our modern athletes to feel like they have a wonderful experience, but we know sometimes things happen. Thankfully, we can sift out no-purchase data through observation and interactions on our sites.”
“The ability to sort data offers precision in looking at the customer who may not be pleased and gives clues to why they are not purchasing, if they had a bad experience, or couldn’t find the product. This ability is invaluable to our strategy moving forward.”
We enjoyed learning from Foot Locker’s Tyler Saxey about how innovative CX programs benefit the modern athlete and help companies bring their a-game. If you want to learn more about the ability to prioritize, and drive the most effective actions at every level of your business click here.
