Mumbai : 1st Retail Committee Meeting "The Customer Experience"

The Indo-French Chamber of Commerce & Industry had successfully conducted its first Retail Committee Meeting for FY 2019-20 on Friday, 5th April 2019 in Mumbai. The meeting was very interesting as it gave the members an insight on ‘The Customer Experience- a next competitive battleground’.

The session started with a brief introduction on IFCCI by Mr. Bruno Bronquard, Regional Director of IFCCI Mumbai which was followed by a welcome speech by Mr. Francois Arpels, Co-founder of Brands & Beyond and Chairman of the Retail Committee. He also introduced the next speaker.

Mr. Matthieu Rochette-Schneider, General Manager - Greater China & South East Asia and Mr. Aamir Attarwala, Overseas Marketing Consultant from Centdegrés jointly presented  “Offline/Online – New Rules of Retail for a new age of customers”. They stated the importance of an Omnichanneland Digital presence as a key factor for success. They shared examples of successful brands who have adopted the concept of showrooms as well as web rooms with accessibility and awareness of internet.

Mr. Hozefa Attari, Co-founder of Networkbay Retail presented “Tech as the new disruptor” He explained the different models implemented by global retailers who use technology either to transform retail experience based on half store-half app experience to customers, some who curate personalised offerings for each customer, some retailers that create super powered sales associates, some retailers that experiment at the Shelf’s edge and some that use retail as a service.

The third topicwas on “Intelligent Algorithms – a key to help retailers ensure compliance and customer centricity”which was presented by Ms. Shilpa Rao, Head for Retail Strategic Initiatives at Tata Consultancy Services. Ms. Rao presented on the chatbots, intelligent mix, and storespace optimization through algorithms by giving us examples about clients who have witnessed a marginal increase in their sales. She also stated that price and promo optimisation can be achieved through Big Data andleveraging Artificial intelligence can drive-in store compliance and assist in hyper personalisation for customers.

The final presentation was on “The magic and logic of Customer experience” which was presented by Mr. Francois Arpels. He spoke about the next six retail trends that can help drive customer experience” He also shared how retail spaces can evoke emotions and engage clients, reframe customer touchpoints, be social hubs, personalise in-store experience, maintain their authenticity while being more transparent and providing enhanced assistance to customers.   

Mr Arpels concluded the seminar by thanking the participants and requesting them for their inputs on topics/themes in order to format our next retail committee meeting.

We would like to thank Mr. Dinesh Bakshi- Zonal Head of Pernod Ricard India for their kind hospitality.