Clienteling in luxury retail is setting new standards for developing highly personalized relationships with customers and driving loyalty.

Steve Dennis, president of SageBerry Consulting, said it best: “Even ‘very good’ is no longer good enough.”

Customers are tired of purely digital experiences, and they are craving something more personal. Winning, growing, and keeping customers requires you to create deep customer resonance through unique, memorable experiences. Building that kind of resonance starts with knowing exactly how to turn customer interactions into repeatable revenue and for luxury retailers, that starts with clienteling.

What Is Luxury Clienteling?

Luxury clienteling involves building and nurturing long-term relationships with luxury retail customers through personalized shopping experiences and interactions. Luxury clienteling typically entails leveraging customer data to understand individual preferences, purchase history, and lifestyle, allowing luxury brands to anticipate and meet their customers’ needs more effectively. 

This approach often involves one-on-one interactions between knowledgeable sales associates or personal stylists and customers, whether in-store, via phone calls, email, an app, or text messages. The goal of luxury clienteling is to enhance the overall customer experience, foster brand loyalty, and drive repeat purchases.

The Importance of Luxury Retail Clienteling

Luxury clienteling and white-glove service go hand-in-hand (pun intended). Since top hats and coattails were all the rage, white-glove luxury service has set the gold standard for experience. While we may have swapped coattails for bomber jackets, customers still desire the white-glove experience in luxury retail.

It’s the deeply personal in-store experiences associated with white-glove service that customers cry out for. Utter devotion and attention to the customer is the driving principle behind luxury retail clienteling. Get it right, and you’ll scrub away any trace of disjointed experiences. 

How Technology Supports Clienteling in Luxury Retail

Savvy modern businesses can use omnichannel technology to achieve luxury retail clienteling. You need to squeeze the most out of every customer interaction. With clienteling you can, but only when it’s a component of or integrated with a mobile point of sale (mPOS). 

Luxury clienteling allows brands to turn personalized service into measurable revenue growth. UNTUCKit used NewStore’s clienteling solution to build deeper customer relationships, with clienteling transactions accounting for 5.76% of total saless and generating a 17.28% more per transaction than the overall company average. 

The right store technology will allow you do the following:

• Connect and convert: Communicate with customers virtually through chat, sending promotions and adding products and payment links to encourage customers to buy.
• Create a customer profile: Build and refine customer profiles to enable personalized future interactions. Turn the profile into a little black book full of important information, such birthdays and anniversaries. 
• Interact across channels: See every touchpoint between your brand and customers (online and off).
• Customize recommendations: Offer personalized recommendations for customers based on their unique style and needs.
• Keep all store associates in the know: Let your teams in on each customer’s profile and communications so that even if staff are off, the customer is never left hanging.

How to Train Your Store Associates for Luxury Clienteling

To be successful at luxury clienteling, store associates need product knowledge, interpersonal skills, and an understanding of how to leverage technology. Arming your store associates with the skills and information to succeed is how you win at luxury clienteling.

Product knowledge

It’s important to ensure store associates have in-depth knowledge of your inventory, including materials, craftsmanship, and unique selling points. Train them to articulate product stories and convey the value proposition effectively. This education needs to be ongoing as you will have new collections and trends will change.

Interpersonal skills

Store associates need to understand the importance of building genuine, personalized relationships with customers. Train your store associates in active listening to understand customers’ needs, preferences, and aspirations. It’s also important to teach effective communication techniques, including verbal and non-verbal cues, to convey professionalism, attentiveness, and empathy.

Point of sale

Store associates must know how to use a mobile point of sale (mPOS) device, a powerful tool for luxury clienteling. Store associates can use a mPOS to leverage important client data, including contact details, purchase history, preferences, and special occasions. This allows store associates to address customers by name, acknowledge past purchases, and reference their preferences to personalize the shopping experience.

A mPOS can also be used to check real-time inventory availability to ensure accurate information on product availability, sizes, and colors, and to process transactions efficiently while maintaining a focus on building rapport and providing exceptional service.

Store associates can also reach out to customers across channels for follow-up actions such as sending thank-you notes, notifying them of new arrivals, or reaching out about upcoming promotions.

Clienteling in Luxury Retail Made Easy With NewStore

The number of transactions is no longer the metric to watch for store success. It’s a social world out there, and every experience is shared. Customers talk to each other more than ever and smashing your customer experience every time to genuinely satisfy customers will get them talking.

Every experience you create should drive the behaviors you want to see more of from your customers. Loyalty comes from achingly beautiful satisfaction. Customers will keep coming back seeking genuine enjoyment, and you’ll keep profiting.

Get in touch and begin your journey to better retail with support from the NewStore team.

Shoppers no longer separate the brand they meet online from the one they meet in store. They expect both to recognize them. They expect the conversation to pick up where it left off. And they expect every interaction to feel like it was designed for them, not for a segment of one million. For premium retailers, knowing how to create a personalized shopping experience that meets that bar is now the baseline for loyalty.

A personalized shopping experience is what turns a high-spending customer into a repeat one, and a repeat customer into a measurable revenue channel.

What is a personalized shopping experience?

A personalized shopping experience is one where the brand uses what it knows about a customer to make every interaction more relevant. Product recommendations, communications, store visits, and service moments are all shaped by that customer’s history, preferences, and context.

This goes beyond a name in an email subject line. Real personalization is built on a unified view of the customer, one that travels with them across channels. The associate at the flagship store sees the same profile the customer sees in the brand’s app. The recommendations a shopper gets at home reflect the conversation they had in store last week. 

For premium retailers, this is what clienteling is built to deliver – an ongoing, personalized relationship between an associate and a customer that drives repeat revenue.

Why personalization matters

The business case for a personalized online shopping experience, and an equally strong in-store version, is well documented. It comes down to three things.

Higher revenue per customer. When recommendations match what a customer actually wants, basket size goes up. Personalization is one of the more reliable levers for retailers looking to increase AOV without acquiring new shoppers.

Stronger loyalty. Customers stay with brands that treat them as individuals. Personalization is one of the more durable ways to enhance customer loyalty because it compounds over time. Each interaction adds to the profile, and each future interaction gets sharper as a result.

Better margins. Personalized service reduces return rates, raises full-price sell-through, and supports more effective upselling and cross selling. The economics improve on every dimension.

Personalization is not a vanity metric. It shows up in revenue, retention, and margin.

The foundation: the capability you need before strategy

Before any personalization strategy will work, the retailer needs the underlying capability. Three pieces of infrastructure are non-negotiable.

A unified customer profile. Purchase history sits in the OMS. Preferences and engagement data sit in marketing tools. Loyalty status sits in another platform. Store conversations sit in associate tools, if they are captured at all. The capability is bringing it together into one record per customer, accessible in real time.

Real-time inventory visibility. A recommendation an associate cannot fulfill is worse than no recommendation. Personalization depends on knowing what is actually in stock across the network, not what was on hand last night.

A delivery surface inside the workflow. The unified profile has to show up where the associate already works, which means inside the POS on a mobile device, not in a separate app. Without that, the data exists but never gets used.

Personalized shopping experience strategies that drive revenue

Once the capability is in place, strategies are what teams actually do with it. The four below consistently move the needle.

1. Equip store associates with full customer context

When associates can see purchase history, sizing, preferences, wishlist activity, and past conversations, every store interaction is a chance to convert, raise the basket, or set up the next visit.

This is the core promise of retail clienteling. It gives the associate the information they need to recognize the customer, anticipate the need, and follow up after the visit. The result is consistent, measurable store revenue from the customers a brand already has, rather than relying on one-time transactions or paid acquisition. James Avery, an artisan jewelry brand where some customers have been shopping for 50 years, takes this literally. When a granddaughter walks in with a single 30-year-old earring inherited from her grandmother and asks for help finding its match, the associate can pull up decades of family purchase history at the counter. By unifying customer data with the OMS and

POS, James Avery makes sure those long-running relationships are not lost when an associate turns over or a system changes.

2. Use purchase history to shape recommendations

Past behavior is a reliable predictor of future preference. A customer who has bought three pairs of slim-fit denim does not need to be shown a relaxed cut.

In practice, this means giving the associate a single view of the customer at the moment of interaction. Last purchase. Sizing across categories. Items returned and why. Wishlist activity from the app. The conversation an associate had with that customer six months ago, and the note they left after.

That view is what turns order history into a recommendation. Without it, the associate is guessing. With it, the conversation starts at “I saw you bought the wool coat last fall, the new shearling just landed in your size,” rather than “Can I help you find anything?”

3. Create a personalized in-store shopping experience, not just digital

A personalized online shopping experience gets most of the attention, but the offline personalized shopping experience is where retailers often have the most upside. Many brands have invested heavily in digital personalization while leaving the in-store experience generic, even though the store is where the highest-spending customers actually transact.

Closing that gap is straightforward in concept. Give associates a mobile tool with the customer profile built into the POS, so it is part of how they already sell. Train them to use it as a conversation starter, not a script. Capture notes after each visit. When done consistently, this is how the store becomes a measurable revenue channel rather than a fulfillment channel. It is also one of the reasons the importance of clienteling keeps rising on retail leadership agendas.

4. Extend personalization beyond the four walls

Personalization does not have to stop when the customer leaves the store. Outreach after a visit, styling suggestions ahead of an event, restock notifications on a favorite item: each one extends the relationship.

Virtual shopping is a strong example. An associate who knows a customer well can run a video appointment that feels closer to a private styling session than a sales call. The customer gets time and attention. The associate gets to reach beyond their own catchment area. The brand gets a higher-value transaction.

Mackage shows the model working at scale. The brand built clienteling into the way associates already sell, with mobile tools that let them follow up after a visit and send personalized styling suggestions. Clienteling now drives roughly 30% of store revenue at Mackage. The store stayed central. The reach extended.

Common challenges to plan for

Most personalization programs run into the same obstacles. Naming them up front makes them easier to navigate.

Data silos. The single most common blocker. If purchase history, loyalty status, and store conversations live in separate systems, no amount of strategy will close the gap.

Associate adoption. A personalization tool that associates do not use is a budget line, not an asset. The most reliable way to drive adoption is to embed the tool inside the POS, so accessing the customer profile and following up are part of the sales workflow rather than an extra app to remember. Training and incentive alignment matter, but workflow placement matters more.

Privacy and trust. Customers are willing to share data when they see the value. They are quick to disengage when personalization feels intrusive. The line is real and worth designing around.

Measurement. Personalization is easy to talk about and harder to measure. Pick a small set of metrics, including AOV, repeat purchase rate, and associate-attributed revenue, and track them honestly.

What separates programs that drive revenue from programs that look good

Most personalization programs that miss the mark do not fail because the strategy was wrong. They failed because the program wasn’t built into how stores actually operate. Accessing customer profiles required switching between apps, adding friction to already busy workflows, so associates often skipped it. At the same time, personalization was owned by marketing, leaving store teams without a sense of responsibility. And because revenue was measured at the channel level, there was no clear way to determine whether the program was improving store performance.

The programs that succeed take the opposite approach. Customer profiles are instantly accessible within the POS associates already use, removing extra steps. The store team owns the relationship, supported by the tools, not the other way around. And revenue is attributed back to the associate who drove it, which is what makes the program defensible at budget time.

Clienteling in luxury retail is the clearest illustration of this model at scale, but the principles are not exclusive to luxury. They apply to any premium brand where the store is the highest-value channel and the associate is the relationship.

Best practices for creating a personalized shopping experience

A few practical principles for retailers looking to build or rebuild their personalization programs.

Start with the associate. For premium retailers, the store is where high-value relationships are built. Repeat customers, high-AOV transactions, and the conversations that generate the next purchase all happen in person more often than in any other channel. If the in-store experience is generic, no amount of email personalization will close the gap. The first investment that pays for itself is putting a real customer profile in the associate’s hand.Unify the data before optimizing the experience. Personalization built on top of fragmented systems will hit a ceiling fast. Purchase history in the OMS, payment history, loyalty status, and

store conversations all need to land in one place, accessible at the moment of the interaction. Without that, every channel is working with a different version of the customer.

Pick a few high-value moments and execute well. Onboarding a new customer, the post-purchase follow-up, restock alerts on a wishlist item, and pre-event outreach are reliable starting points. Each is a moment when a relevant message materially increases the likelihood of a return visit.

Measure what matters. Outreach volume per associate, response rate, conversion rate from outreach, AOV, and customer lifetime value are the metrics that prove whether the program is generating revenue or noise. Activity metrics in isolation are not enough.

Personalization that drives revenue, not just experience

Knowing how to create a personalized shopping experience for premium retailers comes down to three things: unified customer data, associates equipped to act on it inside the POS workflow, and a measurement framework that ties every interaction back to revenue. The brands doing this well are not running a parallel personalization program alongside their store operations. They have made personalization part of how their stores sell, and they can prove it in their numbers.

Book a demo to learn more about how NewStore helps premium retailers embed clienteling into the POS workflow and turn store interactions into measurable revenue.

Last updated on July 31st, 2024 at 08:20 am

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

Advancements in technology aren’t only driving omnichannel retail – they’re also impacting how brands can enhance their in-store experiences. From equipping sales associates with mobile devices containing customer data to installing technology that scans shoppers’ bodies to determine which products fit them best, the possibilities are vast. However, customer-centricity should be at the forefront of all retailers’ efforts to personalize their shopping journeys. 

Chris Rigg, Retail Director at Ellis Brigham Mountain Sports, recently discussed the importance of brands maintaining a brick-and-mortar footprint during an Endless Aisle podcast episode with Marcus LaRobardiere, NewStore’s Vice President of Marketing. Chris and Marcus also addressed how technology can elevate in-store experiences for shoppers and demonstrate retailers’ commitment to customer-centricity.

Read below for key takeaways from Marcus and Chris’s conversation, and click here to listen to the full podcast episode.

Why In-Store Retail Experiences Remain Critical

Although many consumers opt to make purchases via online or mobile channels these days, a true omnichannel experience also encompasses in-store shopping. Some retailers may have believed that the pandemic’s effects would result in consumers moving away from wanting in-store experiences, but that has not been the case.

Shoppers still want to experience the adventure of finding new items in a physical location and then walking out with those products after paying. To reach the widest audience possible, retailers should ensure they keep up-to-date stock in their physical locations and maintain their brick-and-mortar presence.

“People still want to walk into a store, have a great experience, pay, and walk out with that product – and there’s a reward and value in it for them,” Chris said. “There’s a real desire to do something you are passionate about, and part of that journey is coming into a store and [experiencing] it.

“One of the great learnings after the pandemic was that things are different, but things are still pretty much the same as well,” Chris continued. “We came out of the pandemic and our strategy was…it’s going to move into the full omnichannel world. Stores will be experiences; there’ll be less product in there; it’ll be more showrooming and showing the great brands we’ve got and people will be happy to purchase through technology in store or purchase at home on their app.

“That hasn’t not happened, but what the last six months has shown me [is] a lot of people want to walk into a shop, drop their cash, [and] walk out with their latest jacket or snowboard. We got slightly caught out by that because we had to work very fast to make sure our stock holding was where it [needed] to be [and] make sure we had the right people in the shops to sell those products. Going forward, we are probably more positive about brick-and-mortar retail than we were two years ago.”

Evolving the Customer Journey

Brands should ensure they evolve their customer journeys to adapt to both digitally savvy and more traditional shoppers’ needs. However, they must also keep in mind that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to maximizing the customer journey, as each shopper has different needs.

“I think we’ve seen evolutions of shoppers’ journeys,” Chris said. “A shopper that is time poor, maybe cash rich, wants to walk into a shop and buy something because they need it tomorrow. 

“If someone’s thinking about a longer-term purchase, they might research that online. They might actually buy it online and get it in two weeks. We can’t say what a consumer’s behavior [is] because everyone is vastly different than how they shop.”

Retail and Technology’s Symbiotic Relationship

Retail and technology will always maintain a symbiotic relationship, especially as brands seek to attract consumers around the world. Not only does technology allow for brands to compete in the global marketplace, it also enables retailers to further personalize in-store experiences with innovative features, like virtual try-on options.

“I think retail is going to be intrinsically linked with tech forever, and that’s only going to grow,” Chris said. “There’s some great innovation out there, which we continue to look at. We’ve recently been trialing foot scanners within our stores – partly from a customer experience point of view – but partly from a CRM data collection point of view.

“The logical step would be that you’ve been in our Ellis Brigham store, and you’ve had your foot scanned, and you have a 3D avatar of your foot. Now we should be able to apply that to any model on our website and get something that fits your foot. The technology’s not quite there yet, but it’s pretty close. And your ability to scan a body or a foot and apply ‘perfect fit’ to it is going to be [a] massive jumping forward in retail.”

Why Understanding Customers’ Needs is Critical

One pitfall that retailers should avoid is adopting certain technologies because their competitors are doing so. Any new technology vendor or platform should address customers’ current needs. If customers feel that their needs are being solved, they will be much more likely to increase their average basket size with the retailer.

“Understanding your customer’s needs is really key,” Chris said. “I could go and spend millions now, just phone up various companies, put retail tech solutions in, but without a need to do it. And that’s how we’ve always challenged it as a business. We will go out and we’ll talk to people about what’s out there and then we’ll look at it and go, ‘Well, actually, does that satisfy you?’

“The business has to accept that things have to innovate. And then you’ve got to find a way you can test it. You have to go back to your customer, back [to] what is the customer journey…what do they gain from this? If they’re gaining something from it, they’re going to spend more money with you.”

How Clienteling Drives Better Retail Experiences

If retailers choose to integrate the right technologies for their audiences, they will eventually gain a more holistic understanding of each customer. In turn, this will help sales associates do their jobs more efficiently and engage in better clienteling. Clienteling enables sales associates to provide more customized shopping experiences as a result of seeing a 360-degree profile of each consumer.

By investing in engaging in-store experiences and equipping staff with technology to further personalize the customer journey, retailers will be able to grow their existing client base and attract new audiences. Ultimately, leveraging technology to facilitate stronger customer connections is key – while ensuring that the human element remains present.

“I’d like to believe that human interaction will stay with us in some way,” Chris said. “Our job at the moment is to use tech to make that experience as good as possible.”

Last updated on August 5th, 2024 at 01:20 pm

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify

The rapidly evolving digital landscape has significantly impacted the retail industry, making it easier than ever for retailers to reach potential customers worldwide. However, continuing to foster customer loyalty and enhance shoppers’ in-store experiences remain top priorities for many brands.

That’s where the practice of clienteling comes to life – by incorporating human connection into the essence of retail. Kaitlin Gottlieb, Senior Director of Omnichannel at UNTUCKit, emphasizes clienteling’s critical role in building long-term connections between customers and store associates.

What is Clienteling?

Clienteling helps store associates offer personalized shopping experiences by giving them a full 360-degree profile of the customer. Associates can leverage clienteling to message customers on a mobile app and search for a specific shopper in a database. They can also access shoppers’ purchase histories to recommend products they may like, and note customers’ personal preferences – such as sizes and styles – in their digital profiles.

How Clienteling Empowers Store Associates

During an Endless Aisle podcast interview with Marcus LaRobardiere, NewStore’s Vice President of Marketing, Kaitlin discussed the symbiotic relationship between technology and store associates. While today’s world grows increasingly digital-first, particularly for many shoppers, technology should not replace store associates’ roles in assisting with the customer journey. Instead, technology should augment their roles. Equipping in-store staff with the right technology solutions will provide additional opportunities for personalizing the shopping experience for each individual.

Read below for several key insights from Marcus and Kaitlin’s conversation, and click here to listen to the full podcast episode.

How Clienteling Fosters Better Customer Connections

As retailers consider strategies to boost in-store traffic, leveraging clienteling should be a priority. Clienteling helps bridge the gap between the physical and digital worlds by offering store associates valuable customer data that they may not obtain as easily without the help of technology.

This data then facilitates more personalized in-store interactions with shoppers, which could result in greater brand affinity and more sales. As an example, store associates can leverage data from customer profiles to cross-sell or upsell products that the customer may not have initially considered.

“Clienteling is fostering relationships and all about getting them back,” Kaitlin said. “And so associates [are] able to not only engage with customers that they connect with, continue to text them, but influence and inspire them across all different product categories – perhaps for another family member or friend.”

The Intersection of Human and Tech Collaboration

Although many consumers are no stranger to shopping on digital platforms, human interactions are still paramount to retailers’ success. When store associates gain access to the right technology, they can do their jobs more efficiently. This increases employee engagement and reduces the potential for staff turnover.

“The best technology enhances the store associate’s role and allows them to focus on [being] beneficial in that face-to-face contact,” Kaitlin said.

Additionally, store associates can collect valuable feedback from customers on digital tools that will enhance their shopping journeys. This could include adding a new feature to a mobile app or improving an existing function. This results in continuous optimization to improve the in-store experience.

How Apps Fuel Collaborative Shopping Experiences

Store associates can also leverage retailers’ mobile apps to further collaborate with customers on creating personalized looks. Some brands enable app users to virtually try on items and receive customized product recommendations. 

“I love that the app for associates oftentimes becomes a collaborative tool with the customer,” Kaitlin said. “It’s almost like you can dive into the product in the fitting room and then [say], ‘Let me show you some inspirational ways to wear it.’ 

“Our products often are easy to flip through those product images to really enhance [the shopping experience]. It’s really easy to pull up the app and demonstrate what this looks like on the model wearing the product and bring it to life that way, in addition to all of the amazing visuals that we have in our stores.”

This type of clienteling can increase customers’ average basket size by helping them create new outfits or garner inspiration for gifts for family and friends.

The Need for Personalized Retail Experiences

Per Kaitlin, customer engagement does not encompass a one-size-fits-all approach. She underscores that retailers must offer personalized experiences that resonate with a slew of customer personas.

She cited Sephora as a prime example of a retailer providing personalized in-store experiences to different types of customers. Those who visit a Sephora store can select a shopping basket in one of two varieties: a black basket that indicates their openness to being helped by a store associate or a red basket that signals a preference to be left alone while shopping.

Other retailers may opt to leverage clienteling to follow up with customers via text or mobile app about new inventory they may like or to inform them that their preferred product’s size or style is now available. 

“Not every customer wants to text when they leave the store; it’s not for everyone,” Kaitlin said. “But when you identify, connect, and find that genuine, authentic relationship, it’s natural to want to stay connected.”

How Retailers Can Maximize Clienteling 

Retailers can maximize their efforts to build stronger customer brand affinity via clienteling by embracing a growth mindset and striving for continuous optimization. This extends to technology – such as taking feedback from shoppers about certain app features that would augment their experiences – as well as improving one-to-one human interactions. 

Brands should obtain a clear focus on specific challenges or needs they are trying to address and be willing to innovate – even when it’s risky. And if they experience failure, they can treat it as a learning experience that will fuel faster growth in the future.

Ultimately, retailers can foster more loyalty with consumers by leveraging technology’s massive reach while remaining rooted in key elements of human connections – such as personalized interactions and consistent communication. This type of approach to developing a unique customer journey not only builds brand advocates among individual shoppers, but it may extend to their friends and family as well.

“One customer has a great experience – you’re probably going to tell a lot of your friends and family about that experience,” Kaitlin said.

Interested in learning how your business can use clienteling to enhance the customer journey? Speak with one of our experts today.