What we learnt at NRF 2023

The Proximity team were in the Big Apple for NRF last week connecting with friends old and new.  We kick-started our trip with the Vendors in Partnership Awards where we were finalists for The Best Unified Customer Experience award. Surrounded by the very best in retail tech and innovation, we had a great night hosted at the stunning venue, Gotham Hall.

Then we made it to the floor at NRF, the world’s leading annual retail event, bringing together 37,000 retail professionals and vendors from more than 90 countries to discover the future of retail. Driving customer engagement and loyalty whilst creating exceptional customer experiences continues to be the main focus for many retailers this year.

In addition, we learnt that efficiency within store teams is front of mind. Leveraging customer data and delivering seamless personalised customer experience is more important than ever, no matter where the customer is.  

Something else we also learnt is how brands are trying to make it easier for their staff to operate, resulting in the consolidation of the tools they use. For these reasons, our Retail Super-App demo resonated with many brands. Our all-in-one platform can inspire and empower retailers to create a personalized customer experience and improve engagement. 

Proximity’s CEO & Co-Founder, Cathy McCabe, describes why personalization is so important in today’s hyper connected world;

“Brands have a clear opportunity to excel at what they do best – create a great customer experience and build lifelong relationships. They have an innate advantage when it comes to making an emotional connection with their customers and, let’s face it, most non-commodity purchases we make as consumers involve an emotion. To do that well you have to connect and capture customer data and that typically starts with a human or a compelling reason to share your personal data.  The technology is there to enable ways to connect people, reach out, to allow teams to build trust and to deliver a complete and clear expression of the brand.”

Taking to the stage at Salesforce’s Customer Success theatre sessions at NRF,  Carol Schuster, VP Marketing & Business Information at Lafayette 148, shared her success  story and talked about  how  her team worked with Proximity to  drive customer loyalty and revenue by:

• Increasing focus on the customer experience, before, during and after the sale
• Offering a personalized approach digitally and in-person
• Providing superior customer service and seamless processes

The outcome was $5.9M attributed sales and an average order value of $1,964, Lafayette 148 were seeing rapid results.

Proximity’s John Liebler, Head of Partnerships NCSA, talked about the importance of store team members and how they have the greatest opportunity to directly connect with customers and increase brand loyalty. Like Lafayette 148, if retailers arm teams with the right tools and data in a single application, they can scale personalization and massively increase customer lifetime value.

By investing in a single app solution that can provide customer data in real-time, retailers can help shoppers make more informed purchasing decisions and  create better shopping experiences that build long-term customer loyalty. 

To discover how the Retail Super-App can empower your store teams, click here to book a demo with the team.