Richemont

 
35'000 Employees
Salesforce customer since 2019

25

data sources aggregated

 
 

Richemont gives customers luxurious retail experiences with Salesforce

A luxurious shopping experience isn’t just about exclusive products. Shoppers also expect a five-star customer experience, personalised services, and a sprinkling of the magic that makes the best brands stand out. 

Swiss luxury goods company, Richemont, owns twenty brands – known as Maisons™ – and is dedicated to delivering excellence through the customer experience for every single one of them. That means being special, personal and relevant at every touchpoint, across every channel. With Salesforce driving its transformation, the company knows exactly how to add that magic to every customer journey—and do it at scale. 

“The world of luxury retail is not just about going digital, it’s about omnichannel and offering a unified experience of luxury across all touchpoints. To continue to thrive we are modernising our operations, with a clear focus on customer-centricity. Salesforce is one of the core pillars of this transformation,” explained Philippe Meyer, Group Client Marketing Director at Richemont.

A new initiative to elevate the customer experience

Founded in 1988, Richemont owns some of the world’s most iconic, exclusive brands – from Cartier to Chloé and from Montblanc to Jaeger-LeCoultre.

In 2019, the company launched an initiative called Elevate to consolidate more than 25 data sources and align processes across the group. “We wanted to improve efficiency by having the customer at the centre of operating model while still retaining the flexibility for each of our Maisons to adapt and offer each customers a unique experience: personalised to the individual and faithful to the brand DNA,” explained Meyer.

The group’s core CRM platform is built on Service Cloud, with Marketing Cloud  streamlining the creation of customer interactions. The group also uses MyTrailhead to upskill employees, encourage user adoption, and keep its people engaged with the platform.

“The Elevate programme was a big change for our employees. For the transformation to be a success, we knew we needed to support our users throughout the adoption,” added Meyer. “MyTrailhead is a great catalyst for that.”

Richemont launched a specific adoption and training stream as part of the program to educate people in five key roles on the benefits of the programme and how it would fuel the company’s growth. Dedicated corporate sponsors and executive committees were set up within each Maison. MyTrailhead is managed by a dedicated product within the Elevate core team, which is a unique blend of Marketing and IT talents, both with long lasting experience within the group and new talents with the right fresh digital skills to drive the transformation forward.

“MyTrailhead helped us instil the right vocabulary, guidance, and governance in our people,” said Meyer. “That’s a powerful force for aligning the whole team.”

Empowering staff with better access to data

Richemont integrated Salesforce with the group’s business management system to unlock 360-degree visibility and give customers a personal, seamless, experience across all channels.

“We want to enhance what makes a client relationship exceptional and memorable with technology—something that became even more important during the COVID-19 pandemic when we had to close stores during lockdown,” explained Meyer.

One example: Service Cloud aggregates customer data from a number of touchpoints to create what’s known as a ‘golden record’. With the full customer history captured in one place, both retail staff and contact centre staff – known internally as ambassadors – have all the information at their fingertips to give customers a more personalised experience and resolve their issue faster. Information silos are broken down, making retail staff and ambassadors empowered when interacting with clients.

The solution also integrates with a number of channels, such as phone, email, and social media, meaning customers can engage with Richemont on their preferred channel and still get the consistent, high level service they expect.

 

The app is really user-friendly, empowering staff with information on stock levels and pricing so they can respond to queries quickly and accurately while the customer is in store”

- Philippe Meyer, Group Client Marketing Director

Digitalising the boutique experience

Today, when a prospective customer enters a boutique they might have already registered and set up a wish list. Data is captured in Salesforce in the customer’s preferred language and helps sales reps can show them the products that are most likely to interest them.

Staff are equipped with a bespoke app built on the Salesforce platform. “The app is really user-friendly, empowering staff with information on stock levels and pricing so they can respond to queries quickly and accurately while the customer is in store,” Meyer explained.

Store staff can also access the customer’s golden record to provide updates on orders placed online or in boutiques anywhere in the world. So the record keeps getting richer.

A smarter approach to marketing

To energise customer acquisition and retention, Richemont strengthened its marketing team, hiring more people with strong, omnichannel digital skills. The team now maps and tracks customer journeys, using Salesforce data to drive opportunities to the right sales channels.

While the group aims to provide a consistent experience across all Maisons, it’s also important that each brand offers a unique experience to its customers. With Journey Builder, leads are segmented and sent on different journeys according to which Maison the customer has engaged with. For example, Cartier customers receive information about additional services and warranty extensions to help maintain the value of their purchase.

“Having that golden record in Salesforce doesn’t just help the service team, it also means we can adapt all marketing communications to be more personalised and relevant,” explained Meyer. “We’re just starting to track KPIs in Salesforce, but we’ve already seen email engagement rates increase by 18-24% for our Montblanc Maison.”

The team can also target new customers by building lookalike audiences based on user engagement and propensity scores. Integrations with solutions such as WeChat and Chatly mean the team can interact with customers from different global markets – for example, WeChat is the go-to channel for many customers in China. 

A culture of continuous improvement

Although the Elevate programme is still a work in progress, Salesforce is already helping Richemont stand apart from its competitors in the luxury goods sector. “Salesforce helps us build more intelligence and efficiency into our processes and ensure the customer is always at the heart of everything we do,” said Meyer. “It means we can be more proactive and have better interactions as well as unlocking greater transparency.”

Next, the company plans to capture customer satisfaction data to uncover actionable insights to further improve and streamline its close the loop processes. 

It all adds up to more successful and more resilient brands. Weathering the COVID-19 pandemic is just one example—when the ability to react quickly and meet customer expectations in new ways became critical to success. But the same principles of intelligence, efficiency and resilience apply across the business.

“The ultimate goal of Richemont is to foster ‘savoir faire’ across our Maisons and encourage organic growth,” commented Meyer. “That pandemic showed us that people need a little luxury in their lives, and Salesforces gives us the agility to provide a luxurious shopping experience with any or all of our exclusive brands.”

 

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