Want to boost ecommerce? Learn how Guess is creating richer experiences

Guess wants to do more than just grow its iconic brand; it wants to leave a legacy. And it wants this legacy to be founded on exceptional lifestyle products as well as exceptional customer experiences. As a global business, this means Guess must be able to engage seamlessly across multiple channels in multiple countries – from its stores and websites to its customer care teams and social platforms. 

Thanks to its investment in digital transformation, Guess is not only enriching the experience for millions of customers around the world but also driving sustainable growth. The lifestyle brand, which has 1,600 stores in 100 countries as well as a flourishing wholesale business, is on track to hit its operating margin target of 10% two years ahead of schedule. 

The transformation of Guess began in 2019 with the arrival of new CEO Carlos Alberini, who set out his ambitious vision for the company, which includes targeting an increase in operating profit of approximately $150 million and a rise in sales of around $250 million by 2025. 

To make this vision a reality, Guess needed to do more than just deploy new digital technologies. It needed to unite its teams, processes, and datasets to deliver richer experiences, unlock sharper insights, and drive stronger ecommerce sales. 

We talked to Carlos and the team at Guess about how they are using Salesforce Customer 360 to achieve their growth and omnichannel goals.

Guess has always provided an exceptional in-store experience, but it needed to find a way to bring the same quality and style to a growing number of ecommerce customers. This need intensified with the advent of COVID-19 and the closure of Guess stores around the world.

To fast-track its ecommerce ambitions, Guess needed to migrate from its homegrown solution to an agile and scalable platform that could support multiple languages and currencies. “Although we were collecting a lot of customer data, we were unable to use it in a meaningful way,” said Carlos. “We needed to not only transform the front-end ecommerce experience but also our approach to CRM.” 

In one year, Guess deployed Commerce Cloud across 48 European countries with the support of Salesforce Professional Services. Guess saw an immediate uptick in website speed and reliability with a 72% reduction in home page loading times.

Guess uses insights from Einstein, Salesforce’s AI solution, to personalise the ecommerce experience by promoting different products to different customers, which helps to increase conversion rates. 

By the first quarter of 2021, ecommerce revenue had compensated for losses at its physical stores, with online conversion rates soaring by 60%. 

Guess expects ecommerce to account for 23% of its overall revenues compared with 18% prior to the Commerce Cloud implementation. “With Commerce Cloud, we can respond more rapidly and flexibly to customer behaviours and market trends,” said Patrizia Lazzaro, Guess VP Global E-commerce for the company’s operations in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA).

With omnichannel engagements set to increase, Guess needed to ensure customers records were captured and updated centrally. “Customer centricity starts with data centricity,” said Miguel Requejo, Chief Information Officer at Guess. “We’ve always had lots of great data, but it was not connected.” 

With Salesforce, Guess is breaking down its information silos and opening up new opportunities to engage with its customers. It uses Service Cloud to combine the rich data captured in Commerce Cloud with information from other physical and digital channels. For example, Guess colleagues can now see a customer’s previous purchases, online interactions with the brand, as well as their product preferences. “With a single customer view, we can empower our people to make smarter decisions and provide richer experiences,” said Carlos.

A 360-degree view is particularly powerful for agents when responding to customer queries. “The time and effort needed to fix a problem is now significantly lower,” explained Miguel. “On top of that, because we can see exactly what our customers’ preferences are, we have opportunities to cross and upsell. The customer service team is starting to actually make sales. It’s really exciting.” For instance, if a customer calls to exchange a pair of jeans, the agent can look at their purchase history to suggest an alternative product. 

With more than 16 million followers on Guess’ Facebook and Instagram accounts, social networks are key to not only brand awareness but also customer service. By integrating Social Studio with Service Cloud, Guess can track social interactions and respond more easily to customer posts and queries. This not only helps to accelerate the resolution of cases but also provides Guess with a wealth of information to create more personalised customer journeys.

With a diverse customer base, creating personalised communications without the help of automation was incredibly complicated and time-consuming. To reach the right customer at the right time with the right content, Guess uses Marketing Cloud’s suite.

“We have created specific journeys to match customer moments, such as welcoming them to Guess or sending birthday greetings,” explained Patrizia. “Managing this across 48 countries and 10 languages would be impossible without Marketing Cloud.”

The team uses the solution to carry out A/B testing and track campaign results, which increases engagement rates. “Marketing Cloud has been a real game-changer; we started to see results on day one,” said Dario Cardamone, VP Global Marketing at Guess.

By making greater use of automation, Guess can better coordinate its marketing communications and campaigns across different channels. This enables Guess to identify which channels are the most effective for each customer and prevents people from being contacted multiple times. 

“We are spending a lot of money on marketing, so it’s absolutely critical that we’re spending it on the right things,” said Miguel. “With Marketing Cloud, we can personalise communications based on customers’ digital interactions and drive a much greater return on investment.”

To ensure it maximises the value of the 3.5 million customer records, Guess wants to harness the power of analytics. With Tableau, it can unlock richer customer insights and drive greater operational efficiencies. “By embracing analytics, we can look at a customer’s purchase history to suggest alternative products when they want to make an exchange,” said Miguel. “We can also spot trends in the data to identify issues within our operations.”

Analytics are proving equally beneficial for Guess marketeers. With Tableau, they can apply a smarter approach to segmentation when developing campaigns and communications. 

By letting customers connect to Wi-Fi in its stores, Guess will be able to unlock even more insights into shopping behaviours to enrich its marketing campaigns and loyalty programme. “We’re moving from a channel-driven mindset to a customer-driven business, and we’re confident it will deliver a big return on investment,” said Dario. 

Since it first implemented Commerce Cloud in 2019, Guess has been adding new capabilities to empower its teams and optimise its processes. To further connect its in-store and digital customer experience, Guess plans to develop a mobile app, which will include features such as showing the availability of store fitting rooms and pushing out location-based promotions.

Guess also wants to unlock greater supply chain visibility by deploying Commerce Cloud Order Management and developing an online community for its 8,000 wholesale partners in Europe with Experience Cloud. “We are committed to building a successful business for the next 40 years and beyond, not just the next quarter,” said Carlos. “With Salesforce, we can make millions of customers feel truly special. It is pivotal to everything that we do.”

The Salesforce Professional Services team will continue to support Guess on its digitalisation journey. “We’ve formed a really strong partnership; the team understands how we work,” said Miguel. “Salesforce Professional Services challenge us to think about working in different ways.” Guess also uses Salesforce Accelerators to help optimise the time to value of new features and products.