Having lived in Hong Kong, Singapore and now Dubai; the further East I have lived, the worse the E-commerce proposition has been. Less choice, longer fulfillment times, poor customer experience and service.
2020 has brought immense change to the way consumers purchase, with a global lockdowns, social distancing and general movement away from traditional retail shops – online shopping has become normalized in the region and we have seen a huge uptake from all consumers segments to purchasing online. Yet many retailers in the region have struggled to meet customer online needs and in turn offered a poor online experience and frustrated customers!
So, the question is how can retailers enhance customer experience and ultimately customer engagement?
In a recent conversation with a Dubai based CMO of a Global Electronics business (sadly I’m unable to name him but we’ll refer to him as “GE CMO”), I learnt that their |E-commerce sales in the region this year had experienced “600% growth on last year’s sales yield.” He also detailed the importance of the customer experience of their website and how important that has become to create engagement and loyalty. To this very point; Bain and Company recently published an article showing that a mere 5% boost in customer retention increases profit by around 25%!
So, from the consumer perspective, how can the customer experience of an E-commerce transaction be enhanced? Well, clearly one way of improving is to maintain a world- class E-commerce platform, all of which means ultimately investing in best-in-class employees!
The challenge many clients have been coming to me with, is where can they find this digital talent…
When I asked “GE CMO” about his talent pool, he told me that acquiring talent was probably the biggest challenge that he has faced, especially when it comes to e-commerce. In this instance he would typically target large MNC’s in consumer electronics in the region. He also told me that he puts a lot of value on continuous e-learning for his staff and online workshops investing in training to make sure they have the right tools to do a great job.
My initial feeling on this was that, as previously alluded to; perhaps we need to look west in the quest for talent but on reflection, perhaps this is a common misconception…
In recent months at Mackenzie Jones we have connected with exceptional digital and e-commerce talent in several disciplines including: Digital Marketing, E-Commerce, Performance Marketing, SEO and Creative, most of which have been local candidates from global businesses.
Having said all of this, for the senior leadership roles or roles that involve huge innovation or change, the UK is widely regarded as fertile ground and “GE CMO” confirmed that much of their thought leadership comes out of the UK and he has been able to import talent internally from the UK and externally too to assist in L&D within the E-commerce and Digital channels of the business. Again, here at Mackenzie Jones we have several great examples in 2020 where we have been able to extract top talent from the UK and relocate to the GCC region for leadership roles in Digital/ E-commerce.
If you are looking to step up your digital presence and capture the ever growing online market, please do not hesitate to get in touch for a discussion about growing your E-commerce team.
