Latest / The Retail Podcast / NRF 2023 Salesforce Kelly Haut Thacker, Salesforce Senior VP, Marketing, Commerce Cloud & CMO of Retail and Consumer Goods
Transcript
- 0:01Hello and welcome back to another episode of the retail
- 0:04podcast. Now we've interviewed a lot of
- 0:07people but cell swells. Exactly South was one of the
- 0:12event. Participants who have in my
- 0:15opinion? One of the most intriguing
- 0:18stands. It's like a theme park or it's
- 0:22absolutely amazing. It captured my attention, it
- 0:26brought me in. So, who am I here with?
- 0:29I'm with Kelly. Who is the CMO for Commerce,
- 0:31clout for consumer goods and Retail.
- 0:34What we're going to do is unpack what Commerce Cloud means.
- 0:37Because a lot of people have different views.
- 0:38Were, actually, what Commerce is, what I would love to do.
- 0:41Get easiest to tap in to all those sort of little nuggets of
- 0:45learnings that you had during this.
- 0:46And I do believe you've actually produced a report recently on
- 0:50the consumer insights and love to learn about that.
- 0:52Yeah. And I will say it's it's been an
- 0:54incredible amount. It's so nice to be back in
- 0:57person, doesn't it feel like the magic of NRF?
- 1:00It's very much alive. So, we did just publish our
- 1:03fifth edition of our connected consumer report and I'm we were
- 1:07just talking about just that let's talk about holiday just
- 1:10happened not too long ago and while I think retailers had a
- 1:13pretty incredible season overall consumer, still feel frustrated.
- 1:19I think it's 77 percent of consumers are frustrated because
- 1:22they feel like the retail experience with different brands
- 1:26is very disconnected. So if I'm talking to some a
- 1:29store, so Associate versus online versus maybe someone in
- 1:32customer service, it really feels like siloed departments
- 1:36and I think consumers want that frictionless experience that
- 1:39wombat personalized amazing journey regardless of where they
- 1:44are and so that has been really frustrating for consumers, but
- 1:47on the flip side, you're seeing 65 percent of consumers are
- 1:51willing to be brand loyalists if consists retailers can deliver
- 1:55that incredible personalized experience.
- 1:58So I think what this means for Hours.
- 2:00And I've been talking to a lot of retailers today just left an
- 2:03incredible retailer talking about the opportunity, which is,
- 2:06we need to bridge The Experience Gap.
- 2:08So we need to make sure whether a my is a consumer.
- 2:11Whether I'm online or in-store or on, you know, anywhere in
- 2:15between that I'm getting that consistent experience, that
- 2:18feels really contextual to the ethos of the brands.
- 2:21And so there is an amazing opportunity to do that and
- 2:24retailers that figure it out and do it.
- 2:26This year are really going to win in retail.
- 2:28Yeah, I think what's really interesting for me is the fact
- 2:30that a lot of the path to purchase and shopping missions
- 2:33when it comes to technology and I'm not saying Salesforce one of
- 2:37them, but sometimes that's part of the frustration consumers
- 2:39would say, I'm on a shopping mission to do X.
- 2:42I'm shopping mission to do why I know cells will sort of Pride
- 2:45itself of trying to within the Commerce, not to actually care
- 2:49where the transaction takes place.
- 2:50I don't know if you could just expand on shopping missions and
- 2:53like Puff the purchase and what that looks like for you.
- 2:56Yeah, I know. It's been so exciting.
- 2:57The proliferation of just channels like Our, I like to
- 3:00shop. So, personally, I'm a mom.
- 3:02I have two young kids. My husband we both work.
- 3:05And so, my shopping time, these usually, after the kids, go to
- 3:08bed, I spend some time with my husband, I go on to my customers
- 3:12sites, especially those that just watched and I shop and my
- 3:15experiences. I really want to, you know, when
- 3:18I shop, I want whatever's on the site to be relevant.
- 3:21So what I want, what? I need my size.
- 3:23I don't want to view an item that is not, you know, an
- 3:27inventory available for me, that's really frustrating.
- 3:29So it's you know, it's really dependent on what you know each
- 3:32person wants. I have lots of friends who like
- 3:34to shop in Instagram and they wanted to be totally
- 3:36frictionless when they click. When they see something that
- 3:38they like, they don't wanna leave Instagram.
- 3:40They actually just want that transaction to happen right
- 3:43within the UI that they're in. And so, you know, it just it,
- 3:46I'm sure next year, there will be something even better, you
- 3:49know, a new place for for consumers to shop.
- 3:51And so for Commerce, we don't care about the channel, we just
- 3:55want to make it, you know, deliver on that and mazing
- 3:57frictionless experience. So consumers can get A wide when
- 4:00they wanted, you know, on the right channel, they wanted in.
- 4:04And that is like what Paramount that is the most important thing
- 4:07for us that we're delivering on Innovation, we're delivering on
- 4:09trust and we're, you know, helping our consumers and
- 4:13helping our retailers really win.
- 4:14Another like interesting, like little piece of data that I've
- 4:18been talking a lot about with customers, is that.
- 4:21We also had a lot of consumers that went into this holiday was
- 4:24over, sixty percent at a lot of angst around product
- 4:26availability. So, you know, I remember last
- 4:29holiday a supply chain snafus and Lake Omicron were the two
- 4:33things that took center stage and while I like to go, a lot of
- 4:36retailers have really thought deeply about how do they
- 4:38deliver, you know, inventory transparency, how do they make
- 4:43sure they have really strong customer calms so that they're
- 4:46able to, you know, calm any nerves or, you know, customers
- 4:50are still feeling that. So I'm really proud.
- 4:52We have our order management Solution, that's connected
- 4:56straight into Converse Cloud. So that means that if I'm
- 4:58shopping, I only see again, the products that are in inventory
- 5:02and if they're not an inventory, I get something through a
- 5:05high-powered recommendations that is just like that.
- 5:08The consumers just like me. My size might want, is an
- 5:11alternative. We also talking to a lot of
- 5:14customers. A lot of retailers hear about
- 5:16the need to have clean data. So, with the, you know, with the
- 5:19economic Times that were in uncertainty now is taken Center
- 5:22Stage, right? And so, me as a consumer,
- 5:26inflation's up costs are up. My discretionary spending is
- 5:29down. Down.
- 5:30And so I'm much more intentional about what I need to buy.
- 5:33And so for retailers and need to not only increase loyalty,
- 5:37increase Revenue, decrease costs.
- 5:39They still need to deliver on those like hyper personalized
- 5:42experiences. And so we really guide a lot of
- 5:45our customers on it starts with data.
- 5:48Yeah. Do you have clean data that's
- 5:50actionable or you can drive insights across the entire
- 5:53customer lifecycle? And so we have our our
- 5:56Salesforce customer data Cloud that really empowers customers
- 5:59to do. And and I think that is also
- 6:01going to be being Trend that we see this year is how do we do
- 6:04more with less and how we really use actionable data to deliver
- 6:07on those, you know, differentiated experiences?
- 6:11So I'm sure a lot of listeners and retailers think our Commerce
- 6:15means lots of different things that people have different
- 6:17perceptions, and I see their perception is their reality.
- 6:19I'd love to learn a little bit more about your perception.
- 6:22Yeah, so I you know, Commerce style is such an incredible
- 6:26product because it truly provides customers with the
- 6:29utmost flexibility and control of their experience.
- 6:32So, if, you know, we have lots of big customers that really
- 6:35want to go fast and for them like speed and, you know, speech
- 6:39that value is really the name of the game.
- 6:40And so we have templates that really provide our customers,
- 6:43the ability to go fast. We have customers that want to
- 6:45be able to unlock kind of brand ownership and for them it's
- 6:49really important to have this highly customized experience
- 6:52that really again like leans into the ethos of the brands and
- 6:55so we have are composable storefront solution but still
- 6:58empowers customers to go fast but also really provides it
- 7:02teams and marketing and brand teams kind of the separation.
- 7:05Did you things that are most meaningful to their business?
- 7:07Driving, that impact. So I think the butyl and then we
- 7:10have customers, That you both some of them want to use
- 7:12templates, but then they also want different parts, they want
- 7:14to test new things, they want new innovation.
- 7:17And so having kind of tablets plus the ability to have that
- 7:20composable storefront experience.
- 7:22Empowers customers to do kind of anything that they need so we
- 7:26really talk about Commerce. Cloud is empowering customers,
- 7:28do Commerce, their way, it's not one versus the other, it's
- 7:32whatever. Feels most true to the customer
- 7:34in that moment. And that's what I'm most proud
- 7:36about and what we're able to deliver as a cloud.
- 7:39Final thoughts, future of retail if you had.
- 7:43I don't know if you can share with us.
- 7:45What were your thoughts are? If the event has shaped your
- 7:47thinking on, you know, what will their looks like all
- 7:50specifically in terms of way where your specific area is
- 7:54going just thoughts on the future?
- 7:56Yeah. I mean, I get to work with such
- 7:57incredible customers where they're already thinking about
- 8:00again, bridging, like the physical, and the digital.
- 8:03And so, it's been amazing to hear from a lot of retailers out
- 8:06here that are still like, how do I do this?
- 8:08This feels Really hard. I'm hearing a lot about clean
- 8:11data. How do we get clean data?
- 8:13How do we access actionable clean data?
- 8:15And then I'll just, for a retail perspective, we just launched
- 8:19the, you know, Walmart sales force partnership.
- 8:21So I'm really seeing a ton of partnership top and across
- 8:24services. And even across like, you know,
- 8:27Claire's is in Macy's. We have lots of direct to
- 8:31Consumer brands that how our program that wholesalers or
- 8:35another standing up and in physical stores and say you're
- 8:38single to Partnerships. Again, you know, doing more with
- 8:41last, how do we reduce kind of time to Market, how do we expand
- 8:45channels? And so I think Partnerships will
- 8:47continue to be the big trend of this year Kelly.
- 8:50That's brilliant. Thank you for coming out,
- 8:51sometime to see us. Thank you so much.
- 8:53Thanks a lot. Yeah.
- 8:39Again, you know, doing more with last, how do we reduce kind of
- 8:43time to Market, how do we expand channels?
- 8:46And so I think Partnerships will continue to be the big trend of
- 8:49this year Kelly. That's brilliant.
- 8:50Thank you for coming out, sometime to see us.
- 8:52Thank you so much. Thanks a lot.
- 8:54Yeah.