Key Takeaways from NRF2021: Retail’s Big Show

The National Retail Federation’s NRF2021 Big Show, the premier conference for innovative brands and retail professionals, took place as a virtual event this year. Though we missed connecting in person with old friends and colleagues at New York’s Javits Center, NRF’s Big Ideas sessions still came through with fresh insights from retailers at the forefront of innovation.

AWS and Amazon Pay teamed up to host two sessions that spotlighted how retailers are responding to the dramatic changes impacting the industry. Here are some of the highlights:

Burberry Harnesses Digital to Elevate the Customer Experience

Retail is going through a period of profound change, with innovations in consumer technology progressing at an unprecedented pace, according to Rajeev Aikkara, vice president of digital technology at Burberry, the celebrated global apparel and accessories brand. “You can’t predict the future,” he observes. IT’s focus must therefore evolve to providing the tools that enable the brand to rapidly deliver differentiated customer experiences.

Aikkara described how Burberry’s cloud-first strategy lets the brand take more risks, learn fast, and more easily scale innovation. In a major ongoing initiative, the company is moving to make its physical stores fully connected with its digital channels, and to empower its client advisers – the main point of retail contact – to excel in guiding customers through their journey. Toward these ends, Burberry is hard at work creating exciting new ways to tell product stories with campaigns featuring AR, VR, and gaming.

What I found most interesting was Aikkara’s explanation of Burberry’s approach to evolving its infrastructure under the hood while keeping the business running. To enhance business agility and modernize its applications, the team has gradually carved off portions of legacy systems and replaced them with microservices, or “macroservices” as he calls them, from leading-edge software partners built with modern cloud architectures. He gave examples of how in a monolithic ecommerce application, Burberry logically separated and then replaced elements such as identity, authentication, and searchandising.

As to how these efforts change the role of IT, Aikkara notes, “We believe in owning the customer experience and the creativity behind it. So our engineering focuses on building a great website, and integrating with out-of-the box tools and microservices from vendors like AWS, to provide a unique, differentiated customer experience.”

Burberry’s digital initiatives and partnerships are paying off. “Engagement rates are extremely encouraging,” says Aikkara, “which gives us confidence that we’re moving in the right direction.”

Enhancing the Customer Journey with Voice Commerce

In the second session, Kris Zanuldin from Amazon Pay and Andrei Rebrov, CEO of Scentbird, discussed the ways in which voice is changing how customers interact and transact with retailers.

Voice is the most natural way for people to communicate, and powered by Amazon Alexa, voice commerce is starting to become a reality. Zanuldin sees the trajectory for voice commerce as similar to the adoption pattern for other disruptive technologies, such as internet commerce in the late 1990s and mobile a decade ago. In the early stages, merchants struggle to figure out how to best capitalize on the shift in customer behavior towards new channels.

Probably the biggest challenge with voice is simply getting people to try it. But once they do, there is tremendous potential for rewarding customer experiences. A recent Amazon Pay study found that 44% of customers indicated they’ll be using voice in some way on their shopping journey. In another survey, one in five customers expect to make more voice purchases in the next two years.

Forward-looking retailers are now beginning to explore the use of voice within the digital customer journey. One example is Scentbird, an online retailer dedicated to helping people find and buy perfumes they love. Scentbird decided to start small, using Alexa for delivery notification. The company’s next big step, which is being worked on now, is incorporating Alexa into its recommendation engine for makeup and fragrances.

Admittedly, voice commerce will take time to catch on. That said, enabling voice-driven touchless experiences is a window of opportunity. There’s a lot to be gained for those who move early and fast, which makes now the right time to develop your voice strategy. Zanuldin recommends starting out by overlaying voice onto your other channels. Begin with delivery notifications, as Scentbird did. Then, as you move forward, bear in mind that what you want to create is an engaging conversation between you and the customer. As Zanuldin says, “Make it natural.”

Learn More About Transforming Customer Experiences

We look forward to bringing you more stories from the frontlines of innovation at NRF Chapter 2 in June. On a personal note, I’m also looking forward to seeing old friends again at NRF next year, when we can get back to commiserating about the bracing New York winter weather in cab lines outside of Javits.

In the meantime, AWS and Amazon Pay continue to press forward with our own mission of changing the retail landscape. Find out how to put our innovations to work for you.