London, UK, 2017-Apr-30 — /EPR Retail News/ — honeybee™, a pioneering digital platform, has today (April 25, 2017) announced a strategic alliance with PwC to transform the way people buy and sell. The combination of honeybee™ and PwC expertise and technology will help organisations create a more consistent and improved customer experience across all their channels to market.
This alliance will help organisations achieve growth by embedding a proven hybrid of digital and human experience into the sales process, focused on gaining a deep understanding of customer needs to improve their buying experience and satisfaction. This is underpinned by honeybee™’s unique approach to simplifying the sales journey, either in store or over the phone; a model learnt first-hand through its evolution within Dixons Carphone, where digital customer journeys have been live in the hands of over 5,000 store colleagues for over three years.
The importance of investing in staff and training is highlighted in PwC’s Total Retail 2017 report, which found that product knowledge is power, with 78% of consumers citing a “sales associates with a deep knowledge of the product range” as the most important factor when it comes to in-store retail experience.
honeybee™ will be part of PwC’s digital customer experience offering, enabling the business advisory firm to work with its clients to boost margins and sales by improving consistency in customer experiences, helping them become more successful in an increasingly competitive market. In addition to retail, sectors that could see benefits from this new alliance include automotive, retail banking, telecoms, energy, and consumer products including electronics and connected home technology suppliers.
Jon Andrews, Head of Technology and Investments, PwC commented:
“Revenue growth needs to be centred on customers – in order to grow, our clients must focus on the customer’s needs, no matter what the channel. This will be increasingly true as consumer spending power is squeezed by rising inflation. honeybee™’s platform directly addresses the opportunity to improve customer experience, opening up a multi-trillion dollar global market. Combining this technology with our industry knowledge and expertise in implementation means we can better help our clients achieve their growth aspirations.”
Graham Stapleton, Executive Chairman, honeybee™ comments:
“Investment in customer facing technology is long overdue but it requires a different approach. Whether selling face to face or over the phone, the power of bringing together the best of human empathy and sales skills, with technology’s agility and ability to personalise, can revolutionise the experience for customers and the results for businesses.”
“We are delighted that PWC shares our vision of revolutionising the way people buy and sell offline and are excited about creating a powerful alliance to help organisations transform not only the customer experience they deliver but equally their sales performance.”
Three Services, A Single Platform
Simplifying the sales journey to solve the problems of person-to-person selling, honeybee™ brings together three critical elements to offer clients an end-to-end solution: digital offline customer journeys; ‘no-code’ platform agility; and expert services.
- Digital Offline Customer Journey honeybee™ is an intuitive platform that can be rapidly configured to meet the needs of customers, staff, and the wider brand. The solution covers every step of the end-to-end sales journey, analysing customer needs to help sales teams co-create a solution for the individual customer that best suits their needs.Working with PwC, honeybee™ will be utilised to optimise the customer interface and automate processes across the customer environment.
- ‘No Code’ Platform Agility honeybee™’s revolutionary ‘no code’ approach eliminates the complexity of traditional IT solutions, allowing operational staff – rather than developers – to reconfigure sales journeys in real-time. Most importantly, the platform is the first to offer actionable data on all points of the customer’s journey, bringing the digital optimisation tools up to now only associated with the online channel, to the offline channel for the first time.Coupled with PwC’s digital capabilities and team of technologists with market-leading business transformation skills, honeybee™ allows rapid delivery of digitised experiences across multiple offline channels.
- Expert Services Having the right technology in place is only half the issue solved. With significant expertise in designing, delivering and optimising digital transformation strategies in offline channels, honeybee™ brings a rapid return-on-investment, helping organisations take the solution to market in a fraction of the time it would take an in-house team. In the longer term, honeybee™ delivers sustainable business transformation by allowing companies to continually refine their processes as the market, and customers, evolve.Each engagement delivered by PwC and honeybee™ will utilise the behavioural science and analytics expertise within the specific industry’s customer journey, tailored to helping organisations achieve their strategic objectives.
Already recognised as leaders in the customer experience industry, PwC’s alliance with honeybee™ offers organisations an innovative solution that will allow them to better understand, and deliver on, the needs of their clients and their client’s customers. Ultimately, with improved customer experiences, PwC’s front-office solution will help businesses achieve top-line revenue growth whilst maximising bottom-line profitability.
-ENDS-
About PwC
At PwC, our purpose is to build trust in society and solve important problems. We’re a network of firms in 157 countries with more than 223,000 people who are committed to delivering quality in assurance, advisory and tax services. Find out more and tell us what matters to you by visiting us at www.pwc.com.
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SOURCE: Dixons Carphone plc