4th November 2019
Where did HMV, Mothercare and Thomas Cook go wrong?
High street stalwart Mothercare has collapsed, becoming the latest in a long line of ongoing woes for British retailers. With financial losses of £36.8m for 2018-19, the company’s 79 UK outlets finally went into administration, causing job losses for up to 2,500 employees.
Other High Street institutions such as Thomas Cook and the Arcadia Group are also making headlines lately due to their failure. Raj Badarinath - VP of Marketing and Ecosystems at hyper-personalisation tech company RichRelevance - puts this trend down to their inability to keep up with disruptive new technologies and retain customer loyalty.
He says, “With AI, brands can now detect and recognise context and intent of customer interactions and respond swiftly and in real-time. This is hyper-personalization, which uses NLP technology to understand, learn and deliver an individualized experience.
Opportunities for NLP technology to improve the customer service journey are everywhere and retailers will soon recognise this as an integral way to set themselves apart. With individual experience accounted for, and preventative measures implemented better, issues are addressed in a much more targeted way when they do occur, making for a pleasant and efficient shopping experience. This technology marks the end of the mass-marketing era and the start of the hyper-personalised customer-centric one.”
If you would like to speak further with Raj about the changing face of the retail sector, please contact me by email or on 020 3637 0640.