Gucci client advisor Valentina, dressed in a black suit, bow tie and red gloves, pulls down a GG Marmont bag from orange shelving lined with in-season accessories and deftly unclips the clasp, shows off the interior and swivels the $2,290 leather bag onto her shoulder. Only she isn’t in a store, nor is the potential client.
The luxury megabrand, in a bid to recreate its crucial in-store experience, has launched Gucci Live, a video service that lets staff communicate with shoppers on their mobiles or laptops. Valentina is working from the 2,300-square-metre client services hub, Gucci 9 in Florence, which has developed a faux luxury store with cameras and TV-style lighting for the new “remote clienteling”. Gucci says it’s the first of its kind in luxury.
Like most of its luxury counterparts, Gucci is navigating how to keep in touch with its clients, who are still largely unable to visit stores but require the personal service associated with luxury. With e-commerce far from replacing in-store sales and digital-savvy Chinese millennials the core of luxury growth (per Bain), Gucci is betting personalised video consultations will spur sales.
“The mission of our Gucci 9 global service centre is to provide our customers around the world with a direct connection to the Gucci community that is a seamless, always accessible, personalised experience,” Marco Bizzarri, Gucci president and CEO, said in a statement when Gucci 9 opened. “The service is delivered according to the values that define and differentiate our brand today: a human touch powered by technology.”
Most of Gucci 9’s employees have been working remotely, but a small team has been developing and testing Gucci Live from the Florence hub while maintaining safety protocols.
© Gucci
Gucci developed the service with an undisclosed technology partner this spring, and after testing in Europe with a smaller number of employees, it had “immediate adoption”, according to a spokesperson, who declined to give sales figures or other metrics. The service is now being extended to the entire Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) regions and the brand is dedicating more online client advisors to this feature.
Currently, only a handful of online advisors are fully dedicated to this, but more are being assigned given early “positive feedback”. (The brand has six Gucci 9 centres in New York, Tokyo, Singapore, Sydney, Shanghai and Florence, with 400 staff in total.) The company may expand the feature to in-store associates.
“More and more retailers are looking to increase customer value and enhance brand relevance by bringing the personal features of the in-store shopping experience directly into the customer’s home,” says Scott Clarke, VP, consumer products industry lead at digital consultancy Publicis Sapient. He says that research has shown that despite the convenience of e-commerce, consumers still value the human touch at critical points along the shopping journey.
While Gucci is positioning this as the first such experience from a pure luxury player, it is not without precedent. Customer support platform Hero, for example, lets in-store shop assistants chat with online customers. Before the shutdown, it added two-way video, and Oscar de la Renta, Panerai and Temperley London had added the service. Paris department store Galeries Lafayette Champs-Élysées, intimates brand Cuup and beauty retailer Credo have also previously experimented with using videos between in-store employees and online shoppers. This is unlike live-stream shopping, which is broadcast to multiple anonymous viewers at once.
Personal shopping service Threads Styling, which lets luxury customers discover through Instagram and buy from personal shoppers through iMessage and WhatsApp, relaunched video consults this year. Founder Sophie Hill says that Threads shoppers are speaking to their clients via video about styling, managing wardrobes and recommending items to purchase. Since lockdown, Threads clients are having more and longer conversations with their shopper, both via text and video, she says.
The rise of in-home or remote video consultation services represents significant industry macro-trends: the convergence of physical and digital experiences, data-driven personalisation and the rise of the service economy, Clarke says. “As we accelerate into the future, expect to see a continuing shift from the point of sale to the point of experience.”
Unique to Gucci’s approach is its dedicated set that operates independently of the store, combined with the ability for online shoppers to have built-in access to personal video calls. It is designed to feel quite similar to an in-person visit: a one-to-one interaction with a real person showing physical products (the customer can be heard but not seen). If a customer wants to make a purchase, they can check out online or on WhatsApp with their host. Clients browsing Gucci.com can start a video call, and it is planning private appointments.
The brand doesn’t think it can fully replicate the emotional and sensorial experience of a store, rather, it is experimenting with additional technologies to enhance remote clienteling.
Going forward, the humanisation of online experiences might include augmented and virtual reality, computer vision to recognise emotions and faces, virtual assistants and live chat. The best brands will leverage technology to augment human skills and decrease friction, uncertainty and anxiety, Clarke says, adding that sales associates will be key to “helping transform a brand from mediocre to remarkable and intensely relevant”.