A Thoughtful Interview with Omnichannel and Clienteling Veteran Alan Berner Artwork

The Clienteling Podcast

Welcome to the Clienteling Podcast! On our show, we'll discuss a broad spectrum of customer engagement, clienteling and retail technology insights, and we’ll provide plenty of examples and case studies directly from some of the most successful customer-focused luminaries in our industry. We'll discuss why in most cases, innovation and transformation is not a technology issue as much as it's a people, process and methodology problem. Clientricity and in particular this podcast, is focused helping retailers think through those challenges and develop a repeatable process to ensure that their stores are delivering on customer expectations and that the organization can fully benefit from those technologies deployed. In this podcast you'll gain a deep understanding of what’s working, what isn’t and where you should consider making your customer-centric technology investments. We are hoping that after spending 20-30 minutes listening to each episode you will leave energized and ready to apply what you’ve learned in your own business. We look forward to bringing you this podcast several times a month and would welcome your thoughts, ideas and comments. If you are passionate about customer centricity, clienteling and retail and would like to be a guest on the show, please send me a personal message at bryan@theclientelingpodcast.com. If you want get more personalized help or if you are interested in advisory services, contact Clientricity at info@clientricity.net

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The Clienteling Podcast

A Thoughtful Interview with Omnichannel and Clienteling Veteran Alan Berner

September 29, 2020 • Bryan Amaral • Season 1 • Episode 8

Interview with Alan Berner

In this episode Bryan interviews omnichannel and clienteling executive, Alan Berner. Alan has worked for some of the country’s most respected discount, specialty and department store brands and has been at the forefront many leading customer centric innovations in enterprise retail.

Alan shares some historical context on clienteling, sharing his experiences of how selling culture has benefited as tools evolved from a black book to sharing customer data at POS to more sophisticated mobile solutions that guide an associate through the selling process. Alan describes that as online became a more significant channel, there was a shift from targeting customers based on what they bought in the past to making new creative recommendations based on what could be learned about their lifestyle such as important people in her life, the significant dates for her and her family, the type of work she did, and the places she traveled to. He describes how they needed to understand how she spread her shopping dollars across the family of business as well as across the store, so that we could introduce her to those items that fit into her lifestyle that she may have overlooked us for in the past or possibly those she chose to buy elsewhere.

Bryan and Alan discussed how innovation projects are prioritized and how new technologies were considered, and validated. Alan explained that innovation must address the needs and wants of the customer but too often new ideas are “introduced and sometimes put into motion before the business realizes that they are chasing after a shiny toy rather than fixing a problem”.

Alan explains some of the biggest challenges he’s had in gaining adoption and the role of training, accountability, communication and an eye on the metrics.

Alan and Bryan then discussed his thoughts on the future of retail and what experiential retail be in a post COVID world.

Alan’s final recommendations for retailers included:

a. Focus on the customer

b. Make their lives and experiences better leveraging digital tools

c. Innovate and try something new – evaluate quickly.

d. Provide clear expectations and accountabilities for seller, vendors, and other constituents.

Resources:

Alan's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-berner-04a9863/

Alan's Email: alan6652@gmail.com

Bryan's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryanamaral/

Bryan's Email: Bryan@retailtechexec.com