One thing I feel fascinated about the commerce is, no matter how technology transforms the way of selling staff, the nature of customers’ desire for human touch remains unchanged.
Nowadays, all investors and entrepreneurs in E-commerce are obsessed with the idea of personalization with algorithms. The web-stores carefully design their Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies to acquire traffics, track every click and search of their users, and tune their algorithms to provide customers with recommendations that they can add to their shopping cart.
Picture from Pixels
However, there comes some outliers: for example, an E-commerce startup Threads from UK has neither an online storefront nor mobile apps; however, it has already raised US$20 million and most of its customers come from word of mouth referrals. Threads builds its business by providing the personalized, concierge style services to customers (mostly female millennial) through messaging apps like WeChat, Snapchat, instagram, and so on. There are some impressive numbers:
70% customers are under the age of 35
Asia is its fastest growing regions
(My favourite one): the average amount people spend per session is US$3,000 (In comparison, the Amazon Prime subscribers in US were estimated to spend US$1,300, per year, and the non-member spent only US$700 per year).
Threads has secured relationships with 250 luxury brands, including Dior, Fendi, Chopard, and others.
Picture from Threads
All customers in Threads primarily interact with human shopping assistants, yes, not virtual ones. There are human assistants who have deep knowledge of customers’ tastes and curate items; there are designers flying to different cities to show pieces to clients and deliver orders; and there are even excursions to physical boutiques to actually try clothes.
That being said, the company still has technology deeply in mind: in addition to the services provided through the messaging apps, Threads hires software engineers to optimize the operations and provide services at scale: make tracking orders more efficient, enables shopping assistants to search through their catalogs faster. The company is actively experimenting with potential AI applications. My favourite quote comes below:
“We are going to be using technology to enhance that personalised experience. Using tech blended with human interaction will be the ultimate service for the luxury industry. We see it as a complement, a way to enhance the personal experience.”
From the Internet to AI, technology help us continuously reduce the cost and improve the productivity. It is key to provide services at scale and people are eager to pursue massive distribution and work automation. However, it doesn’t mean we can solely rely on technologies and diminish the input of human. The story of Threads show us an example that the presence of human touches and deep thoughts on customers’ experience should not be ignored. We should not lazily use AI as a solution for everything. The success of commerce still rely on the deep understanding on customers.
Picture from Burst