Phygitising customer experience – design-thinking approach

Phygital is the seamless merging of physical and digital worlds to bring together best customer experiences offered by both, without the limiting factors of either.

Phygitalisation, similarly, is the ability to build customer experiences that meld the best aspects of the digital and physical worlds, to cater to unique user preferences.

For instance, the speed and convenience of the digital world can be incorporated, while retaining the immersive-ness (the feel-factor) and interaction of the physical world.

An important aspect of phygital customer experiences is to ensure that customer preferences are incorporated in the design. The key elements of the physical and digital worlds would have differing priorities for customers and the need is to “hear” them in design thinking before joining them to create a phygital experience.

The following are the crucial elements of incorporating design thinking into the phygitalisation process:

Emphathise: Research customer needs in experiencing a brand/product
Define: State customer’s needs and ideate on the problems
Ideate: Challenge assumptions and create new ideas.
Prototype: Start to create phygital experience solutions
Test: Test out phygitised experiences.

The unique advantage of this approach is to uncover new and interesting experiences that customers mostly leave unstated. In the initial days of phygitisation, we have seen the physical, brick-and-mortar store formats merging into the digital world, via virtual reality and interactive digital assistants.

Blurring boundaries
Fashion brands like Ray-Ban invested in virtual fitting rooms and chatbots to help retail customers experience products on trial and find their best style. Such amalgamations have today become a norm, especially in retail.

Recent research has shown that some customers still prefer to research online, but buy in a physical store. This insight has given rise to deeper innovations in phygitisation. Rebecca Minkoff fashion stores, for instance, allow their patrons to link their browsing patterns and selections to the physical stores. Customers can just walk-in to a store and find their shortlisted cart readily laid out in fitting rooms. Alternatives in size, colour, and design are also neatly placed for quick trials in the store.

Systematic design thinking approach has made it possible for the likes of Ray Ban and Rebecca Minkoff to experiment. They have adopted Design Thinking as a consumer-centric approach, wherein customer needs are first researched, problems statements or requirements identified, and then a joint solution is created using the inputs from the process.

With competition intensifying to grab the short-lived attention span of consumers, it is important to address the real needs in both the physical and the digital space.

No “assumptions”
Adopting a non-structured, non-design thinking approach to phygitilisation has its cons. To start, the solutions created in isolation will fail to address the specific needs or issues of your customers.

A high-end jewellery retailer, for instance, invested heavily in creating tools based on Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) for their walk-in customers. The tool assisted the customers to try on jewellery and experience it without touching it, before deciding to buy it. Hence, the store avoided the insurance cost of stocking up expensive jewellery products in-store.

However, the store learned that discerning high-spending customers or couples searching for that perfect wedding ring, were not keen on using AR/VR headsets. They rather wanted the premium, touch-and-feel shopping experience. The retailer, “assuming” a need for a phygital customer experience, had invested in a tool that was now lying idle in the stores. A simple design thinking session of ideating with the customers or creating a prototype first, would have averted this costly mistake.

In contrast, French sporting goods retailer Decathlon’s experiment with design thinking approach paid off well. The store managers worried about the high costs of holding inventory in their premium locations. After extensive customer research, the concept of “inventory less” store was formulated. The company chose its store in Englos, France, as the prototype, with only product displays and no additional inventory.

Customers browsed the aisles, tested and tried out products, but made their purchases via a mobile app. Products were delivered within 24hours to the customer’s doorstep. Design Thinking thus helped Decathlon unearth a real customer need, create low cost prototypes to test out solutions, and only then it went ahead with an investment to roll out the no-stock phygital stores to more locations worldwide.

As the lines blur between offline and online, prompted by user preferences, phytisalisation is the way forward for companies. But, an ad-hoc approach to achieve a phygital solution, in all probability, will prove futile. Investing time in taking the Design Thinking approach to phygitilisation, on the other hand, will not only bring huge improvements in customer experience, but will also be cost-effective in the longer run.

• Shyam Rao,

• The author is Associate Vice President, Infosys BPM.