The Fragrance Shop is a retail business with 185 stores across the UK and an annual turnover of £120 million. It focusses purely on the sale of fragrances and has recently invested in Microsoft Cloud Technologies in order to develop a stronger understanding of its customers and hence provide a more connected experience. It has fully embraced multi-channel experiences, using technology both in store and at its Head Office built on Microsoft Azure.
With Microsoft Azure, The Fragrance Shop is innovating its sales technique, considering ideas such as how to talk with customers before even purchasing a fragrance in store and how to find out if they provided the right experience for the customer after a recent sale. “Customer centricity is a massive part of our business, so the technology we invest in is all about collecting the right data. Joining this all together means creating a seamless experience and a connected customer,” explained Sanjay Vadera, CEO at The Fragrance Shop.
Their CRM team can now engage the customer immediately after a purchase and because they are interacting with customers in real-time, the response rates being achieved are very high. “We gather information in stores, online and through customer service, which all feeds into Microsoft Azure. With the right computing power, we can now get the results that we want in the timescales we need,” commented Julian Holt, Chief Technical Officer at The Fragrance Shop.
All stores now collect live data, such as how many customers enter and walk past the store, sale frequencies and conversion by the minute. This data transforms the information staff have access to, the roles they perform within the business and hence the way the business functions as a whole. Julian Holt stated, “We are now able to give the responsibility of certain IT elements to Microsoft like security, high availability and scalability, meaning my IT department can focus more on business strategy and less on dealing with IT issues.”
The Fragrance Shop is excited about what the future holds with the help of Microsoft Azure. Sanjay Vadera sums up by saying, “We’re in the right position and we’ve got the right partners in place… now we’re thinking about how we can take this to the next level.” Check this short video to see more.
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