The customer at the center: why omnichannel is key to improving the experience

With 40 years of experience in the country, Mirgor, the benchmark company in the electronics and mobile telephony products sector, seeks to reflect on those issues that make the industry tomorrow. For this reason, in a new edition of Mirgor Talks, the focus was on the retail of the future, that is, what will define Stores 3.0.

Together with Fernando Maquieira, commercial vice president of Mirgor, and Bruno Drobeta, vice president of Samsung Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, the conversation focused on how companies reconfigure themselves to provide an experience tailored to customer needs.

In this sense, Maquieira assured that the main innovation in the industry is to be proactive in order to be close to the client. “Many brands in the world, from the big ones to the entrepreneurs, understood that they needed to be closer to the public. In this line they worked to develop their exclusive channels and have capillarity. In this way, the paradigm of waiting for customers to come and going out to find their public is broken,” explained Maquieira, who is in charge of Samsung and Diggit's strategy and commercial management on and off.

"The customer is at the center of all operations and their voice, their opinion, as well as their compliance and loyalty, is what allows us to make decisions and take action to improve their experience," he added. In this sense, he argued that a highlight of this new paradigm are pop up stores, that is, mobile spaces located in squares or strategic events and for a limited time. “They are very attractive visually and allow premium products to be exhibited in few volumes in order to surprise the public and generate surprise,” she clarified.

After the pandemic, the digitization of retail became a global trend, but nevertheless, Mirgor had positioned itself as a promoter of omnichannel for a long time. This means that physical outlets and digital stores complement each other. "Both should aim to be contact spaces for the client and, at the same time, be simple points to make sales," warned Maquieira. The reason is that, for some time now, the purchase process often starts in one channel and ends in another.

“For example, the customer searches for a product from home, from the street, from the subway, with a PC or cell phone, and then goes to a store to be advised and buy physically. Or vice versa: he is walking through a shopping center, he goes to a store, tries the product, gets advice and goes home and buys it online, ”he explained.

For his part, the vice president of Samsung Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, stressed that the company has been working hard on omnichannel, “historically the online channel was completely separated from retail and the concept of omnichannel is what unites them. On the other hand, they are still solutions that improve the experience, ”he said. “When we started working with Mirgor to open stores and a few years later we launched the dot.com, it ended up leveraging all the opening that we had worked on before. Strategically, omnichannel comes to close a circle in which we have been working with Samsung for more than six years”, he added.

When making a purchase in the stores of the future, the consumer experience is key. For Maquieira, the idea that the customer is at the center does not have to be an empty phrase. For this reason, the company launched its own retail store called Diggit, where the product offer was expanded in its own chain. "As an example, we don't have salespeople, we have integral advisors who are not looking for an opportunity sale but rather to generate long-term relationships with the client and who choose us beyond a price offer and quotas," she assured.

Among other actions that the company carried out in this line are the Online Exchange Plan, which it implemented in 2020, an alternative so that the client had the possibility of leaving their used equipment as part of payment without leaving their home. "The result was disruptive and, indeed, we were among the pioneers at a global level in doing so," explained Maquieira.

During that year, they also continued to evolve in omnichannel, for example, with different modalities that combine online purchase and store pickup; also what is called Ship From Store, that is, the possibility of sending the product from the nearest store in order to reduce delivery times; Or, people can choose to go to the store but have the product delivered to their home as if it were an online purchase.

2022 was also an inspiring year for the company, which achieved a very important milestone, launching one of its products at the same time as in New York and the rest of the world. “For this we had to produce it first in Tierra del Fuego, we went through a prior manufacturing process always with the support of Mirgor. We were able to tell the world that Argentina was launching at the same time as any other country, that was something very important for us," said Drobeta.

The directors of Mirgor and Samsung assured during the Mirgor Talks that they are preparing to achieve better experiences for their clients, who increasingly demand a higher level of personalization. "From Mirgor we are working on tools and data models that allow us to have more detailed and agile customer and business information, in order to improve all contact points," concluded Maquieira.

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Content LAB is LA NACION's idea and content generation unit for brands with distribution on its digital platforms and social networks. This content was produced for an advertiser and published by the Content LAB. The writing of LA NACION was not involved in the generation of this content.

During that year, they also continued to evolve in omnichannel, for example, with different modalities that combine online purchase and store pickup; also what is called Ship From Store, that is, the possibility of sending the product from the nearest store in order to reduce delivery times; Or, people can choose to go to the store but have the product delivered to their home as if it were an online purchase.