How British high street retailer, Schuh, reduces friction in their digital customer buying journey

In early 2019, Sean, the (now ex-) Director of CX & eCommerce, made contact with our team because Schuh's website experience was dragging their overall customer sentiment scores down.

Getting visibility on 100,000s of survey results and reviews is tough. They were aware of some issues but struggled to quantify which issues were the worst. Without statistical data on the impact of each issue, Schuh struggled to prioritise which changes to make first.

Using natural language processing (NLP), we analysed the written responses within their NPS surveys in minutes, mapping each stage of the customer journey to performance. The Schuh team now had an unparalleled visibility on the journey, and a clear indication of which part of the customer journey was driving negative sentiment and shopping basket abandonment.
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With this kind of objectivity, the Schuh team had the required data to tackle the causes of customer complaints. The SentiSum dashboard acted as a guiding light, enabling Schuh to target issues and track improvements over time.

Sharad: Hey Sean, let's start at the beginning. How do you currently use our platform?

Sean: Hey Sharad, to summarise it in one sentence, we actively listen to customer feedback so that we can take timely, objective action on any friction in the journey.

Sharad: What's been the biggest impact on the way you work as a team?

Sean: There's a couple of noticeable changes. We've saved hours of manual sorting of free customer text while simultaneously achieving an objectivity which previously eluded us.

Sharad: What's has been the biggest impact for your company-customer relationship?

Sean: We now have a clearer impact "to do" list for the Web Optimisation team. They use the insights to reduce customer friction along the digital buying journey.

Sharad: What about you personally? As a customer experience leader, in what way has SentiSum been useful to you?

Sean Mckee: One incredible thing is that I get to quickly "take the temperature" of significant numbers of customers as I review trade. Now I better understand patterns over time which will lead the team to take action on customer friction. Less friction means more sales." Listen to the podcast here.

Making sense of +50,000 data points regularly was a difficult task before we started working together. Now Schuh has a real-time, objective and comprehensive view of the customer.