Analysis: How Burberry is using apps to make luxury retail luxurious again

The British luxury retailer will try out the latest iteration of an app developed for its store associates, called R World, at its Manchester flagship from this month.

The shop staff mobile app, which was designed in-house with Apple consulting on its development, was first rolled out to Burberry’s 8,000 store employees a year ago in conjunction with Apple and based on feedback from store staff and Burberry’s client relationship team.

This iterative development means features such as an Instagram-style feed called ‘TB Inspiration’ (after the label’s founder Thomas Burberry), which includes regularly rotated snippets ranging from video messages from chief creative officer Riccardo Tisci to press coverage.

TB Inspiration is one of the key drivers of daily usage of the app by staff, which is one of Burberry’s KPIs.

“There’s no point building something that sounds great to you or I but no one in the store is actually using,” Morris says.

“The bits I’m most excited about are intelligence, automation and task management, but to have got to the point where you can play with those things you need a daily rhythm and cadence of people using the tool.

“The inspiration component that gives them some bite-size Instagram-style content to start the day has gone down really well because it gives them three things they can then incorporate into conversations with customers throughout the day.”

R World also allows store associates to scan a product barcode to get a live view of its availability across the retailer’s global store and online stock pool, as well as a digital ‘little black book’ where they can keep information about particular clients such as past purchases and fashion preferences and schedule personal styling appointments.

Burberry’s newest app feature, R Message, will be rolled out on a trial basis to a selected cohort of high-value shoppers in a bid to bridge the gap between store staff and users of the luxury retailer’s customer-facing app.

It is a messaging platform allowing invite-only chat for customers, connecting store associates using Burberry’s R World app to shoppers with Burberry’s retail app.

Using the feature, store associates will be able to message customers directly in a similar format to a WhatsApp chat, whether to send product recommendations shoppers can buy directly within the app or to schedule personal styling appointments, which are then added to a customer’s Apple calendar.

One-of-a-kind

Morris believes the new feature could be a game-changer for how Burberry communicates with its top-tier customers.

“There are so many technology trends but messaging is one that is clearly appropriate for luxury because ultimately it’s intimate and goes back to the core purpose of luxury, which is creating that one-of-a-kind relationship between the customer and store associate,” he explains.

Morris says the long-term objectives of the feature are to “increase the value it generates from top-tier customers” as well as their average order and lifetime value.

During the trial, Burberry will select the customers who are offered the R Message feature in-app based on “a number of predetermined criteria around spend, level of engagement, recency and frequency”.

However, from that point onwards Morris predicts the rollout of the feature could go one of two ways.

“Either you say this is going really well, and let’s focus all of our efforts on adding additional services that can be offered to those top-tier customers that end up making it feel even more elevated and differentiated.

“Alternatively you say, actually the value [of the tool] is to extend the service to other tiers of customers that previously wouldn’t have a consistent experience, and using our data intelligence to power that. Honestly, at this point, I don’t know which of those two paths is most likely – we’ll learn once we have the trial up and in place,” he says.

At a time when retailers run the risk of going snowblind amid a flurry of technology claiming to transform retail, Morris believes Burberry’s new app capabilities represent a “move away from the idea of technology as just a buzzy part of an in-store experience” and to something that can “genuinely develop the core relationship” between the luxury retailer’s store associates and customers.