Purple Square’s long-term success supporting top UK retailer’s CX

From supporting its martech solution and the launch of its loyalty programme to integrating, analysing and protecting its on- and offline marketing data, Purple Square’s knowledge, expertise and dedication have underpinned this UK retailer’s customer experience journeys for more than 10 years.

Key Benefits To Working With Purple Square

  • Loyalty and customer app launch
  • Integration of online and in-store customer journeys
  • Transactional email framework and quick turnaround campaign support
  • Privacy engineering
  • Ongoing martech support from day one – present

A customer-led journey

“Our relationship dates back to 2013,” said Purple Square MD, Tim Biddiscombe. “We were called in initially to ‘help right the ship’ of its large martech-led business transformation project that was facing some challenges.”

Brought in for their expertise and track record with successful Unica and IBM software implementations, Purple Square quickly earned the trust of the retailer’s IT and marketing teams by identifying and resolving many issues related to the set up.

“We were able to get the project back on track and successfully implement the system, laying the groundwork for what has become a long-standing relationship and a customer experience success story for the retailer,”

Underpinning loyalty

Once it was up and running properly, the martech software became the technological backbone for the retailer’s new loyalty programme, which they launched later that year. Purple Square integrated the new loyalty app into their centralised system, allowing the retailer to personalise and prioritise real time offers tailored to customers’ purchasing preferences.

Another CX milestone the Purple Square team is particularly proud of helping the client achieve involved capturing the data from shopping lists created by customers within the loyalty app and cross-checking it against their actual purchases made in-store.

“The company’s bricks and mortar shops had a long-standing history of good service and value for customers. They didn’t want to lose the trust they had built by simply launching a competing online offer,” explained Biddiscombe. “By offering customers the ability to create their shopping lists online to use in the physical stores, they are able to simplify their shopping experience without cannibalising either service.”

The integration has also allowed the retailer to gain a complete picture of how their customers shop with them. Analysing the prepared lists versus actual purchases made in-store provides a wealth of data to help improve store layouts, pricing and the overall shopping experience for their customers.

Responding to customer needs

Purple Square remains on hand to upgrade, maintain and extend the martech platform to keep up with the changing needs of the retailer and its customers. Their knowledge of the retailer’s business, their systems and their customer journeys means that Purple Square often works side by side with the in-house team on new initiatives, such as underpinning the marketing and functionality of the home delivery services.

Purple Square has also worked closely with the client to implement the receipting, order preparation and order collection emails for the retailer’s click and collect services. This mobile ordering service launched during COVID to allow customers to place mobile orders for food and drink from the store’s cafes and collect them with their shopping, minimising contact and adhering to social distancing guidelines.

Purple Square’s director of services, Mos Bhatti explained the significance of the project at the time, “This is genuinely great news for our clients’ customers and was a project we were able to provide support for at short notice, and turnaround quickly… It is not only great for their customers, but also allowed them to bring back more of their staff.”

The project’s success follows on from the transactional email framework Purple Square developed alongside the in-house team, which continues to power targeted communications for customer-centric services including discount clubs for new parents, Christmas savers, students and NHS workers, the latter of which was also implemented during the pandemic.

Good Governance and ongoing support

“Everything we do for the client revolves around improving customer service – from targeting communications and services to keeping their data safe and secure,”

From a technology perspective, the Purple Square team also managed the shift from on-premise to cloud with minimal disruptions and continues to provide application management services, ensuring the system stays up and running and meets all compliance and security requirements.

“Good data governance is at the heart of what Purple Square delivers to all our clients. We ensure their systems are resilient and compliant. Nearly ten years on, we still support the disaster recovery for their martech system and provide privacy engineering to ensure the robust processes for customers to manage their data consent are in place.”

It is this consistent delivery of results and adherence to best practices that keep the client coming back to work with Purple Square.

And the benefits flow both ways. “Working with this client has really helped us to shape Purple Square as a business over the years,” said Biddiscombe. “Learning from the solutions we’ve devised to solve their pain points has provided us with the inspiration to refine services we can offer other clients.”

“From the start, we’ve been teaming up to solve what seemed like the ‘impossible’ – and now, to paraphrase Lewis Carroll, we try to accomplish ‘six impossible things before breakfast’,” concluded Biddiscombe.

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