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What we achieved

  • iOS and Android  from a single code base

  • 25% Increased  revenue in 1 year

  • 2 Million active monthly users 

To who

  • Industry: Retail

  • Products: HCL Volt MX

  • Region: NA/US

Overview

  • Part 1

    Challenge

    This major North American arts & crafts chain needed to create a new app that would grow its market share and improve customer experience — and unite its dev teams.
  • Part 2

    Solution

    An app was built and released on both iOS and Android (with a single code source). Salesforce, another contender for the solution, was unable to compete.
  • Part 3

    Results

    More than 2 million people uses the app every month, with 60%+ opting in for push notifications. Scan-and-go features for curbside pickup has grown revenue by 25%.

The Challenge

Grow Revenue, Improve Customer Service, and Cut Costs

This already-successful mega-chain, with more than 1,250 stores in the US and Canada, wanted to increase its market share in the retail arts and crafts industry.

After an evaluation of overall business operations and expenses, a “stream-lining” strategy was developed to move the currently outsourced (and expensive) IT and development functions to a single in-house team that could build and maintain a primary business app.

The app would need to be able to run on multiple operating systems, primarily iOS and Android, and give customers a great digital experience as well as keep them coming back for ongoing exploration of the latest product offerings and “specials.” Their goal was to deliver a “best-in-class” consumer experience.

How could this be done quickly and smoothly?

The Solution

An Easier Way to Shop

This company was already familiar with the power of Volt MX, having been a customer since 2017, but quickly developed an even greater appreciation for the platform’s simple — and controllable —pricing structure based on the number of active user sessions. This was a critical deciding factor for the company to use Volt MX versus a competitor’s solution which based pricing on an unpredictable number of service calls.

The powerful Volt MX app also provided a consistent user experience across operating systems. Unlike its competitor, Salesforce, with Volt MX you can build an app once and deploy a consistent experience across any platform. A Salesforce solution requires a combination of native app development shops plus its proprietary app platform, which made the solution more costly, from a time, complexity, maintenance, and dollars standpoint. Using the Volt MX platform was the clear winner when it came to price and value.

With Volt MX, the company is leveraging full native mobile capabilities, with a focus on UI/UX design, and has evolved the app to address real customer needs, giving them an exceptional shopping experience.

The app works the same from any geographical location and provides easy-to-use, in-store product location and wayfinding to an exact product a customer wants. This is accomplished via an AI-enhanced conversational interface with natural language processing (NLP), product image recognition, barcode scanning, and more. The presentation to the customer is a seamless and sticky user experience that drives loyalty and engagement.

As part of the company’s response to the pandemic, it also enabled a few newer and faster shopping options for customers including curb-side pickup, buy online and pick up in store, and a contactless scan-and-go option, making it easy to shop safely.

The Results

App Deployed in Record Time

It took the team just 6 months to build, test, and deploy a fully functional, robust, and sleek new shopping app. They saw the customer’s adoption of the app immediately skyrocket and the ratings of their app in the Apple AppStore and Google Play also soared, with ratings of 4.8 and 4.6, respectively.

With this positive reaction from the market, especially notable during the pandemic, the app directly contributed to a 25% increase in revenue in 2020 alone. Now the app has about 2 million active monthly users, with more than 60% of those opting in for push notifications. The app has increased revenue and customer loyalty, and at a lower cost than the competition could offer.

About the company

This major retail store in North America, with more than 1,250 stores in the US and Canada, is one of the largest provider of arts and crafts products.

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