What Is American Eagle Doing For Customer Service

COVID-xix has shone a light on a common issue many retailers face: disjointed communications, particularly from company headquarters to brick-and-mortar store teams. With the safety of employees and customers depending on stores receiving timely data (east.g., safety policies and protocols) and taking immediate action, communication has go even more disquisitional.

Only before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, American Eagle Outfitters (AEO) adopted a "Slack-like" communications platform, Retail Zipline. The investment has proven to be a wise ane for AEO. The company has seen increased staff productivity levels at each of the stores that implemented Retail Zipline. Furthermore, the communications platform has served to go on 8,000-plus store assembly informed of constantly evolving COVID-19 protocols in existent time, helping them to create a safer shopping experience for consumers.

AEO notes that its partnership with Retail Zipline saved the visitor labor hours in the terminal year — hours that tin now be redirected to delivering safe and more engaging customer experiences. In an exclusive interview with Total Retail, Sunny Woo, senior vice president of American Eagle and Aerie Stores at AEO Inc., discusses the company'southward utilize of Retail Zipline's platform and how information technology has made such a positive impact on store operations during a challenging fourth dimension for the brick-and-mortar sector.

Sunny Woo, Senior Vice President of American Eagle and Aerie Stores, AEO Inc.

Full Retail: What communication challenges take presented themselves for American Eagle Outfitters, particularly its in-store staff, during the pandemic?
Sunny Woo: Our priority is the safety and well-existence of our customers and assembly. As our squad worked closely with top medical experts to develop and implement industry-leading condom protocols, including being one of the first companies to offering masks every bit customers returned to shop, and a reimagined store experience, there was a lot of data we needed to share with our store associates to make sure they were well informed. As states implemented different guidelines that built on the practices we put in identify in our stores, nosotros needed to ensure that all stores had admission to the policies and procedures for their specific locations. Furthermore, it was important to have a tool that was consequent and not subject to platform errors.

TR: What solution(s) has AEO put into place to accost its communication challenges? Can yous share examples of how the solution has been used?
SW: Prior to Zipline, field leaders didn't accept an easy way to view and track the advice their team was receiving. They now receive a daily "package" email containing all advice and tasks for their squad. The email likewise offers quick access to task compliance reporting, which gives a starting betoken for follow-upwards and coaching conversations with their squad. Additionally, Zipline allows leadership to reply to Zipline group chats straight from Outlook email. This is a bang-up tool for the "on the become" leader.

TR: What has the feedback of AEO'south employees been to this new communication tool? How much training time have employees needed to employ the platform?
SW: We conducted a survey of our field leaders, and 97 percent reported that Retail Zipline improves the way they receive and process communications. Nosotros chose to host a i-60 minutes training session for our store leadership teams; still, in that location was very little change-management needed beyond that. The platform is intuitive and easy to learn, which fabricated for a seamless transition. Additionally, Zipline'south live conversation back up allows our team to ask questions in existent time. We launched Zipline to our full armada merely weeks before COVID forced united states to close our doors. Zipline quickly responded to the need for a COVID hub, which allowed us to provide a one-finish-shop for all of safety and store closing/reopening processes and procedures.

TR: What are the business concern benefits that AEO has realized since it began working with Retail Zipline?
SW: Retail Zipline is a user-friendly platform that gives us the opportunity to target specific groups of assembly and distribute data quickly and in a style that makes sense for our teams. The Zipline team understands the impact that proper communications can accept on a business and makes it a priority to ensure that information technology understands all aspects of our concern. Zipline takes on cease-user support by being attainable to all field users and publishers in the product so that our team can focus on providing value.

TR: How can AEO meliorate its in-store communications strategy going forward?
SW: Equally we continue to grow and evolve our advice strategy, we're always looking for means to streamline the associate feel. This yr, Zipline is launching a feature that volition allow field leaders to build full communications from Outlook, which will land directly in Zipline for their store teams. Since our leaders already communicate to peers and business organisation partners via Outlook, this feature will exist a natural transition and volition still keep letters archived and organized in Zipline with readership and compliance reporting.

People:
Sunny Woo

Joe Keenan Author's folio

Joe Keenan is the executive editor of Total Retail. Joe has more than ten years experience roofing the retail industry, and enjoys profiling innovative companies and people in the space.