Gigantti is one of the Nordics brands of the London Stock Exchange-listed electronics and telecoms retail group Dixons Carphone, which was formed through a merger four years ago between Dixons Retail and Carphone Warehouse. The overall group’s core retail business makes it the largest multichannel specialist electrical and telecommunications retailer in Europe.
Gigantti is performing particularly strongly right now, with sales up 10% in its most recent results – well ahead of the performance of the group as a whole. Like other parts of the business, the challenge from here onwards is to continue to make more of the brand and the group’s multichannel strengths by investing in staff and in the customer experience, both online and in-store.
Since April this year, the group has been headed by Alex Baldock as group chief executive. He and the rest of the board have set out their stall to better join up the offer to customers in all markets, and especially to invest more in staff in-store.
Evidence of this sharpened customer focus is to be seen in part by what’s happening in the group’s core Currys PC World stores in the UK. These are often used as a testbed for initiatives that are then rolled out to the rest of the group, including Gigantti in the Nordics.
At Currys PC World, staff have recently been issued with tablets on a trial basis to help them assist customers with researching products in store. After some tweaking, the tablets now give staff access to a cut-down version of the retailer’s consumer-facing website, with functionality that will help them when talking to customers.
A version of the technology had already been trialled in other parts of the group, with Carphone Warehouse stores giving staff the capability to offer a guided journey for customers. Learnings from this installation were then fed back into the Currys PC World project, and the expectation from here is of a wider roll-out.
Stuart Ramage, ecommerce director for Dixons Carphone, says all the signs are that customers appreciate interacting with staff who have access to digital assets, since it has doubled the net promoter score registered in participating stores.
Anecdotal feedback from those involved in the trial reveals that customers believe they’re getting a better quality of service when interacting with staff using a tablet because they regard it as a genuine and informed interaction. Staff are able to use product comparisons and reference buyers’ guides to aid customers in deciding which product to buy. Customers notice and welcome that they can have helpful and informed staff interactions.
There’s no timetable yet for Gigantti to feel the benefit of such improvements but this kind of tech deployment is relatively easy to extend, so the Nordics should soon be feeling the benefit too.
