How Argos are Leading the High Street Revolution Using Social Insights

Argos is one of the most recognized names on the British high street – the company is the UK’s largest high street retailer online, with over 430 million website visits annually and serving over 130 million customers a year through its network of 740 stores.

British consumers relish the opportunity to flick through the Argos catalogue while pondering on how they get their pens so small.

However, that’s all about to change.

Argos is entering the digital age, with the opening of some beautiful, shiny-brand-new, polished digital stores.

Gone are the heavy catalogues, being replaced with slick iPads.

 

Customers no longer have to go to several members of staff to pick, place, pay and finally collect an order – it now all occurs at one till.

James Finch, Customer and Digital Insight Manger at Argos, explained at a recent event that launching these stores was a risk for Argos.

This is a whole new format – how would the traditional Argos customer react to the changes?

Argos wanted to see the impact their new format stores were having and how the public was reacting to the change.

Argos turned to Brandwatch Analytics to monitor the online reaction.

Using the Brandwatch platform the retailer was able to capture just what was being said online, across social networks, news and forum sites.

This strength of research allowed for an unbiased look into the minds of customers that Argos may have struggled to obtain from traditional focus groups.

Argos used a whole arsenal of Brandwatch features to segment the consumer data.

 

Demographics

 

Using the demographic feature, Argos discovered that men and women appreciated different aspects of the new stores.

Men, somewhat surprisingly, showed a higher level of positivity to the change and were especially interested in the high-tech features inside the stores.

Women spoke positively on how they found that the new approach to customer service within the stores dramatically improved their shopping experience.

This information is extremely useful for the multiple teams within Argos, when trying to establish which features to focus on for the wider rollout of the digital stores.

 

Geographical Data

 

Using Brandwatch, Argos was able to break down conversation by location.

Looking at this segmented data, Argos found that Londoners – who appeared to be the most tech savvy – embraced the changes.

The rollout for the new digital stores has mainly focused on urban areas so the ability to track the feedback from the rollout into more rural areas will help Argos to decide where in the UK these new stores are most effective.

 

Feedback and Response

 

The data captured by Brandwatch revealed that not all customers were happy with the changes. Consumers missed familiar catalogues, paper slips and those tiny pens!

The ability Brandwatch has to provide this type of insight for Argos is extremely useful.

Based on this feedback Argos have taken the decision to keep copies of the catalogues behind the counters for those consumers still wish to use them.

Had Argos not had been tracking the conversation online using Brandwatch, this feedback would have been missed.

James also highlighted how social insights was an ongoing source of information for Argos.

Throughout the launch of the digital stores and the implementation, social was crucial in providing real-time information on customer satisfaction.

Looking ahead, Argos will continue to use social insights to monitor the reaction of customers to changes in store and online.

If you want more info on how you can use social insights for your brand, why not get a demo?

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