Sephora’s Advisor Assistant
Sephora is one of the largest luxury beauty retailers in the world. The brand as we know it now was formed in the late 1990’s, and today has thousands of stores in dozens of countries. One of the well-known parts of the in-store experience is the use of digital tools to de-mystify beauty and find your version through exploration and creativity.
The business problem addressed by this product came from an insight that 25% of in-store customers who departed without a purchase did so because “they couldn’t find help.”
Sephora Storefront
Customer Need
Sephora stores can get incredibly busy during a Saturday afternoon rush, and beauty can be an intimidating category at any time. Non-purchasing customers told our consumer insights team that the primary reason they left without an item was because they couldn’t find a person to help.
Challenges
Change management, including training hundreds of retail associates to use an app that could be perceived as threatening, was the biggest hurdle. Loss prevention, WiFi, software updates, 500 doors, and tap-targets for long fingernails were others :)
The Sephora Advisor Assistant UI
Approach
After primary, “in-the-store” research with Beauty Advisors, design sprints with the Apple iOS Enterprise team, and multiple prototype rounds, we rolled out the Advisor app. Features included an inventory lookup, a Client purchase history, and a Services booking engine. Importantly, the core feature was a virtual waiting queue for Advisors to better and more efficiently understand Client needs.
Results
Customers supported by Beauty Advisors using the Assistant app left their session with an average 31% higher basket size.