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- [00:02]
Nathan Isaacs
Welcome back to the Insights Unlocked podcast. In this episode, we're diving into the world of Omnichannel Strategy with Kate McCabb, founder of Flywheel Strategy. Kate has spent nearly two decades helping brands create seamless customer experiences and she's here to share what it really takes to bridge the gap between digital and physical interactions. From the power of user insights to the importance of cross team collaboration, this conversation is packed with actionable takeaways. Enjoy the show.
- [00:32]
Bobby Meixner
Welcome to Insights Unlocked, an original podcast from User Testing where we bring you candid conversations and stories with the thinkers, viewers and builders behind some of the most successful digital products and experiences in the world. From concept to execution.
- [00:51]
Nathan Isaacs
Welcome to the Insights Unlocked podcast. I'm Nathan Isaacs, senior manager for content production and user testing and joining us today as host is UserTesting's Bobby Meixner, senior Director of Industry solutions. Welcome Bobby.
- [01:05]
Kate McCabe
Hello everyone.
- [01:07]
Nathan Isaacs
And our guest today is Kate McCabe, founder of Flywheel Strategy. With 17 years of experience in the digital space at Ancestry, Rothy's Brooklinen and our place, Kate specializes in blending the voice of the customer data, insights and marketplace opportunities to create streamlined road roadmaps for high growth organizations. Welcome to the show, Kate.
- [01:30]
Kate McCabe
Thanks, Nathan. I'm excited to be on the podcast today.
- [01:34]
We're excited to have you, Kate. And I know that you've had a really impressive career working on customer focused omnichannel strategies. Can you share a bit about your journey, how it shaped your perspective on creating those sometimes ever elusive seamless customer first interactions?
- [01:52]
Yes. I'll give a little peek into where I started in the industry which was in the marketing space. And then I pretty quickly stumbled into product management. So my background and like most, most official expertise is in product management. And the reason I stumbled into product management is I was seeing this really constant struggle between our marketing teams and our development teams where marketing wanted to go chase and build something different every three weeks. And the technical team was always, you know, flabbergasted that what the asks were being changed and also just speaking like pretty technically about why it was going to take so long. So as I moved into what I call the translation space between those organizations, that's where I really found the unlock that can happen in organizations as they figure out who are the right people, who are the right, what are the right practices internally as a team and what levers and metrics of performance really drive that user experience that customers are going to love and are also going to help the business be successful in their goals.
- [03:01]
So you wanted to jump in. You wanted to be the referee, you wanted to be the mediator, and that's what carried you.
- [03:08]
Yes. And when I sort of just volunteered for the space because I thought, we're all brilliant people. Why are we angry at each other? The time. Yeah, yeah. Why is this so hard? And then I started. I actually didn't even know it was product management. I just said, let me. Let me step into referee and try to see if I can create a story that everyone feels heard and seen and it feels comprehensive. Then I started going to conferences and I learned, oh, this is product management. And this is where I feel like, well, user insights often officially lives with design teams and user research teams. I feel like product teams and product leaders have a really invested interest because we're responsible for shaping the full picture across all of the different departments. Like, what are we all trying to accomplish and what's going to be the totality of that that comes to market in a way that's really cohesive.
- [04:05]
Yeah, I think that's a great call out. And when we think about omnichannel, Omnichannel, it's been a buzzword for what, over a decade now? Maybe more so I think everybody knows that it is important people do it. You know, organizations can pull it off to varying degrees. From your vantage point as somebody who's been on multiple sides of the fence, why is omnichannel so important?
- [04:34]
I think there's a few reasons why in the past two years, omnichannel has become table stakes. And it's different depending on how each company grew up or entered the marketplace. So for any of those companies that are DTC native, you know, they started online, selling direct to consumers. There was sort of this glory days from, you know, the 2010s to right before 2020, where it was growth at all costs. You know, profitability was not something that investors or companies really managed to. And on top of that, there was an element of data privacy was not as regulated as it is now. And so around 2019, 2020, 2021, a bunch of regulations came in as well as the pandemic that made a bunch of companies who have only relied on E Commerce as their only source of revenue, all of a sudden, it became a whole different world to be success. And so omnichannel, when you think about retail, wholesale, those are other avenues where revenue is available. On the flip side, you have enterprise legacy businesses that maybe they've always only been wholesale and legacy, wholesale and retail. And while there is so much scale and growth Possible in that way. What you're missing is the direct to consumer purchasing habits that exist in the marketplace. When consumers and buyers love you, they are now sort of tuned into, Let me go look on the website, see if I can find a deal that's exclusive, a loyalty program that'll give me additional perks. So for any enterprise companies who have started wholesale in retail, they're now trying to catch up to where the DTC companies are. So you see all companies trying to play omnichannel for very different reasons. At the root of it is, you know, trying to stabilize and diversify growth for the business.
- [06:40]
So everyone has the same goal, they're coming at it from different points depending on essentially how and when they started their business.
- [06:48]
Yes, exactly.
- [06:50]
So, Kate, you brought us a great example of a brand doing omnichannel, right? Not only for driving business, but also as a feedback loop for customer insights. Tell us about that.
- [07:03]
Yeah, so this fall and the reason this experience stood out to me, I just want to give like sort of a virtual hug to any companies out there trying to go omnichannel. It is tough to do well. And so there are lots of examples right now of it not happening super cohesively. And so it's very rare that I see companies executing in a true omnichannel versus just a multi channel fashion. So I'll talk a little bit about this example, but I just want to set the context that the ecosystem we're working in is we're sort of in the crawl phase of companies knowing how to be omnichannel successfully. And I think that this is a great leader in this space. So in the fall, I live in New York City. I had a friend text me. So word of mouth right there. For all of the marketing folks out there, word of mouth, referral, say anthropology has an experience happening for a full week. An entire brownstone is going to be decked out with all of their holiday gear. And because of what I do, I was really curious. I was also really excited to go, you know, in the middle of September, kind of get a pre holiday look as we went in. And as I looked, I sort of was observing how this all came together. So word of mouth was how I learned about it. To attend the event, you had to sign up for the loyalty program. So now Anthropologie has first party data, which is sort of the gold of our ecosystem today. And then you could reserve a spot for free. So completely free for people to participate. But there was an exchange of data to make that Happen. Then we go into this beautiful mansion in New York, six stories that every single room had been completely decorated with Anthropologie in one of their sister companies product lines. What was missing? There were no barcodes, there weren't stacks of inventory saying, buy me, here's a special. And the other thing I noticed is we weren't shoulder to shoulder, you know, a migration of humans being moved through this. It really they wanted you to feel what was their brand ethos, which is imagine this is your home for the holidays and they had different rooms with their different design treatments, really friendly team members in each room, just saying hello and talking about, happy to answer any questions at the very end. You know, throughout the experience, there was a landing page. They were like if I asked, oh, I love those twinkle lights on the tree. There was a landing page that had all of the products available that you were seeing. And then as a little incentive, anyone who purchased while at the experience received a small candle gift on their way out. And I was so impressed. You can see how it was really woven between their operations team, their retail team, their marketing team, their retention team. For all of us who are in house, all of these teams live very siloed and we often have our own initiatives. But for Anthropologie, they were able to bring an omnichannel experience to life. Where I didn't feel the boundaries between each of their departments. I felt a cohesive experience that really worked for me, the user, every single person I went to the all three of us ended up buying a product. We got our holiday shopping done early. So it seemed like a win win all around. It was a really great experience that I hope we can see more of. It gave me hope and optimism for where Omnichannel can go in the future.
- [10:45]
Yeah, when everything comes together like that, it really just feels natural, it feels organic to where.
- [10:52]
Yes.
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You're not even thinking about it, you're just enjoying the experience.
- [10:56]
Yes, yes, yes.
- [10:59]
Yeah. I love how anthropology does this with these pop up stores. They create those really unique organic experiences. And you know, there, there are numerous benefits to that, you know, one obviously being all of the information that they can collect, the ethos that they build as they're kind of extending their omnichannel reach. When you think about other brands, Right. How can other brands leverage similar tactics within their own strategies to drive both in store and online engagement?
- [11:32]
That's a great question. I have a few ideas and thoughts on this. The first one, as I was leaving that anthropology event, I had to Tell one of the team members I said, this is incredible. I've never seen something executed so well and so seamlessly. How did you make this happen? And I'm telling this bit because it falls into my first recommendation, which she said, this is the third or fourth year we've done it. In the first few years it did not feel like this one year we had a Penthouse. Everyone was shoulder to shoulder. It felt like a cocktail party, which is not who we are as a brand. And but she was like, each year we tinkered with it and now we have this manifestation of the experience. And so my biggest takeaway for Omnichannel, to really have Omnichannel become so integrated into your business, it's this long term commitment to learning, iterating and adapting the experience. If you have a mindset of okay, in Q4, we're going to try a holiday implementation once or a back to school implementation if school is your big selling season, if it doesn't take flushing it down the toilet and saying being integrated in our mindset doesn't work for us, I think is walking away from a huge opportunity. So suggestion number one is really give your company the time and space which is a multi year commitment to we're going to do Omnichannel, we're going to do it well and we know it's going to take time and we're going to learn as we go. But those learnings are actually getting us closer to our end goal. So that's suggestion number one. The second suggestion is the cross functional planning and really early. You know, when you think about when E commerce businesses specifically are thinking about the holidays, they usually are coming to market in October, which can be even too early for some people. You know, November, October, November. The fact that Anthropologie did this six weeks before the holiday chatter and it was executed so well to me speaks to how many meetings, conversations, project plans must have been happening across all of these teams to execute it so well. And then the last piece is priority alignment. So, so, you know, if they had a bunch of different teams, their retention team, their marketing team, their digital team, who owns their website, the operations team to bring and set up their visual merchandisers. If any one of those groups had said this is my 18th priority, I'm going to get everything else done before this, the whole thing could have crumbled. And so I think that internal alignment, not only planning early, but just making sure everyone's aligned from A and has the space to execute well, really will help your business stand apart and win in the omnichannel space in a way that very few people are doing it today.
- [14:39]
So start early and it may not pan out exactly how you would like it to, at least right from the beginning. It may take a few baths, which I think people, you know, probably have some battle scars from. So when you think about the. The components, right, of all the different systems, platforms, the touch points that into creating a truly omnichannel experience, what are some of the key ones?
- [15:09]
I think in terms of the components that make up, you know, your omnichannel experience, the core piece is the user. Think about how does this come through for the user, whether that is running something like a user test, you know, if it's a digital experience, or, you know, if you're on Amazon and you're on target.com and you have your own website, you know, do user tests across those platforms for your product to see how it's showing up and what's standing out. And you will learn significant gaps and significant competitive advantages in each of those spaces. And then when it's this physical. So it's omnichannel, it means there is, in person, tactical. So it's, you know, demoing, prototyping and folding in that qualitative feedback in terms of what does this look like for the user? And then map your systems and platforms back to where the support needs to be. So for anthropology, what that looked like is they had a landing page promoting the event, they had their loyalty program ready to go to sign people up for the event, as well as a scheduling tool. They had a landing page with all of the products that had been put in the home. They had a person at the house with candles who was. Show me your order confirmation. Here you go. Thanks for coming. So I think the platforms and technologies you need will be unique to each company and each omnichannel experience. And this is why getting the involvement from each of your departments is so key, is you want it to flow back into your overarching systems for your business.
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Yeah, you touched on doing some user testing. What role does user feedback play in really optimizing that experience in your view? From what you've seen?
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I think this is the difference. I think user testing and paying attention to user feedback, both from a quantitative and a qualitative perspective. This is the difference between companies who right now are seeing growth and building their community versus companies who are investing in omnichannel and they're not seeing the gains. So it's really about thinking less about, are we multichannel meaning, okay, we are available in different marketplaces and in different touch points, but they are all living in their own universe versus being omnichannel, saying, what are the bridges we're creating across each of these channels we show up in? So it's cohesive and users will tell you directly whether it's through reviews, whether it's through, you know, customer emails, whether it's through more guided, moderated and unmoderated before you even go to market. And then there's the qualitative of takeaways. So that example with anthropology, you know, they observed this penthouse experience is not, you know, our vision of anthropologie, customers, homes. And you know, this isn't where our products live on a daily basis. So that was a, that was a qualitative insight that they pulled, just observing, sort of how is this, how is this landing once you're really in the moment? Omnichannel, certainly.
- [18:31]
So you touched on multi channel, which I think is, you know, and it's an interesting term. You don't hear it a lot. I think people don't like to talk about it. Everyone likes to think that they are omnichannel.
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Yep.
- [18:43]
But I think some companies are still in transition. Right. From a multi channel strategy to a true omnichannel strategy that gives you that completely seamless, integrated customer journey. For companies that are at least perhaps being honest with themselves around where they're at. What advice would you give them along that journey?
- [19:05]
Yeah, I think, you know, give yourself space to start multichannel. If multichannel is this concept of we have a presence in different places and then see it as a gradual progression line into omnichannel. If multichannel is being called omnichannel, and that's your end. All, be all. What I'm seeing in a lot of companies today, now that we're a few years into every company trying to be omnichannel, is you have an AMP team who manages your Amazon marketplace, you have a team who manages retail, you have a team who manages your digital and technology for your owned site. And what happens is that to me is multichannel. Yes, you have a presence in many places, but, but those teams are not roadmapping together. They don't have strategic initiatives to say, how do we bind this experience? So for the customer who is bopping around to us through all of these different touch points, they're going to feel that we are the same brand with the same values everywhere that they interact with us, so that it's okay to be multichannel first that's the first step to this more mature omnichannel mindset. I think the danger is in thinking we're, you know, saying that you're omnichannel when you haven't yet built your technology, your infrastructure, or structured your teams to really collaborate in an omnichannel way.
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Yeah. And as they're making this transition.
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Right.
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The industry doesn't stop. There's always new channels popping up, there's new emerging technologies. How do you see emerging technologies like AI, virtual reality, augmented reality, influencing the future of omnichannel strategies and really enhancing the customer journey across all of these touch points and platforms?
- [21:03]
It's a great question. I think the temptation can often be, let's find the snazziest new emerging technology and find a way to implement it into our business. My recommendation for businesses is to do the inverse. What are your business initiatives? How do you want to competitively show up differently in the marketplace and then go look to emerging technologies to say, can they accomplish or help me get there faster? So a great example of that is Disney Disney World. I don't know. I have a brother who recently started working there. He helps build all of their great experiences. And when you go over the past 10 years, they've really invested in, like, a 5D experience where it's, you know, you're in a car and it's moving and scents are coming out and there's wind and sound. And this virtual AR reality concept, they didn't go into that saying, virtual reality is here. How do we sprinkle it into every, you know, Disney experience we have in the amusement park? They said, okay, our, our rides are a place where we can immerse users. How do we create that immersion? Let me go find the emerging technology and find the right touch points to do that. So that's a great example of setting your business goals and then going to the marketplace to find where emerging technology can help you stand out.
- [22:33]
Certainly now, earlier you touched on one of your tips was start early. Right. So when you think about this holistically, what's the ideal timeline for gathering and implementing customer feedback in order to really come up with a strategy. Right. That's going to produce a successful holiday shopping season? I can't even believe we're talking about it. I feel like we just got out of a holiday season. But to your point, you need to start early. We need to start thinking about it now. So how can businesses make sure that they've started early enough so that they can actually act on insights and time.
- [23:11]
So the approach that I like to take and work with teams on is user testing. And user feedback is not a one and done moment in your development life cycle, your feature development, your strategic initiatives. So I really like to sprinkle user feedback throughout the entire journey. And what that looks like is initial concepting. So this might be your white space analysis, your competitor analysis. Oftentimes when companies do that, they on their own are saying what's in the marketplace, what are my competitors doing? And then they sort of bridge a story together about here's where we can show it differently. I really encourage businesses talk to users at that point, show those competitor landscape, you know, the competitor experiences you're seeing to users and say, tell me what you think, what do you love, what do you not love? Like you don't only have to be user testing for the experiences you're building, you can be user testing for the industry that you're in. That's at the very beginning. Then I really like to have my design teams focus on it in early design prototyping. So let's go wide. We have five big ideas about how this amusement park ride, this omnichannel experience where the anthropology could come to market. Let's put that before users and get feedback hypothetically to help narrow it in. Then there's a third user testing touchpoint, which is the late stage design wireframes and prototypes. Once you've narrowed in and you think you've landed the experience. So for an anthropologies example, once they've mapped out, you know, we're thinking about requiring a loyalty sign up, you know, what do you think of that? As a user we're thinking about a gift with purchase or maybe looking at your quantitative data where you've offered gift with purchases to loyalty members and seeing how did that accelerate in bump the initiatives that you were driving. That's a key part once you've refined it. And then lastly is once you're in market, once you're in market and the experience is happening, talk to users, get feedback. Don't just rely on what you're seeing on social and in customer requests and in reviews. Truly get some people on the phone saying, you know, pull up your either ideal, your best case or worst case. I like to live in the extremes, your happy path or your sad path and hear from users on what's standing out from them. And every single point in that four step user testing touchpoint, you'll be able to save resources and save rework and also build confidence in the strategic plan. So it's not just what do all of us around the table think is going to work, but what do the users who are trying to reach think is going to work.
- [26:00]
I think that's great advice. You are a wealth of knowledge. Thank you so much for being on the show. Really, really enjoyed this conversation. I'm sure people have more questions. How does somebody learn more about you, your thought leadership, the work that you and your team are doing at Flywheel Strategy.
- [26:19]
Yes, it's been so fun to talk. I could talk about this all day long, as you can tell. For anybody who has additional questions or wants to brainstorm, you can reach me at Kate@flywellstrategy.co. we don't do the.com, we do the dot co. We also are on LinkedIn and we have a website. But we, we get really excited about helping teams because this is, like you said, an ever changing landscape. In the meantime, there are business goals that need to be met and so we work as an extension with leadership teams to map out how to get to that future state so that you can really stand out in the marketplace.
- [26:55]
Wonderful. Thank you.
- [26:57]
Bobby Meixner
Want to keep the conversation going? You can find the show notes@usertesting.com podcast if you haven't already, don't forget to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast or Google Play, so you never miss an episode. And if you enjoyed today's show, please share it with a friend or leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And until next time, this is Insights Unlocked, an original podcast from User Testing.