Retail Case Study in Focus: Salesforce and Adidas

Adidas Transforms Customer Insights with Salesforce

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Adidas Transforms Customer Insights with Salesforce
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Published: July 11, 2022

Rebekah Carter

Staying ahead of the latest trends and expectations in the retail industry requires focus and agility. Fortunately, these are two things leading athletics retailer, Adidas, are familiar with. Tuned into the changes in the sales landscape, Adidas began to recognise a growing need to upgrade its customer experience strategy with a more omnichannel focus.

Over the years, Adidas discovered how important it was becoming to have a powerful presence online, as well as a fantastic image in the physical world. Working with Salesforce technology, the company was able to implement intelligent tools for a unified, omnichannel experience.

Now, Adidas employees can access a more comprehensive view of the customer, while back-end leaders can develop a deeper understanding of what customers need. Here’s how Adidas and Salesforce are working together.

Making the Transition to the Digital World

Adidas is one of the world’s leading companies in the athletic, fashion, and footwear industries. Known as a disruptor in its space with bespoke design strategies and a customer-focused approach to business, Adidas is no stranger to be on the cutting edge.

According to VP of Digital Experience Design for Adidas, Jacqueline Smith-Dubendorfer, Adidas is committed to responding to customer expectations as quickly as possible. For instance, in recent years, as new generations have pushed the buying experience into the digital world, Adidas has invested more aggressively into its online presence.

The Adidas website is more than just a virtual address, it’s an important part of a digital strategy for providing customers with premium, personalised, and connected experiences. The company is heavily focused on capturing attention online, and empowering customers through every stage of their customer journey, from awareness, and discovery, to comparison and purchase.

In the past, retail shoppers would mostly start their purchasing process in a physical store. Now, more of the same shoppers are using a combination of online and offline starting points. Adidas has seen its website become the most dominant channel for the start of the sales journey.

For instance, during a recent holiday season, a significant share of revenue for Adidas in the US was acquired from millennial shoppers – all starting their journey online. There’s a clear evolution underway, from brick-and-mortar retail to digital commerce, and it has enormous implications for companies trying to keep up with changing consumer preferences.

Updating for the New Age of Digital Experience

Adidas knew responding to the changing landscape meant acting as quickly as possible. The team needed to invest in the digital experience with a suite of powerful Salesforce products. According to Adidas, leveraging Salesforce technology meant investing in better customer experiences, and getting to know their target audience.

With Salesforce Service Cloud, Adidas gave its over 1,100 care agents access to tools for delivering smarter, faster service in any format chosen by the customer. Agents could connect via social media, the web, email, or phone calls, all using a single application. As a result, customer service became more efficient for the company, and more personalised to customer needs.

Commerce Cloud, on the other hand, empowered Adidas to rapidly form relationships with shoppers anywhere. Today, the company runs over 50 stores across 40 countries, and can manage, create, update, and enhance its global presence easily with a few simple clicks.

Perhaps most importantly, Salesforce gives Adidas the power to get to know its customers a little better. The Salesforce technology provides an insight into the nature of the customer in each interaction, and which buying processes they’ve moved through.

According to Smith-Dubendorfer, these data points ensure Adidas can adapt what kind of content they show, when it shown, and how information is presented. This helps the company to get as close to what the customers might be looking for as possible.

Beyond simply presenting information or content to shoppers, Adidas also uses its knowledge of individual consumers and their preferences to create better products, and custom-made items for a wide range of clients.

Indeed, the ability to create custom products has helped to set Adidas apart from the competition, and it’s something the company has invested in significantly in recent years. Thanks to the technology available from Salesforce, Adidas can not only offer fast customisation options to customers, it can also produce and deliver personalised products at speed.

Bringing the Adidas Brand to Life

By permitting shoppers to build custom products, leaders in the Adidas landscape can open their brand and relinquish some of the control of brand growth to the consumers. According to Adidas, The Salesforce platform creates aw digital interface that allows companies to engage with shoppers and build meaningful relationships more effectively.

The fact that there’s so much data out there for Adidas to collect and use means by placing the right data at the heart of the brand, they can produce a more relevant experience.

The digital-first and customer-centric strategy pursued by Adidas has been paying off, according to the tea. In fact, the brand achieved record-breaking growth during a time when the rest of the industry has been struggling. The Adidas digital channel, enhanced by Salesforce technology, also continues to be a critical part of the company’s growth and future strategy.

For the Adidas company, the scale and consistency at which they’re able to bring the brand to life and delight their customers is extremely important to the future of Adidas. The partnership with Salesforce has allowed Adidas to thrive across many markets, and ensured the company could continue to compete in a world impacted by huge levels of digitization.

 

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