Liberty using store staff to energise digital offer

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Nov 26, 2020

With its flagship department closed for now, Liberty London is aiming to make the best of the festive shopping season by putting its store staff in front of online shoppers.

It means web browsers can chat to store staff and ask them questions, with the functionality having proved popular this season.

It director of e-commerce, Eric Fergusson, told InternetRetailing that “one of the things we’ve done online for the first time this year is made our in-store agents available to customers online. We realised we have a large cohort of customers who love having conversations with our fantastic staff and now they can have them digitally”.

The retailer saw an uptick in business post-lockdown as consumers started their festive shopping early but Fergusson also thinks there’s plenty of pent-up demand for when stores reopen next week.

“I’ve got a hunch that there are a proportion of people out there who might be holding on for when stores will reopen because they love shopping, and they love the weekends out with the carols and the music and mulled wine and they’re holding on for that moment,” he said.

But he expects the online shopping habit consumers have acquired this year to continue to drive Liberty’s e-sales higher in the New Year too.

“People have shopped online, found it convenient and people are going to be spending more time working from home than they did last year and those I think are the two norms that have persisted,” he told InternetRetailing.