The Key to Sephora’s Omnichannel Success: Making Every Touchpoint Personable

Sephora shattered glass ceilings by surpassing a record of $10 billion in sales in 2023. And it’s no surprise when we think about just how well Sephora has been building out their omnichannel experience over the years. When it comes to customer experience, there’s no doubt that Sephora is a clear leader in the industry.

Sephora doesn’t just meet customer expectations — they go above and beyond to connect with their customers and make every touchpoint personable in a unique, exciting way.

Sephora’s Omnichannel Experience

What a lot of brands fail to understand is the importance of building strong emotional ties with the customer at ALL levels and pitstops along the customer journey. Let’s break down Sephora’s omnichannel touchpoints and all the little things that make it so effective.

1. Social Media

• Beauty Talk, The Glossy and Sephora TV, Beauty Board

Sephora does create their own content, but more importantly, they let their customers speak for themselves. Sephora’s social media platform, Beauty Board, allows customers to post their own content using products they love, while also finding new products by exploring others’ makeup looks they love.

A huge part of Sephora’s CX strategy is getting their customers to love their products, love their services, and love the treatment they get as customers. Sephora understands that shopping is social experience. A strong emotion like love is what ends up empowering people to share these experiences and products with others.

1. Physical Stores

• Helpful Personnel

AI can’t replace everything. Sephora’s employees make shopping personable — going in-store and having to talk to a chatbot to find the perfect gift for Mother’s Day definitely isn’t the same as having a trained expert greet you at the door.

• The Beauty Bar

Some Sephora stores offer an express-makeup space where customers can also chat with one another about their favorite products. Again, beauty shopping is a social experience.

• The Beauty Tip Workshops

Several Sephora locations have also experimented with stations in-store equipped with iPads where customers can learn more about a product they’re interested in or watch a quick how-to.

• Sephora IQ

Sephora also offers a range of IQ services, helping their customers find personalized products to their liking. This includes Color IQ, a skin tone-matching technology to help customers find their perfect shade, Skincare IQ, which helps recommend specific treatments and cosmetics based on skin type, and Fragrance IQ, which allows customers to identify their own perfect perfume.

Every offering perfectly encapsulates Sephora’s promise of a personable, unique, socially-powered customer experience.

1. E-commerce

• Smart Experience

Sephora’s website and app offer customers an alternative to in-person shopping with the same personalized user experience. Using data Sephora collects from each customer, it’s even easier for them to offer recommendations personalized to their needs, tastes, and preferences.

• Visual Artist

Sephora has also played with technologies that enhance the online customer experience, including a face-mapping technology that allows customers to try thousands of lipstick shades virtually.

• Beauty Insider

Sephora does a fantastic job of rewarding loyalty. They’ve accumulated over 34 million loyalty program members and are constantly curating new rewards, offers, and promotions customized to individual customers. Their tiered system gives customers an incentive to keep spending.

When attempting to create an omnichannel experience, brands must match the quality of their digital customer experience to their physical customer experience — something Sephora has certainly mastered.

Takeaways

When it comes to curating an excellent omnichannel customer journey, Sephora reminds us to do several things:

1. Prioritize connecting with customers more deeply at every touch point
2. Leverage technology to seamlessly connect the digital with the physical customer experience
3. Look for opportunities to personalize and to reward loyalty

For Sephora, it was through innovations like Beauty Insider, Sephora IQ, Beauty Board that they were able to check off these boxes. But the exciting part is, accomplishing these goals looks different for every brand - which just means you have all the more opportunity to be creative.

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