Q&A Pedro Guimarães, head of business development, eyezon
Pedro is an MBA business leader with over 12 years of experience in client management, business development and strategic sales. Before joining eyezon as its new Head of Business Development and overseeing its business expansion throughout EMEA, he was an Enterprise Sales Manager at Foundry. This company develops creative software for the Media & Entertainment and Design industries. He moved to the UK back in 2014, from Portugal, where he finalised a degree in Economics, a Master in Marketing, while working at one of the biggest banks there, CGD.
Pedro, what does your company do?
eyezon is a young scale-up company that focuses on the digital transformation of omnichannel. We are a live video shopping sandbox that brings human interaction into modern shopping through personal on-demand streaming. We love, and we truly believe in what we do. We are industry agnostic, meaning our products can adapt to any brand, helping it achieve a more remarkable customer experience.
What’s special about the platform and your approach?
Nowadays, with the rise of AI, it seems every corner we go to, we hear about automation. However, brands need to carefully manage their customer journeys and think twice before automating their interactions with consumers. The human touch and personalized service are still factors to consider and leverage. This is how a brand creates a true and long relationship with a customer. And this is what we believe and it is part of eyezon’s philosophy.
What advantage does it add?
A focus on personalization allows you to build your unique storytelling, which actually is also something that brands are still trying to find how to best do it. And who best to build this unique personalised storytelling than your own sales/customer service resources? If you thought that Bricks & Mortar was close to the end, think twice. It is still possible to leverage your best brand ambassadors, located on-site, and use their experience and brand love to contact with any customer in the omnichannel.
What does implementation look like and how do you measure success?
eyezon distinguishes itself for allowing a touchpoint agnostic interaction with customers. Therefore, either if a brand is contacting online (website, web banners, email, social media, etc) or offline (outdoors, printed materials, etc) with their customers, we only need to place a button or a QR code on that interaction, and the bridge is established – an on-demand live video stream is possible. Up to 5 days a brand can have that live connection up and running and from there it is possible to scale to different services and combinations. Success is measured when we help brands achieve their own KPIs, either if those are getting a higher conversion rate in terms of sales or improving the customer experience and brand’s engagement.
How are retailers using your systems to gain competitive advantage and what does best practice look like? Can you share a case study with us?
Retailers are using our solutions to make their omnichannel more efficient and effective. As a result, they can allow their online customers to have a similar experience to in-store ones. For that it is of vital importance that brands understand the same efforts they put in place when receiving customers in the store, they need to apply to online customers. Have you ever thought that a car could be sold online? Well, we are happy to inform you that Volkswagen did it. More information HERE
Are there other companies you partner with?
We have several partners across the whole of Europe and the rest of the World that are crucial for our success. Because eyezon as a company and business is very flexible and cooperative, we are able to initiate several partnerships just to improve our customers’ experience. For example, with our eyezon showrooms solution, we establish partnerships with companies that have a showroom and a sales force/ customer experience team. This allows our customers that do not have an offline presence, to be able to show live their products.
What challenges and opportunities do you see in UK retail for 2022 / What challenges are retailers facing right now to prepare better?
I can definitely see five main challenges and opportunities for 2022:
- How to leverage every touchpoint with the customer?
- Is it too complex to build storytelling around the product/brand?
- What is the most convenient omnichannel purchase process?
- Who believes in a personalised experience?
- How to make shopping inclusive?
How will you address these challenges and turn them into successes?
eyezon’s key philosophy is believing in human interaction and engagement. We analysed every single number and there is no better way for a brand to connect with a customer than through a real human brand ambassador. So, we will continue our focus on allowing our clients to leverage their customer experiences.
What is on the horizon for you as a company?
We are so excited about the great projects that we are working on that will allow us to continue to do what we love: help our customers achieve their goals. 2022 will be the year of our continuous growth and learning process, and our UK office will be crucial for that.
Any final thoughts?
It was great to have the opportunity for this interview. We know there are loads of incredible minds out there, and having the chance to just be here with you makes us understand we are going in the right direction. The Retail Bulletin is doing a fantastic job for the whole retail community.
(Thanks Pedro)
