Constantly improving the customer experience across every touch point is Dan Murphy’s aim as outlined by CDO Lance Eerhard, upon the brand receiving the 2016 omnichannel customer experience title at the Retail Customer Excellence awards earlier this year.

Contributing to this is listening to customers and understanding their needs which are top priorities, as Dan Murphy’s loyalty marketing manager Ricki Hudson explained to Inside Retail: “As a merchant, we’ve learned that meaningful conversations with our customers are the best way of retaining them into the future. We learn more from our customers than anyone else.”

This year saw the return of Dan Murphy’s to its’ spiritual home’ with the opening of its Cellar in the Dan Murphy’s original store.

“Returning to 282 Chapel Street Melbourne has been an extraordinary feat for us as a business and many years in the making. While over 60 years have passed since Daniel Francis Murphy opened the doors, we’ve kept the Cellar true to his vision of providing customers the best drinks retail experience possible focusing on a range like no other,” Hudson went on to elaborate.

“The Dan Murphy’s Cellar contains a comprehensive collection of rare, back vintage and hard-to-source Australian and International wines, with a focus on creating a home for Australian and International wine producers who are taking the wine industry into the next era. And of course, it is still framed by our long-standing customer promise of our lowest liquor price guarantee.”
This offers the opportunity for the business to value add – to grow the business and evolve in a steady, seamless fashion along customer demands and interests.

“The concept is about having meaningful conversations with our customers in an intimate space,” Hudson said. The Cellar offers a unique opportunity to “truly engage with them, understand their wants, their needs, their palate and preferences”.

For those unable to experience it in person, Dan Murphy’s digital team replicated the experience, ensuring customers can access products online for delivery – also part of the brand’s aim of adapting to customer needs.

“It’s important for us as retailers to truly listen to our customers as the landscape changes – which it does constantly – whether that be through new mediums of communications, better layouts, better conversations.”

Dan Murphy’s puts this into practice by having a number of outlets address customer response and conducts monthly voice of the customer surveys as well as qualitative research with customers both in-store and outside. In addition, the customer care team works through social media, phone and email communications to constantly improve customer experience and resolve issues as they arise.

Furthermore, various teams within the organisation hold planning and innovation sessions and have steering committees, with the core focus of reviewing roadblocks to stay ahead of challenges and to spend more time focusing on the customer.

“The most important thing you can do with your customers is to listen… not just face to face or on the phone… through social media, the way they navigate through our website or app, or email channels and that also gives us an opportunity to listen when they’ve disengaged with us,” Hudson explained.

Hudson also described the value of retail awards which ensure brands keep up with their peers and remain relevant. “Seeing other contenders in the various categories is exciting. It allows us an opportunity to look at them and see what they’re doing differently and how we can learn from them in a way that very few other forums can.”

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