Jordan Ekers of Nudge: How To Create A Fantastic Retail Experience That Keeps Bringing Customers Back For More
An Interview With Orlando Zayas
Companies need the right systems in place to capture operational intelligence to drive agility in the decision-making processes. Once you’ve understood what your customers want and what your employees want, you provide your employees the solutions they need to meet the expectations of customers.
As part of my series about the “How to Create a Fantastic Retail Experience That Keeps Bringing Customers Back for More,” I had the pleasure of interviewing Jordan Ekers, co-founder and CEO of Nudge, a leading communications platform for frontline employees. He’s worked with many of North America’s leading retail, foodservice, and hospitality brands to design transformative approaches for executing the brand promise and empowering frontline teams. Jordan is a Forbes Council Member and has been a speaker and conference chair at major industry events, such as NRF’s Big Show and the Future Stores series, as well as a guest on BNN Bloomberg.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory and how you got started?
Nudge was born from the realization that the frontline employees were lacking the connection that they craved from their companies. I was working in the loyalty world, where we were really good about getting customers to the store, but then found a disconnect once they were with the frontline employees who create the customer experience. It didn’t matter what our strategy was for the customers. If there was no communication, follow-up, or follow-through with the workers they were interacting with, the experience lacked.
Being brought up in a family of entrepreneurs, I know what it looks like to rally a group of people around the passion and drive that comes from figuring out how to solve a problem yourself. I am grateful to have grown up seeing the hustle it takes to make an impact when you find a cause that is meaningful to you.
With Nudge, I knew there had to be a better way to reach the frontline employee, leveraging the technology they use every day to connect them with the larger brand strategy and empower them to transform every experience.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or takeaways you learned from that?
Building a business is a lesson in humility because every single day you have to be hyper-aware and be a constant student. Building a company is not easy. Having the mental resiliency and a great group of human beings around you who believe in a vision is the most important part for the success of an organization. Finding a way to laugh even in the darkest of moments is probably my funny story. At least I try to tell myself that.
None of us can achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful toward who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
My two co-founders, Lindsey Goodchild and Dessy Daskalov, have gone through everything with me. When you start a business, it’s the people around you that guide and support you, that challenge you, and are there to lift you up in the trying times. We’ve been through every emotion, complex situation, and trying and challenging time together. Sometimes it’s hard to even see the solution, but the art of a good team is surrounding yourself with people who have a similar passion and spirit.
I haven’t gone through as many difficult situations with anyone else as I have with those two remarkable women. How many relationships endure so much in such a short period of time?
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
I’ve always admired David Attenborough. He came out with a new documentary, David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet. Essentially, the mission of that documentary is to inspire global citizens to be more responsible and be more aware of the impact that we are having on the environment. Before we were Nudge, the company was named Greengage, and the core focus was to help brands better empower their associates to be more environmentally responsible and corporate stewards of how we drive positive change in the world. I admire David Attenborough because he’s put that thesis out in the world, to drive societal change. When Nudge was Greengage, we were trying to make the world a better place by empowering frontline associates. I still think that mission rings true, though it’s evolved. We’re still trying to fundamentally improve the lives of tens of millions of frontline associates who serve the brands that we all admire. There is still a huge social drive behind who we are and what we do. Still, we had that dilemma once upon a time when we pivoted from the business of trying to drive corporate social responsibility at scale to the work at Nudge, which is more helping brands and better empower their associates that drives a better P&L for organizations. Truthfully, I sat down with the co-founders and we had a conversation about: Is that still our identity? It was an important realization that to support the planet, we need to first enable and educate the people — and the deskless workforce makes up the largest segment of the working population.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
So, we’ve built an organization with a people-first approach. A lot of enterprise software over the years has been fundamentally designed to let large organizations provide utility to get more out of their people versus truly understanding how a solution can truly help people on the frontline and bring convenience to their daily lives. Technology should be built in a way that people want to use a solution. Historically, solutions have been built just with the perspective of individual headquarters and based on what they want people to do. Our flipping the script is we built a people-first solution that puts the frontline associate at the heart of everything that we do. And then we ensure that we build utility that simplifies and brings convenience to their daily lives in a way that will help a brand deliver better outcomes. But we come at it by empowering people rather than auditing them. We’ve built something that people really want to use rather than have to use. People don’t want to be treated as a transactional customer, they desire human interaction. In retail, brands have thought about their people as a transactional part of the retail experience. A customer comes into a location. An associate interacts with that customer and hopefully upsells that customer. Compare that with the world of COVID-19 that has taught us individuals on the frontline are not an asset, they are not a part of your P&L, and they have gone through so much in the past 12 months. Brands that take care of their people will retain top performers, which will retain customers. The most important relationship that exists for profitability is how brands treat their employees. Customers are not desiring a transaction, they are desiring a human interaction.
Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?
From someone who has burnt out, the most important thing is to be honest and aware. I was on planes every single week. My focus was on building the business — it’s where all my gratification came from. But I had a conversation with an advisor of mine around life being a marathon, not a sprint. You have to focus on things that make you happy at the end of the day and balance priorities in life. Be more deliberate with our time and disciplined with where we draw the line. You have to intentionally put effort toward self-awareness and self-improvement. Life is not easy and has twists and turns. Having empathy for the people in your life, whether it’s personally or professionally, you’ll never know the full picture of what people are dealing with. So finding ways to support each other through thick and thin at the end of the day is everything. I truly believe that our people are our greatest asset. I think you need to find a way to treat people like human beings.
OK super. Now let’s jump to the main questions of our interview. The so-called “Retail Apocalypse” has been going on for about a decade. The pandemic only made things much worse for retailers in general. While many retailers are struggling, some retailers, like Lululemon, Kroger, and Costco, are quite profitable. Can you share a few lessons that other retailers can learn from the success of profitable retailers?
It all starts with the customer. Understand customer behaviors, preferences, and how they want to engage with a brand whether it’s in-store, online, or a combination of the two. Brands that have a heightened awareness around the expectations, preferences, attitudes, and behaviors of the customers are those that will make better decisions on how to bring their brand to life. I think about operational agility, specifically, if you look at how much retailers have had to manage change in the past year, it’s unprecedented. You had an entirely new customer experience with BOPUS (buy online, pick up in-store), curbside pickup, and e-commerce surged to 25% of retail sales. In order to effectively manage change at scale, you need to find the right way to mobilize your people in an agile manner. A big focus for us at Nudge is helping brands better guide and connect with their associates to provide them the information they need to execute on change in a reliable manner. As much as you need to put the customer at the heart of everything you do, you need to put your people at the heart of everything you do. Best-in-class brands that listen, understand, and learn from their frontline are the brands that will deliver better customer experiences. A lot of the brands working with Nudge were getting operational intelligence in the frontline: Is the reopening working, is it not working? Tap into the knowledge that exists on the frontline. Most important, listen to ensure you’re listening to what’s working and not working so you can adapt to change based on what you’re learning from the frontlines.
Amazon is going to exert pressure on all of retail for the foreseeable future. New direct-to-consumer companies based in China are emerging that offer prices that are much cheaper than U.S. and European brands. What would you advise retail companies and e-commerce companies, for them to be successful in the face of such strong competition?
Experience has never been more important. Consumer behaviors in the past 12 months have been driven by safety, convenience, and price. But fundamentally, we, as human beings, still crave human interactions and experiences. We’ve been aggressively deprived of that. Brands that prioritize experiences — whether that’s digital experiences or experiences in-store — are the ones that not only delight customers but turn them into lifetime customers. Convenience will drive how some consumers purchase and engage with some products and services, but the vast majority of consumers still want that human interaction in-store. It can’t be transactional. It needs to be experiential. There is a transition that’s been happening from transactional to experiential over the past five years, but as best-in-class brands surface from the other side of COVID-19 and foot traffic returns, you have to wow them and you have to create memorable experiences.
What are the most common mistakes you have seen CEOs and founders make when they start a retail business? What can be done to avoid those errors?
It’s important to have a vision, but that vision — whether e-commerce or mom-and-pop business — has to be anchored to the customer behaviors. I always come back to that. Successful entrepreneurs are the ones who are resilient. They are able to learn from every opportunity and experience. My biggest worry would be coming in with too strong of a hypothesis around what you believe customers want based on your own personal perspective, while not taking in that important customer signal to ensure your vision is aligned with the customer behaviors, attitudes, and preferences in a way that customers are going to actually want to engage with what you’re bringing to the market. I think you have brands like Amazon that pioneered same-day delivery to get a product from somewhere to someone. And customers were probably apprehensive about that. There’s going to be a bleeding edge to the adoption curve. How soon is too soon for an idea relative to early adopters or the mainstream? All of that is irrelevant if you’re not listening to your customers and meeting their expectations for what they want.
This might be intuitive, but I think it’s helpful to specifically articulate it. In your words, can you share a few reasons why great customer service and a great customer experience are essential for success in business in general and for retail in particular?
We know that when you have a higher customer satisfaction score you have higher lifetime loyalty of customers who are highly engaged in the store. So, the financial ROI of a satisfied customer vs. a dissatisfied customer is pretty black and white. It still comes back to customer behaviors, preferences, and attitudes and how they want to engage with a brand. And then it’s about shaping your value proposition and service delivery based on how customers want to engage with your brand. I joke that I’m on a mountain top yelling at an industry: Why have we as an industry over the last 10 to 15 years heavily prioritized investments skewed toward the customer experience but not focused on elevating the associate experience? I came from that industry and from customer loyalty and we spent so much money putting the right offer through the right marketing vehicle and incentivizing people to come buy the right product. But as we did that we created a disconnect where you have a society of knowledgeable consumers and a workforce that is under-supported and doesn’t have the information they need. Every time an associate has to interact with a customer, that associate has to have more information, more inspiration, and to be more of a brand advocate than the customers themselves. And that’s difficult in these times because customers have access to so much information that they’re often walking into a location with more knowledge than an associate. And we as consumers have all experienced this. That is completely broken and causing a fundamental shift where brands are investing more in their people.
We have all had times either in a store or online when we’ve had a very poor experience as a customer or user. If the importance of a good customer experience is so intuitive and apparent, where is the disconnect? How is it that so many companies do not make this a priority?
Historically only about 1% of venture capital goes toward funding solutions that support the deskless employee. Yet 80% of the workforce is considered to be deskless. I would like to believe that brands recognize the causation between an engaged employee and how that influences customer satisfaction and how that affects better financial metrics like sales and long-term loyalty. I just think the industry has been let down. I don’t think solutions have been built to help brands better support their people in a meaningful way at scale. We’re seeing a fundamental shift toward solutions for that frontline associate, designed for that frontline associate to drive better outcomes. We talk to brands all the time that say the best way I can motivate my people is to send an email to the store manager and hope that manager cascades that message to the entire team. That statement is no longer acceptable. Part of why that approach is no longer acceptable is because as much as these are employees working on behalf of a brand, they are also consumers. They have now been taught how much love and care brands are investing in the customer experience. They ask why is it that X app gives me all these great offers and I can get something shipped to my door tomorrow. But I walk into the store tomorrow and I’ve got to look at a breakroom board on the wall to understand what I’m supposed to inspire customers on today? There is a revolution, a groundswell that is happening on the frontline where the status quo is no longer acceptable.
Can you share with us a story from your experience about a customer who was “wowed” by the experience you provided?
We worked with Soft Surroundings to create a great experience for their associates (and in turn their customers). They already had a BYOD program in place so we were able to move quickly to implement the platform. They immediately embraced the process, using video and quizzes to educate their employees on campaigns and align the company’s communication from head office to retail locations — and back again. In fact, within a few months, the company’s associates had contributed over 4,000 ideas and feedback submissions. And that feedback actually led to a 22% lift in sales on one campaign alone.
You create “wow” moments by learning from your best people and re-creating that at scale. Not enough brands facilitate learning from what’s working on the frontline. We have to influence behaviors from what is working and bringing your brand to life on the frontlines. Create brilliance at scale by learning from what’s happening in one moment.
Did that “wow!” experience have any long-term ripple effects? Can you share the story?
Soft Surroundings’ widespread adoption of Nudge has definitely had lasting impacts on engagement. They did one campaign to align the retail locations with the catalog call center. They invited store associates to recognize coworkers who demonstrated exemplary service during a support call. There were hundreds of submissions. It really had a huge impact on the partnership between the two business functions.
A fantastic retail experience isn’t just one specific thing. It can be a composite of many different subtle elements fused together. Can you help us break down and identify the different ingredients that come together to create a “fantastic retail experience”?
It’s the digital, physical, and human experience, and the combination of those three work together. Consumers love consistency. And they also love experiences. I think the best experience is when you walk into a physical location that is properly set up, clean, and marries exceptional execution of in-store design and planograms with passionate individuals who bring it to life. No one enjoys walking into a retail location where it’s a mess, things are disorganized, and signage from two promotions ago is still up. It’s not just the human interaction we’re trying to ignite and empower between associates and customers; it’s about how you influence your people to ensure that the physical setting is set up based on the plans that the brand wants. For me, it’s that collision of physical, digital, and human interaction, and the magic that takes place between the three experiences. The same level of experience is required online. We are creatures of convenience. So we don’t want added barriers to outcomes — meaning I don’t want to click through 15 different things to get to buying a particular product and have it sent to me. So the more convenience we can bring to consumers online, the more that convenience needs to be delivered in-store. That requires a physical setting with passionate brand advocates to guide consumers on the journey they are in search of.
OK, super. Here is the main question of our interview. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things one should know in order to create a fantastic retail experience that keeps bringing customers back for more? Please share a story or an example for each.
- First, customers are at the heart of everything you do; be sure you have the right customer feedback loops in place. Know what they want.
- Second, you need to then have the right employee feedback loop in place. You need to be able to make better decisions based on the preferences and behaviors of your people in a way that’s going to allow you to empower them to deliver on those customer expectations.
- Third, companies need modern-day solutions in place to not only deliver an exceptional customer experience but to deliver an exceptional employee experience. They have to be empowered to deliver that customer experience. Support customers and employees through modern-day solutions that bring convenience to how employees learn so they can deliver a better experience. Create ways to engage with the brand whether it’s online or in-store.
- Fourth, companies need the right systems in place to capture operational intelligence to drive agility in the decision-making processes. Once you’ve understood what your customers want and what your employees want, you provide your employees the solutions they need to meet the expectations of customers.
- Fifth, the continuous improvement loop allows you to constantly refine. Continuous improvement is the final state. The customer experience system does a great job of getting feedback, closing the loop, and making change. To do that, you need to have the ability to drive continuous improvement. So you need to be constantly learning from your employees about what’s working and what’s not working. You need to constantly learn from satisfied and dissatisfied customers so you can make that customer experience better. And you need to have the right continuous improvement loop in place that allows you to evaluate customer feedback alongside employee feedback. All of that will allow you to change the way you bring the brand to life. You need those modern-day solutions to activate change at scale.
Thank you for all of that. We are nearly done. Here is our final “meaty” question. You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
The world has been put through a lot in the past year. I’m personally very fortunate to have a job and work with a great group of human beings. Finding ways to better support each other on the emotional journey of life is an important piece to me. We’re all going through different struggles. That’s constant. It’s not like the world is ever going to be a perfect place. I think we preach this internally as a business, finding ways to lead with empathy. And not to have that just be a sentence you say, but to truly be there for each other and have the difficult conversations we need to have because certain people really need to have support sometimes.
How can our readers further follow your work?
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this!
About The Interviewer: Orlando Zayas is the CEO of Katapult, an award-winning omnichannel payment platform. Zayas is known for his revenue growth strategies and visionary leadership in the eCommerce and retail space. His future-forward expertise has led companies such as GE Capital, Safe-Guard Products International, and DRB Capital. Zayas is also highly committed to providing educational opportunities to underprivileged communities through his philanthropic endeavors. Zayas’ business insights are regularly featured in publications such as Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, Retail Insights, and more.
