Chico’s styles omnichannel experience around customer needs

A leading women’s specialty retailer is accelerating its digital transformation in an effort to drive greater digital sales.

In October 2020, Chico’s FAS Inc. launched a major initiative to modernize and personalize the digital experience for its customers across its Chico’s, White House | Black Market, and Soma brands. Over the coming months, Chico’s will pursue endeavors such as enhancing marketing campaigns; fueling customer acquisition; and establishing a single, 360-degree view of customer data to create relevant communication and a personalized customer experience. 

As part of this plan, the retailer is collaborating with Salesforce to develop a single platform with a unified view of its customers through data that has been collected for more than three decades, including via the Chico's FAS loyalty program. Equipped with this detailed, unified customer view, Chico’s intends to deliver lifecycle marketing using predictive intelligence to optimize messaging to each customer across all channels. 

Chico’s is also utilizing the Contentstack content management platform to deliver personalized content to customers based upon personal preference, region and weather. In addition, customers now have the option to use installment payment platform Afterpay for purchases across all three of the company’s brands. 

"As we enhance our position as a customer-first company, organizational agility and speed-to-market are top priorities. Our teams have come together to accelerate critical areas of our digital transformation in months instead of years," said Laura Loughran, senior VP of technology, Chico's FAS. "As the customer continues to evolve her shopping habits, we will expand our digital services to seamlessly personalize her shopping journey at each of our brands to maximize customer lifetime value. This will be critical to meeting the needs of both our loyal customers today and the increasing number of new customers that join our community."

As of Aug. 1, 2020, Sanibel Island, Fla.-based Chico’s operated 1,313 stores in the U.S. and sold merchandise through 69 international franchise locations in Mexico, two domestic franchise airport locations, five proprietary e-commerce sites, and various third-party channels.