Chat to Shop: The New Harvey Nichols-Hero App

The British department store Harvey Nichols partners with retail app Hero to develop new software that assists online users to shop from the store ‘directly’. The new software would require its shop floor sales agents to engage with the online consumers on helping them shop their merchandise. This live and direct shopping facility also includes a messaging style design that lets users shop by just ‘chatting’.

Hero creates a smooth flow of communication between the physical and digital spaces, by clicking on a small icon at the top of an e-commerce site users can connect with any available in-store staffs at the site. Hero uses a Whatsapp style user interface to chat and stream videos (if required), hence getting the staff to do whatever they want to do or would do when in a store – ask questions, bring items onto the screen, even have them try things on in their size.

“The original aim was to propel online growth and while clothes can look great digitally, ‘service’ was proving extremely difficult to replicate. In short, we wanted to make online feel more immersive,” says Pearson Poon, Executive Director – Harvey Nichols.

Users also enjoy same rates of commission as in the stores at the site. As a result of which the results are hard to argue with: people are five times more likely to purchase and on an average spend twice as much. Also notably, Hero flaunts its openness to businesses welcoming them to grow their own customer base as they want.

Kindly visit the provided link which directs to the Harvey Nichols Hero App page.