Luxury brands: what CRM strategies can enhance the customer experience? 

In the luxury industry, customer interactions are elevated to ‘work of art’ levels. However, behind the glamour of the stores and the elegance of the online platforms, brands face a major technological challenge fragmented data. How do you unify all this data to offer a truly tailor-made experience? How can you preserve the privacy of a demanding clientele while taking advantage of AI? 

To understand these issues, Brahim Ben Salem, Sales Director at imagino, explains how a modern Customer Engagement Platform (CEP) can reconcile data, increase salespeople’s confidence, and redefine CRM strategies in the luxury sector.

Faced with a significant fragmentation of their data (e- commerce, store sales systems, clientelling), how can luxury houses obtain a single customer view? 

One of the main aspects of the luxury sector is the abundance of customer data, combined with high fragmentation. Customer information is scattered across e-commerce platforms, in-store checkout systems and clientelling. The primary challenge is not simply to connect to all these different sources, but to reconcile this data into a view that is genuinely useful. 

In this context, brands often come up against the rigidity of their tech solutions. A single customer view requires greater agility, enabled by logical and flexible integrations that offer seamless reconciliation. For example, a customer may identify themselves with an email on an e-commerce site, but only be known through their post code, name, and date of birth in a POS system. 

“Reconciliation is difficult because the data comes from very different sources with inconsistent naming conventions. For luxury brands, a key criteria is agility — the ability to reconcile data using strategies that combine or link different identifiers” 

How can we ensure that the customer, who is used to clientelling, feels personally recognised?

The physical channel and the in-store salesperson remain at the centre of the luxury experience. In order for the customer to feel truly recognised, the strategy is oriented towards the concept of “augmented salesperson”. The objective is to provide the advisor with a complete and immediate view of their client’s data. The notion of real time is fundamental here. 

If a customer looks at products on the e-commerce site in the morning and goes to the store in the afternoon, the salesperson must have access to this information to adapt their recommendations. This is made possible by real-time data connections that eliminate the time it takes to update information. Hyper- personalisation then becomes the standard, while also making it possible to avoid over soliciting the customer with irrelevant offers and communications. 

What data collection strategy should be adopted in a context where luxury customers are both selective and cynical about how their data may be used? 

Wealthy customers in the luxury sector are indeed protective of their information, showing a reluctance to share their postal address or to receive SMS which can be perceived as intrusive. On the other hand, the use of WhatsApp is a privileged yet tolerated channel. This network is perceived as a high-quality “1-to-1” exchange space with an identified salesperson, almost like a personal assistant. 

 Younger generations are also much more open to sharing their personal data, on the strict condition that it is used to really improve their experience. Their main frustration comes when they share information that is ultimately not taken into account by the brand. In this collection strategy, confidentiality and sovereignty are non-negotiable. imagino’s zero-copy approach ensures that sensitive data is not moved unnecessarily, reassuring brands (and their customers) that they are in control of their information. 

How do luxury brands perceive the pre-loved market? 

The pre-loved market is no longer perceived as a threat. In France, home of luxury goods, 75% of luxury consumers have already bought pre-loved items. The big houses consider these buyers to be fans of the brand, who represent a great pool of prospects for future acquisitions of new products.  

The issue is not the discounted price but integrating the buyer into the brand’s universe. This is why many brands are developing traceability systems and certificates of authenticity. Even when an item is acquired on a third-party platform such as Vinted or Vestiaire, the customer enters, thanks to this certificate, into the brand family. Messika are a good example of this, and it allows the brand to cultivate this new relationship.

How can AI transform the CRM strategies in this sector? 

Artificial Intelligence is operating a silent revolution (in luxury CRM, primarily through its ability to spot purchase signals. The simple fact that a customer connects to their personal online space is a signal that, interpreted by AI, can indicate purchase intent and trigger a relevant in-store invitation. 

But AI is going further thanks to the emergence of intelligent agents. They can interact with the brand’s customer data to suggest optimised marketing campaigns that can generate significant revenue from untapped segments. They can also orchestrate specific consent collection policies to enrich customer profiles. 

However, the integration of AI also poses a major challenge in luxury: data sovereignty. Luxury houses categorically refuse to allow their confidential information to feed into public and opaque AI models.  
“Luxury houses are very sensitive when it comes to accessing their data. imagino offers a directly embedded AI. This approach guarantees total isolation. The brand retains absolute control of its data assets, without any external sharing. To completely reassure management, the platform even offers the possibility of deactivating AI at any time.”