Citizen Watch Company, Ltd.

Customer
Success Story

Citizen Watch Taps Timely Customer Insights
to Rapidly Accelerate Ecommerce GrowthOpportunity
Citizen, a pioneer in watchmaking and innovative technology, was founded in 1918 on
the principle of creating watches for all citizens of the world. For over 100 years thecompany has stayed true to this mission, promoting excellence and creativity with a
deep-rooted respect for craftsmanship. Citizen is one of the most vertically integrated
manufacturers in the world, making most components in-house in Japan. While thecompany has a sophisticated mass production manufacturing line, some higher-end
models are still assembled by hand by a single watchmaker.
Traditionally a wholesaler, in recent years Citizen has transformed its sales strategy,
making its products available direct to the consumer via ecommerce. To support this shift,
in 2017 Citizen hired Barbara Garces as Chief Digital Officer, a role created to help takethe brand’s digital retail efforts to the next level while also minimizing disruption to its
traditional retailers.
But then came 2020. When the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, it unexpectedly added
momentum to the organization’s embrace of direct-to-consumer retailing. What theecommerce team needed now was reliable customer experience insights. Specifically, Citizen
required the ability to aggregate feedback, analyze it, and apply the insights to accelerate its
direct-to-consumer business and make improvements for the benefit of all stakeholders.

Solution
Verint® Digital Experience™

Industry
RetailRegion
North America

Solution
Citizen Watch deployed the Verint® Digital Experience™ solution to capture customerinitiated feedback via web and mobile channels throughout the digital customer journey,
empowering the organization to make smarter, faster business decisions. By capturing richcontext with each experience submission and combining it with advanced analytics andtext mining, the solution helped facilitate timely, targeted, and decisive action.
Using the Verint solution, the small but mighty Citizen Watch team now receives
alerts regarding negative feedback or lower scores and a daily digest to
monitor for trends and identify opportunities to reduce friction points for theirconsumers. Plus, on a quarterly basis, the team reviews customer feedback
from in-store interactions.

Results• Through a focus on thedigital customer experience,
Citizen was well positioned
to respond to the COVID-19
crisis, realizing a huge lift inecommerce conversions andan increase in new customers.
• Using customer insights toidentify opportunities, thecompany was able to drive thedevelopment of new digitalinteractive experiences—including the Watch Finderand My Citizen app—tomake the Citizen brand moreaccessible to consumers.

We realized the shifts we had made to be more digital and moreconsumer-focused were working, as our ecommerce channel was the
only channel able to grow during the COVID pandemic shut down.
– Barbara Garces, Chief Digital Officer, Citizen Watch

Benefits
The insights have enabled Citizen Watch to gain a greater
understanding of the customer experience and make
improvements. “With actual feedback from consumers, we
saw that many people didn’t understand our terminology—
the difference between a sapphire crystal and a mineralcrystal, for example,” explains Garces. “We recognized that
we needed to address a whole universe of customers—some who are experts and some are first-time buyers. We
needed our customer communications to work to makeCitizen a more accessible brand.”Garces continues, “We socialized the information gained
across the organization, then enlisted key stakeholders todrive change. We brought Marketing and others together
to make sure we were developing the right content anddeploying it the right way, including to our retail partners.”

New Digital Tools for Customers
For both its Citizen and Bulova brands, the company
created a digital tool called Watch Finder. Designedto provide an interactive and personalized experience,customers interact with Watch Finder by answering
questions about their style, then they receive a curated
selection of watches with features and functionality geared
to their needs and preferences. This was also rolled out
on iPads at physical stores to support Citizen’s wholesaleretail partners.

As a result of consumer feedback, Citizen Watch also
launched its My Citizen app to alleviate friction points
in its watch registration process. Previously, consumers
would struggle to view the small numbers on the backof the watch and were unable to complete the productregistration process. The app can recognize digits and thenautomatically register the watch for warranty protection. As
a result, Citizen saw a large increase in product registration,
which will help the company drive continued customer
engagement and future loyalty and advocacy efforts.
This also enabled Citizen to ditch its old, clunky productbooklets—along with the associated production expenses.
By focusing on the digital customer experience, Citizen was
well positioned to not only respond to the COVID-19 crisis,
but to find opportunity in the unexpected environment.
While it initially saw website traffic decrease, the retailer
eventually realized a huge lift in conversions, amounting toconsistent triple-digit year-over-year gains in its ecommercebusiness, as well as an increase in new customers.
“We realized the shifts we had made to be more digital andmore consumer-focused were working, as our ecommercechannel was the only channel able to grow during theCOVID pandemic shut down,” Garces concludes.

Learn more about
Verint Customer Engagement Solutionsat www.verint.com/engagement

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