The LEAD Experience Audit

With ample shopping opportunities online and in-person, customers expect more from retail businesses to provide engaging and rewarding shopping trips. Amid digital disruption and market uncertainty, the entire retail sector is undergoing a tremendous transformation.

The boundaries between a physical and digital path to purchase have blurred. LEAD looks at both ecosystems to ensure optimized experiences.

Retailers that invest in the customer experience now will find themselves in much stronger positions in the years to come.

That’s why we developed the LEAD Experience Audit, based on Publicis Sapient’s philosophy for designing great experiences: LEAD, which stands for light, ethical, accessible and dataful.

• Light: A simple experience that flows naturally and saves time.
• Ethical: A transparent experience that makes the customer feel good.
• Accessible: An inclusive experience that reflects diverse needs, differing abilities and individual preferences.
• Dataful: An intelligent experience that reflects (and even anticipates) a customer’s needs and wants — both explicit and implicit.

The LEAD Assessment is our central diagnostic tool for evaluating whether an existing customer journey adheres to LEAD’s guiding principles. We measure different aspects of the customer experience against an established framework to identify problems and opportunities for improvement.

Though slight variations in the timeline are natural, a typical assessment takes about ten weeks: