Leader Spotlight: Maintaining continuity across online and offline channels, with Alvin Hill III

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Alvin Hill III is Group Vice President, Digital and Ecommerce at Sally Beauty. He started his career in project and program management in the finance industry before transitioning to consumer retail, where he headed ecommerce companies like Toys “R” Us, Target, and Pearson. Alvin then worked in digital strategy at IBM before taking a product leadership role at Sally Beauty over two years ago.

In our conversation, Alvin discusses his work in bridging the gap between digital and in-store experiences, as well as the importance of maintaining a formal feedback loop to create a consistent omnichannel customer journey. He also talks about spearheading digital transformation efforts in traditionally non-digital industries, such as education and construction.

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Designing experiences in a direct-to-consumer world

As a leader, how do you promote a culture that embraces digital transformation and innovation, especially in organizations that traditionally focus on physical retail?

Very gently! Sally Beauty was founded in 1964, so we’re celebrating 60 years. We have 2,400 Sally Beauty locations and 1,400 CosmoProf locations. We’re working hard to get cross-functional buy-in, and then continually touching base with cross-functional leadership to keep digital-first a focus. If you were to talk to anyone from our board all the way down, digital-first is one of our tenets. It’s easy to say that, so that the work is going into making sure we’re being it.

We continually share successes — both digital and omnichannel — in a very visible way. On top of that, we make sure that we show the value created through these experiences. We’ve found that those end up being self-fulfilling. That feeds the fire. When we start talking about digital, everyone continues to be excited and wants to know what they can do from their vantage point to help.

You have extensive experience in the intersection of digital and brick-and-mortar. What strategies have you found to be effective in meeting the needs of customers who access the business from both channels?

It remains a challenge. It’s really about continual contact with customer segments across all of our markets. At Sally Beauty, we have our stores, which act as D2C. We have CosmoProf, which is more along the lines of B2B — they sell to licensed cosmetologists, estheticians, wholesalers, and large organizations.

In today’s world, everything is still direct-to-consumer, at least experience-wise. For us, it’s important to maintain continuous contact with those segments across markets — making sure we understand what’s working and not working for them across channels. We have a formal feedback loop, and I think that’s key. Formality around how we release capabilities and functionality, how we solicit feedback, and how it’s received is important. That’s the way that we’re able to meet the evolving needs of customers across the markets as effectively as possible. The customer is your silent partner in the experience that you’re building.

Launching Licensed Colorist OnDemand

Do you have an example you could share for a feature that was rolled out to explain how that feedback loop works?

On the Sally site, we just pushed our Licensed Colorist OnDemand (LCOD) tool. We realized that there was a lot of paralysis as it relates to customers buying hair color online, and rightly so. It’s a big deal to change the color of your hair and things can go wrong. We created a solution where you can go to our website and schedule an online meeting with a licensed colorist in your state. They can walk you through exactly how to go about doing that yourself if you choose to do it at home.

We also utilize a scoring system that closes after that interaction. It’s an easy rating — thumbs up or thumbs down. If you want to go into detail, you can tell us how things went, what you enjoyed about the experience, and what you didn’t like. There’s another checkpoint post transaction once you’ve purchased and have done your new color. We want feedback on how things turn out.

Those are formalities that we established throughout creating this initiative. We knew they’d be vital to us for gauging the success and effectiveness of the initiative, as well as help us further evolve the project.

Have you made adjustments to this feature based on user feedback?

We have made some drastic ones, as a matter of fact. We expected that a much higher percentage of our customers would close and purchase online. What we found out was that the majority of customers, even after having the interaction with the licensed colorist, still wanted to go into a physical location to buy the hair color and hold it in their hands. We had to shift our expectations of where the sales would come in. This was a change that we made based on our learnings.

Having continuity among personalization efforts

Are there certain technologies or innovations that you feel are key to enhancing that connection between the online and the brick-and-mortar?

The first thing is probably a group of technologies and innovations you can pull together, and I’m going to use the P word: personalization. You can use various tools for this, but you want good personalization and you want to make sure that it has continuity across online and offline channels. You don’t want to highly personalize the website but then not know your customers when they come through the door. Similarly, you don’t want to highly personalize how you deliver your product to them, but then not really have an understanding of what their needs were online when they made the purchase.

For example, you want the customer to feel like they know you. “Hi, you’re back! You ordered your bonding shampoo two months ago, and you’re due for a new one. We have a discount on these bonding shampoo products. Which one would you prefer? Can we go ahead and add it to your cart?” This is the result of a convergence of technologies that enable that kind of personalization.

To do this, your customer data platform has to be sound and it has to be capturing data across those channels. It has to connect people across those channels and inform decisions that you make going forward. So when I make a purchase online, or if I search online and then buy in-store, it’s got to be smart enough to make the connection that I started my process online and I ended up in the store — driving that notion of overall customer value.

The last thing I would say is that you need a malleable ecosystem that allows for flexibility. Things change. When you’re talking about cross-channel, there are lots of moving parts and considerations. If a customer’s local store is in California, you know they’ve been having weather issues lately. That issue doesn’t exist on the ecommerce channel. It may impact getting items delivered, but rain and torrential downpours are not going to stop a customer from being able to log on and make a purchase.

Connecting data across experiences

How do you measure the success of those integrated digital-physical initiatives? Are there certain KPIs that are most important to you?

We’re working through a better connection of the data across experiences. We track conversion on either channel — digital or in-store. We’re tracking impressions and web traffic, as well as if we’re doing things that are driving traffic in the stores. Having good attribution allows us to do that pretty well. We’re able to determine if we ran certain paid search campaigns from a Google perspective and the impact it had on the site and in stores.

From our branding and PR perspective, we look at how much of what we spend on branding and PR can ultimately be attributed to traffic in stores. Engagement is a little fluffy, but we are measuring overall engagement too, as well as response to some of our CRMs and other things that we’re putting out for customers from a social perspective.

Ultimately, what we’re working toward as a KPI is LTV. We want to dig deeply when we’re doing things that cause pain to an omni-shopper and dig deep into adding capabilities, features, and functionalities that omni-shoppers are continually asking us about — as opposed to the occasional digital shopper who may shop us once a year. That final KPI that we’re marching toward is that of LTV, which is huge. I can’t wait until we get there.

What are the stumbling blocks you face with that? Is it the difficulty of getting clean data, or the challenge of getting the data you need from legacy systems, for example?

It’s having clean data and then the connective tissue between the two. We started off with all these various systems. Now we have legacy systems in place, and they have their own databases. We’re getting that data consolidated so we can understand that this person here is the same person over there, etc. That’s one of the major initiatives we have going on now — driving toward that so that we can get real insights.

Taking ‘paper’ companies digital

You’ve been credited with creating significant changes in organizations’ approaches to business. Is there an example you can share of a transformation initiative that you led?

Coming out of Toys “R” Us, I took a role as head of global products for Pearson, the second-largest publisher in the world. So I was brought on to be a part of what was called Project 451 — the temperature at which paper burns.

The intent behind the initiative was to take the entire global organization digital. We have all these books, but how do we make sure we’re leveraging digital technology? The difficulty was understanding how all the various markets were using their books. For example, in the UK, the jurisdiction determines what books to use, and everyone buys those. There’s more latitude in the United States — some professors can decide what books they want their students to have.

Having students transition to using digital was a little more complicated in the US. We also went to digital testing. There’s a product called Pearson VUE, which we created, which was a solution to take your tests and get certifications in an online capacity. That didn’t exist when we first started this project. The project turned out pretty well. The key was making sure everyone understood the value of going digital and that we were not taking anything away. In fact, we’re making sure that you’re going to be able to add value to the lives of the people you serve, whether you are a university professor, a primary school teacher, or whether you give certifications for project management.

What’s your approach for collecting feedback during a big roll-out like that?

I like to collect feedback along the way. Everything is incremental. I believe in test-and-learn. Test, learn, launch at smaller scales, take feedback along the way, and then roll out. Part of it is helping everyone feel involved and feel ownership in that rollout. We would meet with the country leaders of Brazil and Australia. We would talk about the features and functionality that they were getting and when they were getting it, and make sure their people were ready for the rollout.

Reflecting on some of your global commerce product strategy and digital transformation initiatives, is there a standout project that you believe significantly advanced the organization’s digital maturity?

I was instrumental in the digital transformation of Cemex, a company in the construction materials industry. When you think of building materials, you really don’t think digital. They were responsible for cement and sediment for a state or country. We gave them the ability to allow their customers to order cement digitally. Now, when you see a foreman on a site, instead of calling their salesperson and saying, “We’re a little short on this job here on this skyscraper we’re building,” they can go to their app, determine the amount of cement they need, order it, and watch that cement be delivered to their location.

Now that’s a piece of technology we delivered, but we also were responsible for going into the entire Cemex organization and getting them to pivot to being agile in the way they do projects. It was really a full transition of this cement organization to becoming a digital organization inclusive of technology delivery, change management, and changing the way they do work in general.

Staying open to change

Over your career, you’ve intentionally moved to roles where you could affect the most change. Reflecting on your different career transitions, how did you identify the type of role you were looking for?

The most important thing for me is that the organization is open to change. There can’t be lip service around change or guardrails around where we can end up. The answer has to be, “We don’t know where we’re going to end up, but we are going to enjoy the journey, and we’re going to be all in on the journey to get there.” If you limit where you’re headed, that automatically puts guardrails around what the digital team can come up with.

I like the ability to work in organizations where there is an omni concept. The ability to make sure that digital is intertwined with a company’s overall operations is important for me personally. I enjoy the intricacies of it all — the levers and buttons, making sure you account for store channels, ecommerce delivery channels, mobile channels, marketing, social, etc. I also always take a look at the leadership involved. Are they known for aggressively going after it or playing it safe? Are they comfortable with minimal growth year over year? While I’m sure there’s a place for that, that’s not my type of organization.

What advice would you give others who are in an earlier stage of their career looking to move into leadership or take on a new leadership challenge?

Be open to experimentation. People tend to take their careers very seriously, and I would encourage you to be open to things that you don’t necessarily think you’re open to. The best experience my family and I have had was moving to Indonesia on an assignment — both in terms of just growth and our understanding of the world.

Professionally, I also got a feel for how to work in different ways. There could be days where I’m at Indosat, which is a large telecom business in Indonesia, and then the next day I’m working with a company that is responsible for figuring out how to increase the yield of palm oil. I could be in a suit and tie at the largest bank in Indonesia or working on how I can use AI to determine the best time to dispense chicken feed for optimal health. This move expanded my mind about doing business differently across industries, and also how to bring some commonalities or differences to existing industries and get them to think in new ways.