– Taki Tsaklanos
Bose Corporation is decidedly not a startup.
The company has been manufacturing audio products like headphones and speakers since 1964 – when I Want to Hold Your Hand by The Beatles was at the top of the charts.
Nearly six decades later, its products look as different as our musical tastes. For example, the company recently introduced Frames, a line of audio sunglasses with a wafer-thin acoustic package hidden in the temples.
Like a startup, the idea of perpetual innovation has been central to Bose’s success, but it’s also ingrained in its culture. Nowhere is that more evident than within its Center of Excellence (CoE) for Customer Experience, winner of the 2021 Adobe Experience Maker Team of the Year award for the Americas.
I chatted with CoE lead Taki Tsaklanos to learn more about how Bose won this years’ Experience Maker award.
“I have to admit, if we didn’t have great people on the team, none of this would be possible. We have to create an environment where the team can shine, because it’s really their work, creativity, energy, and passion that brings amazing experiences to life,” Tsaklanos said.
Pivoting like a startup
When it comes to startups, “you have to be constantly open-minded to be able to adjust and adapt,” according to Tsaklanos.
When shoppers could no longer try on Frames in stores due to COVID-19 retail lockdowns and with the rise of digital commerce, the Bose customer experience team recognized the need to pivot.
Through a diverse, cross-functional group of internal experts, Bose created a unique virtual try-on (VTO) experience for buyers that leveraged live web augmented reality (AR) integrated with Adobe Experience Cloud.
I gave this a test drive and was totally delighted by the experience — it was seamless, instant, and helped me visualize what wearing a pair would look like. I’m not alone. Of all Bose.com visitors, 11 percent engaged with this VTO experience, and those who did converted at a rate 52 percent higher than those who did not.
Fail fast, and welcome the unknown
It was clear to me that Tsaklanos embodies the best parts of entrepreneurial, startup thinking. Like all pioneers, customer experience professionals like him are tasked every day with forging new paths to serve the unmet needs of buyers in a world gone digital.
Every CX practitioner, in a sense, must disrupt business as usual as the needs of consumers shift — drastically in the case of 2020.