Next accelerates UK and international growth by creating experiences to surprise and delight its customers with Dynatrace

Next’s growth strategy is focused on increasing the number of profitable customers it has in the UK and internationally, by developing its Online business. Sales through its website and mobile app have risen rapidly in recent years, now accounting for more than half of Next’s revenue. Its Total Platform business is another key growth-driver, enabling third-party retail partners such as Victoria’s Secret, Gap, and Reiss to trade through Next’s infrastructure.

The success of Next’s Online and Total Platform businesses relies on customers’ ability to shop wherever and whenever they choose, enjoying a seamless experience. Next is therefore constantly looking to enhance its website and app, introducing new features to improve ease of use, optimize the experience, and keep customers coming back. To support these efforts, Next wanted to take its digital experience management capabilities to the next level and enhance the observability its services teams had across the customer journey.

After evaluating the market, Next identified that Dynatrace would be best suited to its needs. Its teams were drawn to Dynatrace’s advanced real user monitoring and session replay capabilities, which could have a major impact for improving customer service and satisfaction. Where other solutions use random sampling, Dynatrace captures every user session, which Next saw as invaluable for resolving isolated customer incidents more effectively.

“Dynatrace is really useful for customer experience,” said Matt Barnes, Head of Customer Services, Next. “Customers are at the heart of everything we do, and our ability to track their journeys and improve them is a real differentiator in how we grow as a business. Quite often, customers are amazed we've got that level of oversight into the journey, so it's another opportunity where we can surprise and delight.”

• Mitigating risk: Next has a team of around 2,000 developers, who deliver up to 7,000 changes to its digital services every week to drive innovation. Dynatrace enables Next to mitigate the risk of this rapid innovation, by quickly identifying where customer experience is suffering or changes haven’t achieved the desired impact. This enables Next to respond faster, optimize customer experience, and show internal stakeholders and third-party retail partners that the update is working well. Those capabilities are critical during seasonal sales peaks, when tens of millions in revenue are at stake.
• Delighting customers: With Dynatrace’s session replay and real user monitoring capabilities, Next has visibility into areas of the customer journey that were previously inaccessible. This has been invaluable for pinpointing the precise root cause of customer issues and resolving them faster. The ability to replay customer journeys and see exactly what the user saw brings issues to life for Next’s services teams, helping them to provide reassurance that the problem has been understood and will be resolved to prevent others encountering it.
• Collaborating faster: Dynatrace isn’t just used by Next’s technology department, but by its customer services, marketing, and finance teams, as well as third-party retail partners. This provides a unified platform where teams can access direct insight into how new products have landed with customers and the way that the website and app are performing. As a result, they can collaborate to identify, understand, escalate, and resolve customer complaints effectively.
• Preventing fraud: The real-time visibility into customer journeys from Dynatrace is also helping Next to protect its customers from fraud. Credit facilities account for around two-thirds of Next’s Online sales, driving revenue for the business and convenience for its customers. With Dynatrace, Next is alerted to suspicious behavior that indicates fraud in near real time. For example, Dynatrace flags when a single user has tried to log into multiple accounts during the same session, so Next’s fraud prevention team can investigate and respond if necessary.

“Dynatrace provides us with the protection and insurance we need when we're running at maximum volumes to avoid catastrophe,” said Alex Preston, IT Director, Next. “It provides us with the insights so we can continuously improve for our customers, and the information to share with our partners when they are doing a good job, so we can all see what a good job looks like.”