Innovating through the epidemic: Lenovo’s e-commerce strategy

Innovating through the epidemic: Lenovo’s e-commerce strategy

Lenovo’s e-commerce strategy

Before explaining the brand’s e-commerce strategy, Thadani – the e-commerce director of Lenovo emphasized the importance of a vision for a brand and stated Lenovo’s.

“We have the vision to deliver smarter technology for all and are developing world-changing technologies that create a more inclusive, trustworthy, and sustainable digital society,” he said. Lenovo moved from being a PC or device company to a services organization that aims to also provide solutions and technology, he said, explaining that this change was made after identifying it to be an emerging trend where customers need to be offered more services.

Shift in trends

Thadani then listed the shifting trends, which he classified into three segments: Confirmed trends, Trends triggered by COVID-19, Temporary COVID-19 impact.

Lenovo’s journey

The Lenovo strategy is not just helping to serve the needs of customers but also being their business partners, said Thadani, adding that the organization’s drive towards an omnichannel experience has seen the company integrate its exclusive stores to become one part of the Lenovo.com journey. “When a customer lands on the Lenovo.com platform, we also give customers the choice to pick and choose from products and offerings our exclusive stores have to offer. The customer gets the best of both worlds and has the convenience based on the supply availability that we have.” Lenovo (through LenovoPro) is aiming to be a destination for small and medium businesses as these customers don’t have full-fledged IT infrastructure. Lenovo, he said, has invested in talent, which has enabled it to be able to offer services to its customers and recommend the right solutions for them. Lenovo is also looking at schooling from home and tracking the whole customer journey of the student, right from kindergarten to becoming young working professionals. “We are looking at segmenting our experiences around these customer experiences by offering the right content, products and services, and the right level of partnerships to meet those customer needs.” The other trend Lenovo has identified during the pandemic is gaming and has looked to build this audience by offering the right content and services as it takes the community approach. He said gamers today also include those who work in the day and want to play at night. “We need to meet those sub-gaming demands, which are being driven a lot more.”

Customer experience

Lenovo has been focusing on building a better customer experience through communities and a rewards program called MyLenovo.

Communities

Thadani believes that communities are helping customers, which has made Lenovo take a different approach to digital. “We don’t want to be a site to just list our products and prices; we want to be able to meet some of the customer pain points, whether it’s a need for finding the right solutions for them, to give them a platform to connect with their peers, or having the right content for them to be more relevant.” Lenovo is offering SMBs help in areas like technology, HR, and leasing. For gamers and students, it conducts webinars through which they can learn and be informed.

MyLenovo Rewards

This is Lenovo’s attempt to build more customer advocacy. Customers can redeem points to buy new products or more services from Lenovo. Thadani concluded by summarising Lenovo’s efforts. “We have become a lot more customer-centric; decision making is based on what our customer needs. We are looking at a world where every person in business has access to technology and our attempt is to make sure everybody can achieve their own intelligent transformation.”