PHILOSHOPIC
Take Customer Experience to the Next Level

In the wake of the strategic significance of superior customer experience expanding in the future, enterprises are placing their winning wager on the latest technologies to improve the way they design and build their products and solutions. However, in order to reorient their business to the customers, these enterprises are reluctant to abandon their inflexible legacy assets that often turn into a liability in today’s hypercompetitive environment. To keep up with the pace of innovation/consumer adaptation, the gap between what is possible (due to innovations and available technology) and what is realistically feasible (due to installed technology, legacy practices/culture and budgets) continues to widen. Moreover, many great ideas and offerings need significant investments to come to life and updating legacy systems to adapt may take longer than consumers are willing to wait, ultimately killing the impact a customer experience management solution was designed to bring. Against this backdrop, the question is, how do enterprises deliver superior customer experience without scrapping existing legacy technology and starting from scratch? They no longer can; however, Cyprus-based PHILOSHOPIC is about to change that.

A boutique solutions provider, PHILOSHOPIC aims to work around such issues rather considering them as roadblocks. PHILOSHOPIC’s solutions and services have been specifically designed to deliver an exciting consumer experience and a simple, admin-less, though robust, operation for businesses. “With a mission of creating simple solutions that generate exciting results, we empower our clients across retail and financial services industries with technology to enable an amazing consumer experience, which is aligned with their budget and business objectives,” says Demetris Constantinou, CEO, PHILOSHOPIC.

“In doing so, we take our clients’ innovations at the periphery, without disrupting their legacy and core systems. We leverage the ‘integration of innovation’ model to work around the legacy systems and gradually remove the resistance once the benefits of our solutions are realised.”

PHILOSHOPIC’s solutions are mainly custom implementations of its SMASH cloud-based framework that essentially acts as a unified hub for managing any digital B2C interaction. While SMASHRewards focus on enabling loyalty and rewards programs, SMASHCards power programs for pre-paid cards. The cloud-based framework includes SMASHVouchers for end-to-end omnichannel management of eVouchers. For personalised promotions based on behaviour, location, time and preferences of customers, PHILOSHOPIC presents SMASHPromote that enables targeted delivery and seamless redemption at the point of sale as well as converging social media with the point of sale, which turns social posts engagements into traceable in-store purchases. Enterprises can leverage SMASHEngage in reaching out to customers at the right time/place/platform, and enable targeted feedback collection, gamification and soon conversational chatbot assistance. PHILOSHOPIC also lets third-party providers utilise its platform to offer their services through SMASHConnect.

The PHILOSHOPIC team takes pride in engaging with its clients as trusted partners and more as co-workers than vendors. Before implementing the solutions, the team first gets in the client’s shoes and takes a deep dive into the current systems and processes in place. “We then try to co-exist usually through creative ideas and well-thought flexible integrations that enable an amazing customer experience while maintaining core as unaffected as possible,” explains Constantinou. Natively designed for the cloud, PHILOSHOPIC’s solutions are delivered through a pay-as-you-grow SaaS commercial model with a significantly low initial investment.

The prowess of PHILOSHOPIC’s solutions can be best explained with the success story of one of its clients, Tamimi Markets. A leading supermarket chain in Saudi Arabia, Tamimi Markets worked in close partnership with PHILOSHOPIC to design and implement a truly innovative set of programs in record time. These programs enabled customers to enjoy a seamless omnichannel experience without changing any of the legacy systems. Constantinou says, “We designed an app that greets customers as soon as they enter a store and pulls targeted promos while the customer has complete control of their promo coupons, loyalty points and money.” Furthermore, SMASHConnect solution enabled EMIs such as sKASH by Astro Bank in Cyprus or STCPay in Saudi Arabia to seamlessly process their mobile-app based payments through existing legacy retailer hardware and software, eliminating barriers to entry and massive investments.

Moving ahead, the company plans to add more innovations to its solutions, further unifying the customer journey across touchpoints to enable a truly end-to-end customer experience.