Watch Out! Insider Scoop on Customer Experiences in the High-Stakes World of Luxury Watches
"Our bet is that if we double down on the best customer experience possible and create the most trusted place to buy a luxury watch, we’ll win."
- Michael Shoiock, VP of Growth at Bezel
Why is investing in the CX so important for Bezel?
We’ve built Bezel with the goal of creating the best watch-buying experience. This starts at your first interaction with us and continues as long as you’re interested in buying, selling, or just generally learning more about watches.
When you’re buying a luxury item for multiple thousands of dollars, trust is extremely important. This is compounded in the luxury watch world with the prevalence of fake watches—we just released The Bezel Report, where we shared that 23% of watches attempted to be sold on Bezel do not pass our verification process. Our bet is that if we double down on the best customer experience possible and create the most trusted place to buy a luxury watch, we’ll win.
A core part of that investment into CX and creating that luxury experience is building out our Concierge team.
Talk to us about the Concierge element of Bezel.
Within a couple of days of creating an account, you’ll be assigned a Client Advisor from our Concierge team. You can think of that person as your new best friend who is extremely knowledgeable about watches and the Bezel platform. Your Client Advisor is a real person, there to help you through every aspect of the browsing and purchasing process and answer any and all questions or requests you may have.
Never understood the difference between an automatic watch and a quartz watch? They’re there to help. Trying to figure out what a Tritium dial is? They’ll give you the rundown plus give you the year Rolex switched over to Superluminova in their dials. Have you spent the last five years trying to track down a Platinum Patek Philippe Ref 3939HP-001 with a Tourbillon and Minute Repeater? They’ll reach out to our network of dealers and private collectors on your behalf and source one for you.
You can talk to them in reference numbers or send them pictures of a celebrity asking what watch they’re wearing. You can ask for their recommendations for a gift for a significant other within a certain price range or request them to find the best-priced example of a specific watch on our platform because you don’t have the time to shop our 16,000+ watches yourself.
It goes back to the white-glove, luxury experience we think all watch buyers deserve, whether you’re buying your first watch with your first-ever bonus or you’ve been a serious collector for decades and are looking for the next piece to add to your collection.
✅ Wonderment Tip: Looking for a way to recreate this white glove service for your brand? Talk to Wonderment about ways you can implement strategies to delight customers.
What happens after someone hits buy?
Every watch purchased is sent to Bezel HQ to be hand-authenticated by our team of expert watch specialists and watchmakers. Once a client clicks buy and submits their payment information successfully, the seller is notified and must confirm the order. After the seller confirms, they receive a fully insured shipping label to overnight the watch to our HQ for authentication. I won’t go too deep into this process here, but if you’re curious, we’ve outlined Bezel’s authentication process on our site. Once it passes authentication, the watch is overnighted to the buyer where they’re required to sign for it.
Throughout this entire process, both the buyer and seller receive notifications through our app and via email. Plus their client advisor is available to answer any questions along the way. If any issues arrive during authentication, you’ll receive a call from your client advisor explaining what issue arose and what we can do to help ensure you get the watch you’re looking for.
✅ Wonderment Tip: Sending customers notifications about the progress of their order is essential if you want to keep customers happy and engaged. Discover the best strategies by clicking here.
What was the trickiest part to get right about your CX experience?
Navigating the balance between standard e-commerce automation for efficiency and human touchpoints for a 1:1 experience is always a bit tricky. It’s important for us to have that human element because luxury watches are such a considered purchase, but still give our clients the ability to receive updates and find what they’re looking for without talking to a person if they choose.
If you’re an experienced collector, you expect a specific level of service, the ability to source a rare and coveted example of a watch, and to be able to give somebody a call at any time. If you’re a first-time purchaser, you want to be able to ask questions and get recommendations. However, both types of clients expect the ability to track their order status and receive regular updates after they purchase without having to wait to hear back from a person. I think we’ve done a pretty good job creating that balance to date.
What part of CX are you still trying to figure out?
There’s always an opportunity to improve the customer experience, but I feel really good about where we are today. We will continue to speak directly to both Buyers and Sellers, learn and build based on their pain points, and work to build the best watch-buying experience out there.
Want to create the best post-purchase experience for your customers? Check out Wonderment.