Powerfront welcomes Scott Emmons as the newest member of its international development team. Scott is an authority on luxury retail innovation and the rising need for technologies that match the level of customer experience that luxury customers expect. During his sixteen-year tenure at Neiman Marcus, he built the Innovation Lab and helped advance technological integrations for the company, including being the champion and overseer of the implementation of INSIDE’s live chat software to serve the customer service needs of all brands within the Neiman Marcus Group. He also spent time at the Current Global, an internationally recognized innovation consulting group. At both companies, he was able to use his extensive background in Information Technology in a creative way to produce a more immersive retail experience, both online and off.
Scott is renowned throughout the retail world for his visionary outlook on the future of retail, and his wealth of knowledge and research in omni channel software and technology. His expertise in innovation and CX creates a fitting role for him with Powerfront. Scott understands the value of a real-time, personalized retailing platform that mirrors in-store luxury-level customer service online. His expertise will be impactful at Powerfront and help circulate ideas and design products that are at the forefront of customer service software. Scott’s motivation to help make magic for customers translates perfectly to Powerfront’s core mission, and his extensive involvement using INSIDE make him the perfect ambassador to represent Powerfront. The team is over the moon to be working with him!
Scott Emmons presents at eTail West 2018
Q&A with Scott Emmons
What will your role at Powerfront include?
My role will morph as the company grows and when new types of customers come on board we think of new uses for the conversational commerce platform, all of those things affect it. The initial role is to go out and get potential new customers to a point where they are ready to talk about a demo and turn them into actual revenue customers. As new concepts progress, we’ll develop these ideas and create best practice and use cases for our clients.
Why are you excited to work for Powerfront?
I know when I’ve hit the jackpot on great technology. I knew the moment that a Powerfront representative showed up in my lab and wanted to talk to me about INSIDE. I knew it from that pitch that this was something that I was willing to fight for. You don’t get many epiphanies when you are looking at technology- in fact, you get a whole lot of “yeah, I have seen six different versions of this or ten different ways to do this same thing” And they don’t necessarily solve a problem that you have or that your customers have. It was apparent to me that there was nothing like INSIDE and that it was part of the key to making that digital channel harmonious and bring all the great things we do in our stores to our digital interactions.
From a user perspective, what do you love about INSIDE?
I’m a visual person so having this amazing, visual view of what’s happening on the website is a much better method for everyone. From the chat agent, who’s actually having to deal with the customers and answer their questions, to the manager who has to keep tabs on what’s going on and what’s working and who’s doing a great job and who isn’t and where are the customers’ friction points. Powerfront provides all the tools that open up a massive amount of data that used to come in as a bunch of numbers and graphs and spreadsheets. INSIDE transforms that data into a visual, human form that allows you to process this large amount of data and act on it very, very quickly and efficiently and do it with a human touch.
When you’re not working and innovating, what do you love to do?
I had never really been outside of the United States until I started building the Innovation Lab. Now I’ve been from Seoul to Tel Aviv to São Paulo to Copenhagen to Moscow and that lit a fire in me. My wife and I do a lot of traveling when we’re not working. So my favorite hobby today came out of the work I was doing and it opened my eyes- I thought, “Wow, there’s a lot of cool other places in the world that we get to go see and learn about!” That’s what we are on a mission to do. I just bought a new house back in February and it’s on a piece of property with some woods, so now I have critters and a tractor. I call it the Innovation Ranch.
