Milton Pedraza, Luxury Institute CEO, and Zornitza Stefanova, BSPK Founder and CEO, discuss building client relationships with emotional intelligence in the digital age.
COVID-19 is prompting a massive shift to digital across industries, particularly in luxury. Ralph Lauren and Prada said recently they were expanding digital services. And Bain raised its forecast for luxury e-commerce by five percentage points. The consultant now expects e-commerce to more than double to 30 percent of all luxury purchases by 2025. We are at the dawn of a new era of hybrid shopping which connects the in-store experience with out-of-store experience, prioritizes the human connection and goes beyond transactional interactions, and focuses on the lifetime value of the client.
Zornitza Stefanova is a Silicon Valley innovator who is spearheading the change. She believes in the power of technology. But as a consumer of luxury, she says technology has limits. Perhaps unusually for Silicon Valley, she favors Emotional Intelligence over Artificial Intelligence.