Key Takeaway
iFIT is transforming its customer journey through AI and agile technology, aiming for a seamless, personalized experience from e-commerce to daily interactions with AI workout coaches. By adopting a headless commerce architecture, iFIT enhances flexibility and speed, allowing rapid implementation of diverse payment options. Collaborating with Salesforce, iFIT optimizes customer service using AI chatbots and self-service troubleshooting. The company is also expanding into China through a strategic partnership with Alibaba, adapting to local market needs and regulatory requirements. This collaboration has accelerated iFIT’s growth, turning a three-year plan into immediate action, enhancing user experience in the region.
Engineering the customer journey with AI and agility
With the back-end transformation well underway, iFIT has also concentrated on enhancing its customer-facing technology. The aim is to create a seamless, intelligent, and highly personalized journey that extends from the first click on an e-commerce site to daily interactions with an AI-powered workout coach.
A headless commerce revolution
iFIT is shifting away from outdated monolithic e-commerce platforms and adopting a modern, headless architecture powered by Commerce Layer, Content Stack, and Stripe. This microservices-based approach separates the front-end customer experience from the back-end commerce engine, offering significant flexibility and speed. The transition for its US, Canada, Germany, and UK sites has been completed with zero disruption to business.
The new architecture empowers iFIT to be remarkably agile. Jason highlights that collaborating with partners like Stripe allows them to quickly introduce a variety of payment options tailored to different countries, from Klarna to other local financing solutions. “It took months to accomplish what should have been a straightforward change,” he reflects on the old system. Now, new functionalities can be implemented in a fraction of the time, simplifying the purchasing process for customers and enhancing iFIT’s ability to respond to local market preferences.
Intelligent service and proactive support
One of the most significant aspects of iFIT’s digital transformation is its collaboration with Salesforce. By utilizing Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and the Einstein AI platform, iFIT is fundamentally reshaping its interactions with its six million members.
The initial emphasis has been on optimizing the contact center. “We’re collaborating with Salesforce to leverage many of their AI capabilities,” Jason explains. “AgentForce for traditional call deflection, for example.”
This enables AI-powered chatbots to manage common inquiries, such as order status or delivery changes, freeing human agents to focus on more complex, value-added interactions.
Now, iFIT is advancing innovation by piloting a proof of concept with Salesforce to facilitate AI-driven, self-service troubleshooting. Jason elaborates: “If a customer says, ‘I have a squeaky belt on the apparatus,’ instead of calling a customer service representative, can they resolve it themselves? We’re collaborating with Salesforce and their AgentForce platform, using their AI tool to guide the customer through a series of questions, directing them to the appropriate knowledge article and providing a summary for quick understanding.”
This philosophy extends to delivery. By integrating systems, iFIT can offer real-time SMS updates, from packing and shipping to last-mile delivery, giving customers control and transparency regarding the arrival of their equipment. It’s all part of a comprehensive strategy to leverage technology to build trust and minimize friction at every touchpoint.
Conquering new frontiers: strategic partnership with Alibaba in China
iFIT’s global ambitions are evident in its strategic and well-planned expansion into China. Recognizing that China operates within a unique technological ecosystem and has distinct consumer behaviors, iFIT understood that a standard, copy-and-paste strategy would not suffice. Instead, success would require forging strong, local partnerships tailored to the market.
“China is a very different market from the rest of the world for many reasons,” Jason notes. “As part of that, you need a highly experienced in-country partner who understands the market. So, we partnered with Alibaba.”
The partnership with Alibaba extends far beyond basic cloud hosting. To navigate the ‘Great Firewall,’ iFIT has collaborated with Alibaba and AWS to replicate its entire content streaming infrastructure within China, ensuring a fast and reliable experience for Chinese users.
This collaboration addresses the unique characteristics of the Chinese digital economy, which favors integrated ecosystems like Alipay and Weipay over credit cards and email.
iFIT is utilizing Alibaba Cloud’s infrastructure to operate a separate SAP Business One system specifically for the region. Notably, it is implementing Salesforce using Alibaba’s customized extensions, which cater to the nuances of the Chinese market, including marketing strategies and data privacy compliance. Alibaba’s expertise has been crucial in helping iFIT structure its data and operations to meet local regulations.
What began as a vendor relationship for cloud infrastructure has evolved into a genuine strategic partnership. “They’re being very proactive,” Jason remarks about the Alibaba team. “That’s been a great help for us. It’s about having a partner who can approach you and say, ‘I know this isn’t something you’ve asked for, but we have this, or we’ve noticed this. Would this resonate with you?’” This collaborative spirit is accelerating iFIT’s roadmap in the region, transforming a potential three-year plan into a present-day reality.
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