How Perfect is the ba&sh Customer Relationship?

We take a close look at ba&sh’s CRM tactics. See how they rank against brands we graded so far

October 20, 2021

Taking its name from founders Barbara Boccara and Sharon Krief, ba&sh is a retail brand that offers women the freedom to enjoy a beautifully feminine French look. Can you guess how the Parisian label scores when it comes to CRM?

1. Be Transparent 10/10

According to a post on LinkedIn, ba&sh’s CEO Pierre-Arnaud Grenade spoke with BFM business about the company’s growth and its plan to continue to innovate responsibly. On its website, ba&sh’ has a section called ba&sh voices where customers can learn about the people behind ba&sh-their jobs, their daily lives, their hits, and their misses.

In the spirit of transparency, the brand allows customers to track the history of the products they buy via a QR Code.

With consumers seeking to buy with brands they can trust, being transparent is key to building this bond and the long-term customer loyalty that it can help nurture. We admire ba&sh’s attempt at being open with customers and how it publicly shares information about its operations especially, its financial figures.

Ba&sh gets a ‘Distinction’ for being open about its internal activities.

2. Incentives and Perks 8/10

Giving customers incentives, freebies, perks, and deals they can’t ignore is a smart way to increase revenue while nurturing retention. Here’s what we got when we landed on ba&sh’s website:

Free shipping and returns
15% off on our next order when we refer a friend

Discounted products ranging from 30% off to 50% off

While ba&sh does an okay job of using perks and incentives to build a relationship with customers, it could do it in a more deliberate way.

It feels flat and generalized, and it misses the opportunity to use perks early in the customer journey. For instance, the brand could get people to sign up for its newsletter by offering a discount on their first purchase in exchange for their email address.

3. Be Relevant 7/10

Ba&sh builds relevance by offering customers innovative services that meet their needs. To help customers consume differently and more sustainably, the fashion brand offers customers the chance to resell their ba&sh products on second-hand platforms, directly from its ecommerce website.

It makes buying convenient by offering a ‘buy now, pay later’ through Klarna. This means customers can split up the cost of their purchase into installment payments.

Although ba&sh has physical stores, we didn’t see a click and collect or in-store pick-up option at check out. Really weird. But looking at the FAQ section, we found out that in-store pick up can be arranged by contacting cs@ba-sh.com. Even weirder! This extra step in the customer journey may not always be convenient for online shoppers.

4. Be Helpful 10/10

Consumers are increasingly choosing to shop with brands committed to giving back and making a difference in the world. Organizations ba&sh supports include Women Safe & Children, Women for Women International, and Ruban Rose.

Recently, to honor female entrepreneurship, ba&sh renamed four blazers after inspiring entrepreneurs and donated sales profits to support their project.

We love how ba&sh publicizes its give-back programs on its website and social media accounts. Ba&sh definitely ticks all the right boxes when it comes to using philanthropy and social responsibility to build strong customer relationships.

5. Realtime Personalization 2/10

For this commandment, the only attempt at realtime personalization we experienced was the ability to choose our location and language.

To test ba&sh’s realtime personalization abilities, we spent a lot of time browning the jacket and coat category and finally added a lainy jacket to our bag.

Sadly, ba&sh gave us a generic shopping experience. Our HP wasn’t adjusted in realtime to reflect our site behaviour and as we navigated through the site, the content we saw wasn’t tailored to suit our needs. While ba&sh’s upselling and cross-selling tactics made it easy for us to find an assortment of apparel, it didn’t direct us to relevant or personalized items whatsoever.

Finally, after leaving Ba&sh’s website, we weren’t retargeted with sponsored ads or items in our cart on social media.

Online shoppers expect that the content and products they see on a website are relevant to their individual needs, preferences, and behavior. That’s why realtime personalization is a must for fashion brands looking to add value to the customer experience and make customers feel like you know them – or, at least trying to, in order to provide them with a better experience.

In our opinion, ba&sh could easily have delivered realtime personalization by using data we provided them by shopping around the site to offer us relevant product recommendations, at least. Ba&sh loses points for failing to treat us as individuals.

6. Master UX 7/10

Ba&sh’s website is very visual and uses videos to provide a “feel” for the product that static images can’t convey. Navigation was easy, as the website is appropriately categorized and there’s an on-site search tool for product-finding.

While the product pages were detailed, we couldn’t find any user reviews or ratings. A trustworthy review component is critical in developing trust with customers.

Ba&sh’s website is decently user-friendly (The FAQ section is structured correctly and easy to locate), but we took some points off for the absence of user reviews or ratings, and for the fact it is just kind of bland. To improve its UX score, we suggest ba&sh invests in making reviews a priority on its site to get visitors to share their thoughts on products.

7. Leverage Social Media 7/10

Ba&sh is active on social media and has a decent following. On Facebook, it has almost 200k followers and nearly 820k on Instagram. The brand has no Twitter account.

Ba&sh posts regularly on Facebook but the content is mostly promotional.

We think ba&sh can use Facebook to drive more engagement by hosting live styling sessions, how-to videos or fun polls. This will help engage customers at different stages of the buying journey.

Ba&sh’s Instagram page is modern, and the curated aesthetic made the feed feel editorial. Most posts are promotional and educational.

We saw a strong use of Reels and videos to drive engagement.

Ba&sh can do more to leverage Instagram to connect with its audience, though. We recommend that ba&sh do some UGC activity or anything else towards building more of a community.

Ba&sh does a decent job of being active on social media. The fashion brand doesn’t cross-post, suggesting that ba&sh has a different strategy for Facebook and Instagram.

Verdict time!

So, how overall on-point is ba&sh’s CRM? From our view, ba&sh’s CRM strategy isn’t picture perfect. Falling short on real-time personalization and only cracking 9 or 10 twice, the brand scores 51/70 (73%) – enough for a joint 29th place among the 59 brands we analyzed so far.

We recommend ba&sh adopts realtime personalization by leveraging customer data to perform customer segmentation. This will improve its ability to offer the next best action recommendations and relevant customer communication.

Read more about how to unlock realtime personalization at scale here.