Speaker A: Welcome to the Checkout. We catch up with previous add to cart guests and ask them five quick questions to get to know them better and leave you with a little extra inspiration to get you through your Friday.
[Voiceover]: Today's checkout features Shane Lenton, co founder and CEO of the Wishlist company. The Wishlist allows shoppers to save product items from for review and purchase later, either online or in store. It gives retailers the ability to capture customers details and preferences and automatically generate personalized marketing campaigns that will build engagement and drive sales. Shane has a passion for customer service and a brain for tech. This combination has found its natural outlet with the Wish List and already embraced by retailers such as Kip and Co, Mr. Poolman and and Incoo. Shane, welcome to the Checkout.
Nathan Bush: We've had a great episode with you learning more about what you're building at the checklist and all things Omnichannel, which has been fascinating to hear from your experience there and the opportunities available for retailers in Australia around Omnichannel. We're here to learn more about you. So I've got five quick questions. Number one, what's the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
Shane Lenton: I honestly don't have an answer for that.
Nathan Bush: A pause usually means there's something really good coming or you're really struggling.
Shane Lenton: No, I'm struggling. Look, I'll tell you what my worst purchase was. Most recently with zero research. I ordered a 4 1/2 meter long electric awning for my backyard. Zero research. I've literally spent no short of two days and I'm reasonably handy of getting this thing put up and it just will not work. I'm getting zero support from the marketplace I bought it from. I won't name and shame them yet. I'll give them an opportunity to fix it. But that's certainly the worst because I'm sitting here thinking how am I going to get rid of this thing? I'm ready to throw it away. But it is dead set. Four and a half meters long, it weighs about 3, 400 kilo.
Nathan Bush: What a nightmare.
Shane Lenton: Yeah, so that's probably my most ridiculous purchase. And literally without doing it was a spare of the moment. I need it. I want it. I found it. I'm buying.
Nathan Bush: It makes your wife's boots look pretty simple in comparison.
Shane Lenton: It does. It does.
Nathan Bush: Number two, who is your favorite retailer
Shane Lenton: look in Australia at the moment? It's Incoo. I love the brand, love the team, love the product and love shopping with them.
Nathan Bush: Couldn't agree more. Doug and the team are just amazing. Big Fan of Doug catch up with him often. He was, he was on the show. It was almost two, three years ago now. But I do incredible things and I. They have a great meld of online and offline both beautiful experiences but both still very different in their own way.
Shane Lenton: Yeah, absolutely. And we're yeah, really excited to see what we can do together around the wish list and improving sort of bring those, bridging those gaps a little bit more from digital and in store as well. So. Yeah. But just, just love everything about the brand.
Nathan Bush: Good stuff.
[Voiceover]: Number three, which e commerce practice do
Nathan Bush: you wish was history?
Shane Lenton: The fact that I can still, still transact online and need to go and find my wallet and find my card. Absolute most frustrating thing in my entire life when, when it comes to e commerce and online shopping and then that even comes to service, paying for services and other things. It's infuriates me. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: And I think things like Apple Pay and Uber have changed our expectations of. Why am I filling out this form? I was buying some flowers the other day online and I shouldn't talk to you about it because we've had a lot of gifting businesses on but having to fill out forms at checkout for gifting is like 50 lines of form form that you have to fill in. I'm like, surely there's a better way to do this now.
Shane Lenton: And with the forms not picking up the autofill as well, I'll chuck that up there. Particularly when you're on your phone, it's just like. And I know you can save. I know you know you can save your card in browser and all the rest but for me it's just having. I mean either if I'm shopped with the retailer before, that's the first one, make sure you've given me the option to save it. Secondly, if you're on which we are most of the time when we want to transact is we're on our phones, make it easy and it's with those digital wallets, it's just a necessity.
Nathan Bush: Absolutely.
[Voiceover]: All right. Number four, can you recommend a book
Nathan Bush: or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?
Shane Lenton: Look, from my perspective, I don't read as much as I should. That's probably something that I've never, I've really read to study. I just don't find it relaxing. My family thankfully does, as in my daughters take after my wife and they just plow through books. So I won't say book but for me, and I generally mean this, I'm loving some of the Aussie podcasts, what you've been doing and some of the guests has been incredible and really interesting stuff. So I'd have to absolutely say add to can't the other new one I'm loving. And again, there's people and industry people I can't speak more highly of and, and that's Carmel and Hannah with the humble brags and shopping bags. I think they've come out of the blocks and yeah, really good guests. But also the two of them, that's just a great dynamic and yeah, really enjoyed. Yeah. Listening to what they've launched today and the guests they've had and then internationally, I haven't been back on for a while. I mean, and this is just my headspace. For the last few years I've been flat out with the wish list and flat out with consulting and flat out with Q. But now that I've sort of won't say I won't be super busy and I am with the wish list, but my mind's a little bit more sort of laser focused which means that I've got a bit more headspace. But in the past I'd often go to fashion industry business, which based out of New York and from a global view and a global perspective. Yeah, I've got some huge great insights out of that over the years. And it's like anything when I attend a conference, I mean, going to conferences is still for me a really important thing. When I go and listen to whether it's a podcast or in person at a conference, I don't always get a huge amount out of every single piece within that podcast. But there's some nuggets I can pick up but at the same time it just gets my mind racing. And generally when I'm at a conference or when I'm listening to a podcast, everything else is pretty much shut out. So it's just, it's that time where it's almost a recharge for me and a reset. So, yeah, from my perspective, they're three podcasts that I think could be hard to get past.
Nathan Bush: Good stuff.
Shane Lenton: Thank you, mate.
Nathan Bush: Appreciate the plug as well. Number five, finish this sentence. The future of retail is seamless.
Shane Lenton: Reason why I just think, and everyone's been talking about it for a long time, but I just think it's, you know, the experience whether I'm interacting with customer care and being able to transact there and then and they don't even need to hold stock, give them a way to transact and push it out through the order orchestration. If I'M in store and I want to buy something and it's not available there but it's somewhere in the network, sell it to me there, let me leave and next thing I say stoked because I'm getting that item delivered and then it's you know, things like wish list. It's if I'm going to add something to a card or sorry, add something to a wish list or I'm going to spend time in store, provide an experience so I'm not having to go to my camera roll and search location and months and try and find things. For me it's just about providing seamless experience for the consumer and then it comes to things like we touched on delivery, give all the options, comes to payments. Don't make people get a credit card out and then go and find it. Just make it really, really easy and have, have all their information saved and make sure again it sounds crazy but the amount of checkout forms that aren't, that aren't linked up or connect in the right way to autofill and otherwise just make it easy because everyone, there's so much noise at the moment and everyone's attention span's getting lower and lower and if I think about my kids and the way that they consume content and the way that they're starting to shop, I mean they're fully 14 year old twin girls and love shopping as much as their mum but they shop across all touch points and channels and they know how to interact. They've got no fear of pinging live chat or sending an email and asking a question or they love going into store as much as they love shopping online. So I think we talk about frictionless, it's the same thing but I think for me seamless seemed like a, a good word to put to it.
Nathan Bush: Perfect mate. Well I better let you go go fix that awning.
[Voiceover]: And thank you for joining us on the checkout.
Shane Lenton: Cheers mate. Thanks for having me.
[Voiceover]: To hear more from Shane, jump back into episode 286 where Shane shares how the idea for the wish list gained real legs when his wife lost out on the perfect pair of boots. He also gives his thoughts on the key components of of a good omnichannel experience and how he started problem solving at an early age with a rope, a pulley and the family pet. It's not as sinister as it sounds, I promise. Thanks for listening and until next time, keep adding to cart.
