Ste. Michelle Wine Estates ranks third among companies producing premium wine and has its headquarters in Woodinville, Washington. With around 1001 to 5000 plus employees, it is a public company that was set up in the year 1967.
Among the specialties of the company and its offerings include summer concerts, distinctive winery experiences, world-class vineyards, and professional development.
The Covid-19 driven pandemic closed the on-site business of Ste Michelle Wine Estates in the year 2020. However, due to an inspiring and motivational move that is embarked upon, it was able to offer unique digital experiences to its customers by teaming up with Adyen and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce.
Ste Michelle Wine Estates strengthens its position amid COVID
Like many companies that had to adopt new ways of operating in their niche areas and few companies in the retail sectors, this company had to make changes to two of its most important drivers. The first one being on-site wine tastings and the second one is its concert events on hold in the year 2020 due to Covid-19.
The second step was a huge move especially for a company that played host to several thousands of visitors on its 30,000-acre chateau every year.
Since customers stayed back home to maintain social distancing norms, Ste Michelle emphasized doubly its e-commerce and subscription business so that it can continue to deliver high-quality service online.
Kerbside pickups and contactless transactions at the point-of-sale (POS) terminals were few measures it took. However, it was not happy with the ways business was moving and it decided to implement innovative measures like QR codes and digital wallets and expand into these markets so that customers could get a greater number of international payment methods. And if it wanted to offer quality service to its customers, these payments would have had to be supported by insights, technology, and “real-time visibility” from the “unified e-commerce payment platform”.
Ste Michelle Wines teamed up with Microsoft Partner and Adyen, one of the well-known payment platform providers so that it could offer the best to its customers. By doing so, it could assess and identify the gaps and spikes so that it could personalize its services and better the end-to-end client experience.
According to Francois van Splunder, working as senior product marketing manager for Dynamics 365 Commerce, Microsoft, “Adyen was the right choice as payment partner for Ste Michelle Wine Estates”.
How will Ste Michelle benefit from teaming up with Adyen?
This unification allows for seamless integration between Adyen and Ste Michelle Estates to oversee the business in its entirety and work upon those areas that require attention, in other words, that require optimization.
The Real-Time Account Updater feature of Adyen saves Ste Michelle Estates money and time by optimization.
It aids in monitoring recurrent subscriptions as well as wine clubs. The cards that were previously lost, stolen, and expired, or transferred could make payments that could be declined, and repairing such issues was of utmost importance. All this repair work or retrieval work had to be done one customer at a time which was cumbersome. However, after teaming up with Adyen, this delay in receiving payments and associated hassles could be kept at bay.
Aside from the benefit mentioned above, teaming up with Adyen is also meant for Ste Michelle Wine Estates a foundation for the future. The very characteristic feature of unified commerce being end-to-end in nature makes the overall operations streamlined and flexible.
Also, it has opened new vistas and the company continues to evolve for the better and allows it to retain its top position in its domain.
Implementing the QR Code is also on the cards for developing the all-in-one app and is also planning for the POS customer insight program. The Ste. Michelle Company spokesperson also said that it is in the process of continuously innovating newer methods so that it can offer the best to its customers.
The fact that the winery estates are the best in the region, it has strived hard to “uncover new spirits” and explore regions, techniques, and styles for offering the best wine possible.
It’s been 50 years and still counting that Ste. Michelle has made history and has been known to be “convention challengers”, “community builders”, and “industry founders”.
According to the company, “Our wines are a force for gatherings and conversations- to serve the well-being of our consumers, our communities, and our land”.
