Why is Omnichannel important for modern retailers?
As the retail industry experiences continuous growth, most retail brand owners recognize its competitive nature. The competition is rising due to the constant technological disruptions, rise in the various demands of customers, and the ever-changing shopping behavior. When retailers with outdated, legacy retail processes fail to meet the said challenges, they struggle to keep their roots stable and survive the competition.
Successful retail brands take a strategic approach and adapt to digital technologies by
- formulating better retail experience for their customers
- developing modern retail supply chains
- using omnichannel retail strategies
With omnichannel retail strategies, retail brand owners can
- achieve more product availability
- drive sales and traffic across their channels
- integrate and monitor all their digital touchpoints
How does Omnichannel improve customer experience?
Omnichannel customers spend 15–30% more than single or multi-channel customers.
An omnichannel customer experience comprises unified and seamlessly inter-connected customer touchpoints. Omnichannel customer experience enables customers to switch between channels, thus continuing their journey on all the channels.
What is Omnichannel customer experience (CX)?
9 out of 10 consumers want an omnichannel experience that provides them a seamless service between various communication methods.
Omnichannel customer experience streamlines customer interactions across multiple touchpoints. This allows retail brands to deliver a consistent brand experience across their business channels.
As innovative channel solutions become available, customers expect a consistent, quality experience throughout. And in the coming years, an omnichannel experience will allow retail brand owners to create a loyal customer base.
Why is Omnichannel customer experience significant?
71% of shoppers who use smartphones for research in-store say that it’s become an essential part of the experience.
Customer experience is the key differentiating factor when it comes to customers’ decision-making process. The nature of experience (satisfied or satisfactory) they receive across multiple touchpoints defines the brand’s future and popularity.
Omnichannel customer experience helps retail businesses to provide better insights into customer interactions and their behavior. The most robust omnichannel customer strategies retain 89% of customers.
How do you create a perfect omnichannel strategy?
A digital omnichannel strategy works best when developed by keeping a multiple channel approach for sales, customer support, and marketing in mind. This omnichannel strategy focuses on delivering a cohesive customer experience to the end-users irrespective of their channel for reaching out to your business. If you use a single-channel approach, switching to an omnichannel experience will require much time, effort, and resources. Yet, it will be worth it. Let’s discuss the five high-level steps to get you started on an omnichannel channel strategy.
1. Knowing your customer
When you want to know your customers, assumptions are to be kept at bay. It would be best if you did an in-depth analysis of your target audience’s interests, behavior, and needs. This can be done by creating feedback loops, leveraging the social channels and questionnaire forms.
2. Selecting the correct channels
It would help if you derived where your customers are and what they are doing. This can be achieved by deploying forms via various channels and integrating them into a single database management system, such as a customer relationship management tool.
3. Defining the purpose per channel
Understandably, you cannot just shut them off if you have already deployed multiple channels for customer interactions. That might negatively affect your brand. So, as a brand owner, you must start allotting channels with a prefixed role. For instance, you can use one channel for customer interaction but deploy others for updates regarding discounts and seasonal offers.
4. Unifying and maintaining the channels
Technology plays a crucial part in unifying your channels. As a retail brand owner, you need to deploy technology that enables you to co-exist with your customer across all touchpoints. Test and improve your strategy, and then document the touchpoints. That will allow you to serve your customers in the best way possible, creating a loyal customer base that keeps coming back to you.
What comes after omnichannel retail?
Creating a fully integrated and functional omnichannel ecosystem comes next in the omnichannel retail journey. As the article explained, omnichannel retailing enables retail business owners to increase consumer spending by improving their retail buying experience.
What is an omnichannel retail ecosystem?
Modern retailers need to know some of the fundamental foundation blocks for creating their omnichannel ecosystem. These foundation blocks allow large-scale retailers to implement a comprehensive omnichannel approach.
- Amalgamated product catalog
- Inventory visibility across-channel
- Seamless logistics
- Allocated order management
- 360° customer insight
The point to note here is that each of the foundation blocks will be made up of two essential components
- an adaptable back-end system
- Omni-API
Conclusion: Omnichannel approach is crucial to the retail businesses success
For creating a flawless and clutter-free omnichannel retail ecosystem, you will require a retail digital transformation expert like Rapidops. Rapidops is a highly rated retail consultant that has created 200+ digital products for its clients. The digital transformation expert spearheads the transformation of grocery shopping with disruptive retail technologies to increase growth and revenue-generating opportunities.
Connect with us to discuss and discover your retail growth opportunities with a retail industry technology expert.
