The retail industry has been shifting to omnichannel for more than a decade, a transformation accelerated by the pandemic. According to McKinsey, “more than one-third of Americans have made omnichannel features such as buying online for in-store pickup part of their regular shopping routine since the start of Covid-19, and nearly two-thirds of those individuals plan to continue.”
When the world came to a screeching halt due to Covid-19, digital was the safest and, in many cases, the only way to do business. Brick-and-mortar stores raced to become distribution hubs and optimize pick-up and delivery channels to customers no longer walking through their doors.
Today, omnichannel continues to be the go-to method. Customers have found that they prefer digital services that were pioneered during the lockdown, such as self-serve, buy online pick up in-store (BOPIS), and virtual consults. The pandemic helped set a new normal for consumerism.
The three most significant sources of friction in the modern customer experience come from a lack of understanding of consumers and their new expectations, internal misalignment over omnichannel strategy and not having the right technology to execute. Taking these steps into consideration can help to smooth out your omnichannel experience.
Understanding Your Customers
While consumers of all ages are adopting digital channels, it’s no surprise younger generations are the most excited about the expanded options. “Most Gen Z consumers don’t even think in terms of traditional channel boundaries and they increasingly evaluate brands and retailers on the seamlessness of their experience,” according to McKinsey.
Omnichannel exists to bring customers a better shopping experience no matter who or where they are or how they choose to interact with a brand. To deliver the best experience possible, retailers need to understand their customers, their buying habits and their purchasing needs.
Since the beginning of e-commerce, digital shopping has been a growing part of the customer experience. Google has redefined e-commerce search expectations and personalized product discovery, while retail giants like Amazon have set the standard for what online buying should be.
For brands to stand out amidst the digital noise, it helps to achieve a robust omnichannel strategy. It is just as beneficial to be on the cutting edge of it. Not every company is Amazon, but customers approach every company with Amazon-level expectations. Consumers want a frictionless purchase journey, and product findability is an essential part of the experience.
Aligning On Internal Goals
Omnichannel is a flexible strategy that can be fitted to a business’s strengths and goals with the proper amount of planning and investment. The transition to an omnichannel strategy is a large one that requires companies to shift their entire way of thinking. Therefore, it is essential to get internal alignment on the matter before proceeding too far down the implementation path. Identify key areas of focus to put your efforts behind and develop arms of omnichannel that support those efforts.
If you haven’t already, consider appointing a chief digital officer as the official project manager of omnichannel efforts. This person will be responsible for the long and short-term strategizing, guiding your company on what features to act on quickly and which should be held for future use.
The biggest advantage of the omnichannel is the fluidity in which customers move between channels, and it’s important that the internal structure can adapt with each move. Teams can no longer be siloed to deliver a seamless and consistent customer experience. Department heads need to operate on open and clear communication channels to collaborate on efforts that deliver customers with the same quality experience no matter how they choose to engage.
Getting Technical
With digital being a large portion of the omnichannel experience, technology plays an important part. First, cover your bare basics, optimizing site speed and mobile friendliness. Almost half of e-commerce is predicted to be done via a mobile device by 2024.
Next, ensure your website is inclusive to shoppers of all abilities and is easily findable. Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the biggest drivers of new customers to e-commerce sites, on average contributing to 42% of site visits and 37% of revenue.
To deliver your customers the personalized experience they want, collecting and leveraging vast amounts of data is important. An effective way to manage this data is by migrating operations to cloud-based solutions, which allows departments to share information more efficiently with less room for error and increase the decision-making process.
Once you’ve established how to store and handle your data, you’ll need to look at methods to process, extrapolate and apply the key takeaways, which require many working parts. Product discovery solutions, for example, collect a retailer’s assets—from online interactions to CRM and ERPs to in-store interactions—and funnels and enriches them to create a comprehensive data stream.
Utilizing AI and machine learning can enable your company to keep up with ever-changing customer wants and offer personalized search and recommendations tailored to the client’s search preferences and behavior. These technologies are also headless to allow for seamless integrations into other applications and can be leveraged in many areas of business, from customer service to search and fulfillment.
You will undoubtedly be looking to add to your tech stack to reach your omnichannel goals. The big question is, do you buy or do you build? Both methods have their pros and cons. If you have the time and the resources to leverage the undertaking of building a homebrewed solution, this is certainly attainable. Otherwise, buying “off-the-shelf” will be a favorable option.
Omnichannel isn’t going anywhere. In fact, it’s the new point of entry to go-to-market. Companies that don’t adapt their business models to meet customer expectations risk losing customers. To offer the best experience possible, consider bolstering the systems that support them by aligning your efforts internally and investing in the right technology to get you there.
