Según la publicación del portal Forbes
Nearly three years since many brands shuttered their physical stores at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, consumers are returning in person. A JLL survey of more than 1,000 consumers found that 63.2% plan to do at least some of their holiday shopping in stores this year—up 5% from last year. Clearly, many consumers still want to see, feel and try products before purchasing them.
But that doesn’t mean we’re back to normal as it looked in late 2019. Covid-19 accelerated ecommerce transactions and habits shaped over the past three years are altering our expectations.
“I think of ecommerce and commerce as one and the same. Being home for so long or having changes to your routines had people shopping online more than ever, as well as getting comfortable shopping online in some new categories like grocery,” Kirsten Green (subscription needed), founder and managing partner of Forerunner Ventures, recently told The Wall Street Journal.
The shift in consumer expectations is significantly moving the needle on a concept called omnichannel. Omnichannel retail, the momentum for which was already building pre-Covid, means providing customers with a “consistent, coordinated customer experience” across all channels. In effect, omnichannel is about meeting your customers where they are, analyzing both their digital and physical paths to purchase and responding with new or modified tactics. Let’s examine how mapping customer journeys can help retail firms increase customer engagement by anticipating needs across channels.
Track The Purchase Path
According to Salesforce, customers typically go through six to eight marketing “touches” before making a purchase. In an omnichannel context, that means tracking journeys digitally—from display ads, email promotions, e-commerce sites and more—and matching them with customers’ in-store actions.
“Every interaction a customer has with a brand matters. Each touchpoint should be connected for a seamless experience, not a haphazard journey,” customer experience adviser Blake Morgan said in a recent Forbes Insights report.
To understand the path to a successful purchase, brands generally need to use technology such as customer journey mapping and data platforms to understand each customer’s unique journey. One goal is for every touchpoint to be personalized. But beyond that, there are additional layers of service that customers may come to expect.
For example, a brand might prompt a customer with a “nudge” or promotion, depending on their behavior and preferences. Retailers may also push targeted offers on a mobile app at a particular location or time of day. Personalization that leverages a thorough understanding of customer behavior ultimately translates to an uptick in sales.
How can retailers gain control over these processes? For many, tracking customer behavior boils down to a software problem. But implementing a systematic program is really an integration problem between tech platforms and customer service agents. Through customer journey analytics software, brands can track customer interactions across channels in real time and pursue targeted strategies. Some of these tools can answer questions about customer intent and are capable of sending personalized messages to customers all along the acquisition funnel.
Experimentation is key. Brands need to test how consumers are going to react to various prompts along the path to purchase, be it physical, digital, live agent interactions or a combination of those. Per a recent report from personalization platform Kameleoon, experimentation has typically been done within only one channel. For example, a customer may see different layouts of a webpage as part of an A/B test. It’s difficult to assess the entire behavior chain across online and offline interactions in a single-channel approach.
Omnichannel experimentation, by contrast, uses technology to acquire a holistic approach to the customer across channels. Some possibilities for experimentation include the following:
Connecting The Dots Through Text Messages
Using insights from online and physical shopping behavior, brands can push targeted messages to customers to encourage them to make purchases. For example, Starbucks has used SMS marketing—including information about promotions—to encourage customers to visit stores.
Applying Behavioral Prompts
This approach involves trying out variations in layout and presentation of information on a website or e-commerce platform to see what leads to the best customer responses.
Varying The List Of Products Or Services
Serve up a curated list of products or even suggest products that might align with the needs of your most loyal users. For example, Amazon’s «frequently bought with» list taps analytics to show which companion items are likely purchased with a particular product and are pushed through the website, the app or email notifications.
In-Store Promotions To Targeted Customers
According to the BDO 2021 Retail Digital Transformation Survey, 68% of retailers were investing in in-store analytics to improve customer experiences. Efforts to use analytics to improve in-store experiences may be in the early stages, but brands are investing in location-based mobile targeting. For example, if a consumer typically buys a specific item on a shopping trip, the retailer can send reminders to the customer when they arrive.
Of course, experimentation in omnichannel marketing doesn’t always mean just personalization. A retailer may choose to experiment with a wide set of customers based on pre-established rules. They may want to show a different type of web interface to customers who browse an app or website at a particular time of day, irrespective of their attributes or shopping patterns.
Using Omnichannel Data To Your Advantage
Brands are beginning to harness the power of omnichannel customer journey data to create more meaningful customer experiences and long-term customer retention. Brands should not prejudge consumer intent based on preconceived notions. They need to study their customers and experiment with approaches that might work.
The most efficient way to achieve actionable insights is to use behavior data from all interactions, whether online, in a physical store or during customer service calls. As much as you can dig into the data, you can’t preredict all customer moves, so experimentation is a key way brands can win with omnichannel strategies that adapt to their customers’ behaviors.
