Omnichannel provides a seamless shopping experience across all channels, including in-store, mobile, and online means providing a consumer with the same inventory, pricing, and promotions across all channels. Availability, Buying, and Customer-service (A.B.C.) are the first building blocks for a great customer experience – Here’s what to consider
Availability:
Omnichannel starts with retailers’ ability to achieve higher inventory availability accuracy. Better visibility drives increased sales and traffic, integrates all customer touchpoints, and ensures the promise is made to the customer of when they will receive the goods they purchased.
Omnichannel availability can refer to several different things, including:
Inventory availability
Omnichannel Inventory service provides APIs that can be used to get inventory availability data and manage reservations across fulfillment channels. It can also retrieve inventory updates from back-office systems like ERP, WMS, and POS. This inventory visibility gives retailers the ability to re-allocate items when needed and enables an improved shop-by-store experience for customers. Giving customers these real-time inventory insights is crucial for retailers across the globe. Google’s global research on countries including Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Great Britain, and the United States revealed that 46% of shoppers confirm inventory availability online before going to stores.
Store reach
Omnichannel availability allows a store to extend its reach beyond its storefront through various channels, such as marketing and sales channels. Channel Manager in the control panel can be used to set up and manage these channels, as well as to see the status of connected channels, and to reconfigure or disable them.
Team availability
Omnichannel Availability provides a centralized view of a team’s availability. This can help optimize customer support by assigning inquiries to the right agents.
Buying:
The omnichannel retail experience connects sales channels in the physical and digital worlds, creating a seamless shopping experience for customers. Omnichannel retailing connects a brand’s various modes of selling. Examples of ways customers are using omnichannel retail include. For retailers, activating inventory in stores by showing inventory online unlocks numerous benefits for the business, but each of the use cases below requires advanced logic to ensure the phygital divide is near seamless, creating a true omnichannel experience:
Buy online and pick up in-store (BOPIS) : BOPIS is one of the most common examples of omnichannel retailing, and is becoming table stakes. When looking at how omnichannel retail increases sales, consider the fact that 54% of consumers say they are likely to look at a product online and then purchase it in-store, typically with the intent to buy in store – and BOPIS flows allow those items to be picked and set aside for them, for convenient delivery in-person at the store – at a time they choose.
Buy online and return in-store (BORIS) : It’s an omnichannel strategy that belongs to the same group as BOPIS. In-store returns of products purchased online are soon to become an industry standard, as 47.6% of US retailers, including Walmart, Target, Costco and The Home Depot report an increase in the in-store return method in the past 12 months.
Buy Online, Ship-to-Store (BOSS): Consumers buy products online through a local store even when they aren’t in stock.
Ship From Store (SFS) : Ship from store is a fulfillment strategy where orders placed on an ecommerce platform are fulfilled at brick and mortar locations, rather than at a warehouse.
In coming years, 54% of consumers say they’re likely to look at a product online and buy in-store, and 53% are likely to look at a product in-store and buy online.
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Customer Service:
Omni-channel customer service integrates text, social, email and instant messaging to provide a unified brand experience so that customers can switch between multiple channels yet still experience quality of service. Omni-channel customer service is the solution for forward-thinking businesses.
Mobile Service:
More people are searching on mobile phones and buying on mobile. Therefore, they’re also seeking customer service support on their mobiles. 90% of customers say their customer service experience on mobile was negative. And the same study found that 52% of customers say that poor mobile experience makes them less inclined to do business with a company.
Social media:
Social media can be a great customer service tool, resulting in high customer satisfaction rates. 32% of clients want an answer within 30 minutes and 57% of these clients expect the same turnaround on nights and weekends.
SMS:
Texting is a popular customer service platform for many industries. From placing to-go orders with restaurants via text to booking appointments and sending appointment reminders to responding to insurance claims via mobile, SMS is extremely versatile. When a client wants to reach out to a customer support agent, 52% of surveyed consumers said they would like to have the ability to do so via text message. While 47% said that texting would improve their overall customer service satisfaction.
Live chat:
Live chat is a very popular form of customer service with 63% of visitors being more likely to revisit a site that offers live chat. And 44% of consumers report that being able to get answers to their questions during a purchase is one of the most important features a website should offer.
Email:
Email wins hand-down as being the most effective digital marketing strategy for customer retention with 56% effectiveness, compared to 37% retention effectiveness with social media marketing and 8% effectiveness from mobile advertising.
The omnichannel approach is crucial in modern retail, integrating physical and digital experiences through Availability, Buying, and Customer Service (A.B.C.). This strategy ensures accurate inventory information, offers flexible purchasing options like BOPIS and BORIS, and provides seamless customer support across multiple channels. As consumer expectations evolve, retailers who successfully implement these omnichannel strategies will be better positioned to foster customer loyalty and drive growth in the competitive marketplace. The future of retail hinges on creating a unified, flexible shopping experience that effortlessly bridges the digital and physical realms. Contact us for more insights on Order Management and the omnichannel approach.
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