The practical application of the concept “omnichannel” covers different areas. In recent times its use has become so popular that it seems that any technological solution intended for commerce either adds the adjective “omnichannel” or loses attractiveness.

We can find its application in fields such as:

• • Advertising: customer impact through various channels: email, sms, web browsing, digital media, mobile, …
  • Logistics: management of the buy online, pick up in store processes, buy online / store and return offline / store, etc.
  • Customer service: support through different channels: mail, telephone, WhatsApp, …

In effect, all these solutions enrich the business with a certain omnichannel flavor, but as consumers we continue to perceive two different shopping experiences in the same business, one in e-commerce and the other in physical stores, which ends up confusing and clouding the customer experience in the brand. Let´s see, as an example, three cases that we experience daily in practically any business:

• • Discount coupons or gift cards don´t work in both, ecommerce and physical stores.
  • Digital receipts are only available for online purchases.
  • Product recommendations in ecommerce only take into account ecommerce behavior but not the complete history of the customer in all the sales channels.

Therefore, it´s still missing a solution that placing customers at the center allows to offer them an omnichannel shopping experience.

Where do we start from?

Most retailers start from a classic management focused on product. The efforts go into product design / selection to offer it to a target audience that is treated in a generic way. In other words, the focus is placed on the product and the customer is treated in an impersonal way.

Why has this been done in this way?

Mainly for three reasons:

1 – Retail does not, by definition, deal with an identified customer. Unlike other sectors: telecommunications, insurance, … retail purchases are anonymous and therefore there is no traceability of tastes and customer behavior.

2 – Lack of a customer-centric culture in the majority of companies which have focused their management on references, prices, billing and profitability rather than on knowing the customer.

3 – Inaccesible technological data analysis tools, most of them slow and hard to handle for many businesses.

What is motivating an unstoppable change?

Ecommerce was the big boost for businesses to move from dealing with an unidentified customer to dealing with a customer whose identity is known. Unlike sales in brick and mortar stores, in e-commerce the customer, normally, identifies himself to make the purchase. This provides CRM and marketing teams a valuable information base to exploit and to consider different approaches and recommendations based on each user’s profile.

This is well known by large digital native technology retailers such as Amazon or Alibaba. They increasingly focus their strategy on personalization and offer each client what can best fit their tastes and preferences.

In a world where there are more and more players and where users are impacted daily with advertising by multiple channels, get customer knowledge and addressing them with personalized proposals is becoming essential to survive.

Talking about retail business, customer vision and services must take into account both channels to appear as transparent as possible for the customer experience.

The great challenge for retail is, therefore, how to provide customers with a personalized and omnichannel shopping experience.

 What does not make sense at all, it´s a client has benefits or proposals that only apply or can be enjoyed in one purchase channel and not in another.

There is no point in confusing the customer and making him doubt whether it is worth buying this item in store or online to enjoy a certain benefit.

CUSTOMERS DEMAND A UNIFIED SHOPPING EXPERIENCE !!

Responding to this challenge requires solving three aspects and doing it under a unique solution:

1 – Connect all the sales channels to obtain customer traceability online and offline under a unique customer ID and to make possible any service to operate identically for ecommerce and for physical stores.

2 – Get intuitive real-time customer behavior analytics and segmentation.

3 – Build digital customer centric services, campaigns and benefits that improve user’s shopping experience and that can be used interchangeably in any of the sales channels.

There are two possible ways for a company to achieve an omnichannel customer centric service platform:

✷ WAY 1: Develop it internally. This supposes:

• • Definition of the project: scope, systems architecture, services and functionalities.
  • Create an internal development team or hire a technology consultant to carry out the implementation.
  • Roll out a system arquitecture to ensure reliability, scalability and security.
  • Test, try and debug it before production roll out.
  • Build a technical support team or outsource it.

It will take 2-3 years to have a relevant set of services and it will require a continuous innovation to create new features and services, which will hardly be able to keep up with the industry path.

It is a slow, expensive and risky path.

✷ WAY 2: Adopt a proven and functional platform, what about Wapping!!

• • Created by a team expert in retail with more than 10 years of experience creating solutions in one of the largest fashion multinationals in the world and projects operating in more than 90 countries.
  • Deployed as a SaaS over Microsoft Azure with the highest standards in reliability and security.
  • Developed with a global, multi-chain and multi-country concept and prepared to work with more than 500,000 transactions / day per business.
  • Designed specifically for retail, with ad-hoc services to attract, retain and enhance the retail shopping experience.

Service in operation in just 4-6 weeks (average time for integration + testing) from the subscription to the service.

It is a faster, less risky and more efficient process.

The current retail scenario requires a response to the new challenges as soon as possible, placing customers at the center of the business once and for all and offering them a new shopping experience  more agile, personalized and omnichannel.

Those businesses that previously adopt a solution, will first turn their brand into a benchmark in customer experience and will first differentiate from their competitors.

In the recent words of a chief marketing officer of a major company:

“I want to be the first one in my sector to adopt this solution to get one or two years of advantage over my competitors. In this time, I will have engaged my customers that very hardly will change me for another competitor”

______________________________

José Manuel Maseda

Co-founder of Wapping

www.wappingweb.com