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Retail Digital Engagement

Technology considerations for an exceptional omnichannel customer experience

10/19/2022

by Anna Stone

You’re considering purchasing a new pair of running shoes. You use your phone to do a little browsing and find a pair you like at a large sporting goods retailer. You add them to your cart, but you’re a little unsure and don’t complete the purchase before getting distracted by something else.

The next day, you check your email and see that you have a message from that same retailer highlighting the pair of shoes you were looking at yesterday along with a 15% off coupon. You’re interested, but decide that you’d like to try the shoes on to make sure they’re comfortable. You head to the store’s local brick-and-mortar location and try on the shoes in your size, but not in the color you were hoping for. The sales associate offers to order them from another branch and have them ready for curbside pickup tomorrow. You complete your purchase and happily await your new pair of running shoes!

This is the omnichannel customer experience in action. When you, the customer, interacted with the retailer through online and offline touchpoints, the retailer was able to persuade you from an abandoned purchase to a sale by utilizing a follow-up message, coupon code, and in-store service.

Defining the omnichannel customer experience

Most simply put, omnichannel marketing is a customer-centric strategy. Typically, this strategy involves the seamless integration of branding, messaging, and both online and offline touchpoints as customers move through the sales funnel and, ultimately, make a purchase.

As the retail landscape continues to evolve, it’s never been more important for retailers to consider their omnichannel customer experience strategy.

Retailers who have implemented an omnichannel strategy are seeing success. Take Target, for example, a company that prioritized its omnichannel strategy to integrate digital and physical retail. Today, Target shoppers who use multiple channels to shop spend 10 times more than online-only or in-store-only shoppers. Digital reward programs, like Sephora’s Beauty Insider Rewards or Chipotle’s Extras, give loyal customers a gamified shopping experience that results in stronger customer relationships and increased sales.

The omnichannel approach has a proven success record and is here to stay. While many retailers understand this and are taking steps toward a comprehensive strategy, omnichannel marketing is not without its own set of challenges.

Challenge #1: Data unification and management

In order to understand how customers are interacting with a brand and what they’re interested in, retailers must have a 365-degree view of customer data.

While most retailers are able to collect large amounts of customer data, that information has traditionally been siloed into different systems. Information comes from a variety of customer interactions—in-store sales, web and social media insights, customer service interactions, loyalty programs, mobile application usage, and more. Without combining all this data, retailers aren’t able to see the totality of the customer journey and can risk alienating customers. For example, they may end up sending an email suggesting a product that a customer already purchased, or a survey asking a customer to rate their experience after that same customer called to complain about an issue.

Resolution: Find the right technology to unify data

So, how do retailers go about unifying customer data? A customer data platform (CDP) is a great place to start. A CDP is an application that is able to combine data from multiple different sources into a centralized customer database to create a 360-degree view of the customer. Retailers can then segment that data in a combination of ways to create more personalized marketing campaigns.

An effective CDP is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Here are a few questions to consider before investing in a CDP:

• What are the current customer data sources, and where are they housed?
• How difficult is it to aggregate the information to get a complete view of customer profiles?
• How will centralizing customer data provide value to the business?

Challenge #2: CDP adoption

While the promise of a 365-degree view of the customer is alluring, deploying a valuable CDP is no small feat. Truly adopting this new technology will change the way an organization thinks about audience management, customer journeys, and personalized marketing. Employees must be educated on how the tool impacts them and how this new approach to customer marketing differs from previous solutions. This is not just a technology change–it’s a people and process change too.

Resolution: Align internal stakeholders on a CDP adoption plan

Successfully implementing a CDP requires alignment from internal stakeholders and leadership support both from the top and middle management. Here is a short list of some of the key items to consider when building an adoption plan:

1. Begin with a short-term goal to quickly find value and demonstrate how the CDP is benefitting the business, such as through revenue gains.

2. Take an incremental approach to rolling out the tool and consider assembling a pilot team to test out some initial use cases.

3. Set up governance to make sure you have a plan in place for what KPIs you want to measure and how teams will work together to utilize the tool.

4. Develop a strong change management strategy to help employees not only understand why you’re implementing a CDP and how to use it, but how their daily processes might shift.

Challenge #3: Increased technical expertise needed for the job

There are many ways to acquire a CDP, but maximizing its value may require different skill sets from traditional retailer teams; including technical skills like data management, data analysis, and experience in statistical analytics languages. But soft skills are just as important as these technical skills. Users of CDPs need to be open to new ideas and innovation, and also need to be able to help sell new ideas and concepts to others to get buy-in.

Resolution: Invest in proper training

Tailored training to each specific user base is critical for success. Teams are much more likely to learn new skills and adopt the CDP if they have access to real examples and are able to relate it back to the company’s overarching strategy. Looking forward, it may be time to re-think department structures and begin hiring for more specific omnichannel skill sets.

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Still not sure if implementing a CPD is right for you? Or, do you know that implementing a CPD solution is your next step, but aren’t sure how to navigate the technical, people, and process challenges that go along with it? Sendero can help. Contact us today and take the next step in your omnichannel customer experience strategy.

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