Unlocking Omnichannel Excellence: Prioritising Customer Value for Sustainable Business Growth
18th April 2023
Omnichannel excellence requires a laser-life focus on customer value creation. Nearly every organisation is creating new omnichannel experiences, as businesses strive to incorporate automation, increase efficiency and achieve critical cost-savings through optimisation of processes.
Omnichannel has become the cornerstone of modern-day retail, as those who implement such strategies enjoy higher customer retention and revenue. Many retailers and brands have been defying expectations for the past few years and are thriving, growing the customer base, increasing market share, improving bottom-line revenue and margin, creating more sustainable business models, and delivering customer expectations.
But what does it take? An omnichannel experience is all about delivering a seamless and integrated purchase across all touch points. It has provided new opportunities for retailers to understand the true value of their existing clients and expand their reach to new customers.
Those with a clear strategy that prioritises data capabilities needed to achieve digitalisation and meet customer expectations to deliver value are winning. Those who are successful, are likely to be:
- Optimising the customer experience across multiple devices through consistent brand experience, product information and hassle-free checkout process.
- Providing a variety of services from payment options, click and collect, enhanced delivery services, shop from store capabilities and automated return processes.
- AI adoption and augmented reality (virtual try-ons), sizing guides, virtual chat assistants, digital influences, product visualisations.
- Increasing brand collaborations and offerings.
- Engaging customers through loyalty programmes and personalised content.
- Utilising technologies in-store to provide superior experiences (including clientelling, geo-location, targeting, self-checkouts, scan and shop).
To do this, it requires retailers to aggregate their data across disparate systems into a single unified view throughout the organisation. Retailers will gain true insights which will help extinguish customer retention strategies – including personalised offers, pricing and stock decisions.
Let’s take fashion retailer Paul Smith as an example. So, what’s the secret to their success? Our solution, ClarityOmnivue, that delivers true, accurate data that is utilised to create individually customised targeted marketing campaigns that are personalised and relevant for each customer.
By using this intelligence, Paul Smith are able to create a personalised omnichannel experience for their customers whilst remaining fully transparent about data collection, privacy and usage. As a result, Paul Smith have achieved an average increase in conversion rates of 40% like for like marketing activities.
To Achieve a Successful Omnichannel Strategy, Data Needs to Be Integrated to Enhance Long-Term Customer Value
The rapid growth of digital technology has led to an increasingly vast and intricate tech ecosystem, comprising multiple technology applications and data that can be time-consuming and costly to manage and scale, if not integrated well, and are equally challenging.
And yet, every second counts. Delays in connecting systems, application performance and data freshness impact the customer experience and operating performance.
We have established that Retailers and brands want to:
- Be where their customers are
- Know their customer across all their channels
- Deliver against expectations
With the huge, and growing amount of data we, as a business and as individuals, have access to, understanding how to build a data strategy has never been more important. Besides, the IDC predicts that the amount of data in the world will grow from 33 zettabytes in 2019 to 175ZB by 2025.
By understanding who the customer is and what the customer loves, we can help retailers achieve this customer profile and online-offline unification. Effective data utilisation builds competitive advantage by increasing engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty.
Being present everywhere requires to be integrated everywhere. Retailers will continue to expand their reach; socials, communities, mobile and ecommerce sites to web applications and bricks & mortar, and the adoption of additional tech services (i.e., click and collect, free-returns in store and virtual assistants).
Getting the most value out of your data and technology integration requires careful thought. Being clear on your overall business strategy and strategic priorities helps to define your data strategy. Being able to connect systems and automate processes, unlock data to feed applications across the entire business and make better-informed decisions in real-time is key to optimising performance.
In short, the goal is to achieve peak performance. Who wouldn’t want to increase sales at a higher profit margin and reduce returns? Enhance the efficiency of order fulfilment and delivery while optimising allocation and demand? Make data-driven decisions that are more accurate and efficient while simultaneously enhancing operational efficiencies.
A successful omnichannel strategy requires greater flexibility, choice and convenience to generate customer value. When customers receive a stellar experience, they’ll value your brand and continue shopping from you. This increases customer loyalty, resulting in customer retention.
