Five Benefits of OmniChannel any Retail CXO would love to know

With 25% of India online and South-East Asian markets following the same trend, “OmniChannel retail” is no more a buzz word but a reality that every brand should be aware of.

OmniChannel is the seamless, integrated brand and shopping experience that unifies all channels: brick and mortar, eCommerce, mobile sales, catalogs, phone calls, SMS, Whatsapp, messenger bots - all of it. The idea is to provide ONE BRAND, ONE EXPERIENCE to consumers across all touch points.

Omni-Channel retailing offers benefits that far transcend the challenges of implementation. Any retailer who has the vision of attracting and retaining high value customers and driving greater sales cannot afford to ignore this and should focus on creating an Omni-channel strategy and implementing it at the earliest.

The five key benefits of Omni-Channel retailing are:

1. Walk the talk with the digital native consumer

‘The Digital Natives’ (born in the age of the PC and raised in the era of the internet) have assimilated technology into their shopping habits - they search, compare and often purchase using technology. The even younger generation - “the Digital Dependents’, born since the web was invented are getting increasingly frustrated with this non-integrated world. Their primary platform for engagement is the smart phone and they expect retailers to allow them to connect through this platform - not just to interact but also to transact. Retailers who are seen as laggards by this generation will end up finding themselves out of the race.

Retailers are increasingly using digital channels to get customer feedback and conduct beta tests for new concepts and products. Twitter is a great platform for receiving customer feedback. YouTube is quickly emerging as a marketing channel to test TVCs before they are pushed to mass media.    

2.Increase Reach and Sales

All eyes are on eCommerce and with good reason. Currently, eCommerce sales constitute 2% of the overall retail sales. However, digitally influenced sales are significantly higher than this number. Retailers should not only consider direct eCommerce sales but also digitally influenced sales (online product discovery, Facebook engagement, locating the nearest availability of a product, etc.) OmniChannel capabilities allow retailers access to the whole pie (brick and mortar, eCommerce, mCommerce, social commerce and much more) while leveraging the strengths of each channel.

3.Track and maximize Marketing ROI

Omni-Channel Retailing is a boon for retailers from a Marketing and ROI perspective:

- Micro segmentation and targeting: From spray-and-pray advertising to track-every-cent-you-spend phenomenon, digitally powered OmniChannel retailing aids retailers to reach out to the right audience at the right time at the right place. If you are a luxury retailer, you can reach out to say, women in the age group of 35-45 years, who stay in a particular area and are looking for a luxury handbag. This is possible because the digital platforms amass customer demographic and shopping behavior data.     

- Control on marketing spend: Digital channels provide opportunities to test market messaging and campaigns on a small budget. These channels enable you to learn from experiments and scale it out. Retailers and brand owners are in complete control of their massive investments and are confident of reaching their yearly targets.

4. Increase customer lifetime value and loyalty

Tracking consumer behavior across channels can help retailers better understand consumer motivations and preferences.  Armed with this information, they can increase sales through cross-sell and upsell, make right offers at the right time and delight customers. Also, they can send specific targeted communication to attract customers to visit stores, where the probabilities of impulse purchase are higher.

5.Enhance employee productivity (The not-so-known benefit!)

The key lies in ascertaining that employees are as informed, if not more informed than the customer. Technology can become the best defense against customers, who come in armed with more information than what front line associates have access to. Customer data in terms of purchase history, preferences, etc., when made available to the front line associates on a smart phone/tablet can drive in-store loyalty building.