Omnichannel retail strategy for transformed customer experiences

Digital transformation has revolutionized retail communication, and omnichannel retail strategies are essential for navigating evolving consumer preferences.  

Although customers frequent brick-and-mortar stores more often, they are not willing to compromise on the digital experiences that have evolved over the last few years.  

McKinsey research confirms that Gen Z, in particular, doesn’t even think about traditional channel boundaries, and they increasingly evaluate brands and retailers on the seamlessness of their experience. 

To succeed, retailers must embrace omnichannel communication and understand trends to transform customer engagement in retail. 

An omnichannel retail strategy can involve synchronizing online and in-store inventories, offering buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS) options, or implementing customer relationship management (CRM) tools to track customer interactions across all platforms. 

This means that a customer can start a conversation with your brand on one channel and continue it seamlessly on another channel without repeating information – improving their overall experience.  

You can tell the difference between the three by looking at the words. But let’s break down the terms anyways: 

Many businesses today use voice and email as their primary means of communicating with customers. The first step for them to meet consumers where they are today is to increase digital engagement by adding additional communication channels.  

Notably, social media. 

Gen Z now uses social media to research brands more often than they use search engines.    

Statista reported that global sales through social media were at an estimated  992 billion US dollars in 2022, and by 2026, this number will reach 2.900 billion US dollars.  

This means that your shoppers want to explore your products, interact with your brand, and make purchases on their social media apps. 

Check out what our Enterprise Team Lead, James Stokes, has to say about social media and retail:   

Over the last few years, retail shopping has changed drastically. Customers were predominately shopping online, accelerating the speed at which retailers had to evolve. But in-store shopping is not dead, and it is here to stay.   

The IDC Infobrief, sponsored by Infobip, found that customers prefer a mix of online and in-store buying and return options.

51% of consumers are telling us that without the flexibility to return, they are highly likely to shop at a competitor, and nearly 60% are telling us that the ability to buy online and pick up in-store is essential.  

McKinsey reported that 60-70% of customers shop in an “omnichannel way.” This means that customers want and expect seamless communication and service in stores and online, no matter where their customer journeys lead them. 

Chatbots are a beneficial tool for retailers to bring better experiences to customers through their omnichannel retail strategy. But with advancements in chatbot capabilities, you can now choose different types of chatbots that go beyond answering pre-defined FAQs.  

Rule-based chatbots 

Conversational chatbot 

With the death of cookies, retailers need to leverage insightful data they can collect directly from customer interactions. A Customer Data Platform (CDP) will help you gain an understanding of every customer and all touchpoints and events related to them.   

Often, information is siloed; marketing may be doing something amazing with one platform, and customer service may be doing something great with another platform. But they’re not working together. This needs to be addressed at a company-wide and strategic level.  

Once you have that kind of holistic view, you can better understand the customers and who they are, decide which channels to meet them on, and determine what type of messaging will resonate with them.   

Depending on the business, they will be in different places, digitally speaking. You can create different customer journeys depending on potential touchpoints. From there, you can make each journey better, more fulfilling, and more valuable for the customer. And in the end, that will differentiate your business and create a memorable experience for the customer.  

Omnichannel communication in the retail industry is a key tool for driving engagement and ROI.  

Customers can interact with a retailer through the channel of their choice to get transactional or promotional messages, reminders and notifications, or any other type of message – meaning retailers can provide omnichannel shopping experiences.   

Retailers can collect and analyze customer data across channels to gain insights into customer behavior and preferences. This can help them personalize their marketing strategies and communication efforts and better target their customers with relevant promotions and offers.  

Overall, omnichannel communication is an essential strategy for retailers looking to meet the changing customer expectations, who increasingly demand a cohesive and personalized experience on any channel.  

We analyzed 473 billion interactions on our platform in 2023 to uncover how customers and brands use omnichannel communications in today’s landscape.  

Here are the main findings we uncovered about channel usage on our platform for retail and eCommerce brands: 

More and more retail brands are adopting a variety of channels to communicate with customers, develop end-to-end journeys, and enrich experiences.  

According to Omnisend, marketing campaigns that use at least three channels compared to those launched on just one channel have a 494% higher order rate (0.83% vs 0.14%). 

This is especially true for agile and creative young brands who have adopted chat apps and social media as sales channels and are working with influencers to extend the reach of their marketing campaigns exponentially. 

The key use cases retailers use for omnichannel shopping experiences are: 

We also analyzed channel usage on a popular shopping day – Amazon Prime Day.  

Retail brands have been opening the door of online shopping to their customers through avenues like Amazon storefronts – aka adopting the phygital interactions we touched on earlier.  

More and more brands are expanding their channel mix to include more than just SMS and Email. The most popular channels used by retailers on Prime Day 2024 worldwide were: 

*compared to the same dates in 2023 

What kinds of messages do retailers send on these busy shopping days? 

Rich channels like WhatsApp. Viber, and RCS are perfect for these use cases, as retailers can catch the attention of shoppers on their favorite channels using rich messaging, ensuring their promotions don’t get lost in an email inbox on a day like Prime Day.

Omnichannel communication offers retailers a wide range of creative opportunities. Here is an example of how one customer can interact with a brand using four channels and experience a seamless shopping journey.  

A customer sees your Instagram ad for a product that catches their attention. 

Since you included a click-to-WhatsApp button in your ad, the customer starts a conversation with your brand to get more information on your offer.

After two days, the customer has not yet made a purchase. 

You send a WhatsApp message offering them 10% off their first purchase when they register an account and check out. 

The customer registers and receives a welcome email with the promo code. 

The customer adds items to their cart through your mobile app but doesn’t complete the purchase. 

You send a mobile app push notification to remind them of their abandoned items.

The customer completes the purchase and gets a payment confirmation email. 
  
After a few days, the customer reaches out to you, asking when they can expect their delivery. 
 
An agent responds promptly, saying the package will arrive tomorrow and if they would like to change any details around delivery. 
 
The customer gets their delivery notification on WhatsApp the next day with their receipt and return information in case they need it. 

The customer is satisfied with their purchase and leaves a positive review. They also follow the brand on social media to stay up-to-date with future deals and promotions, demonstrating the potential to become a loyal customer. 

Businesses can build stronger relationships with their customers, increase customer satisfaction, and ultimately drive business growth by unifying data and using multiple channels for interactions. The most effective customer engagement activities in retail will depend on your target audience and the nature of your business. 

These are the top customer acquisition and retention strategies brands are using.
Source: Shopify

Using omnichannel capabilities enables you to build digital customer journeys from start to finish. Utilize different channels and the features of those channels to create more engaging conversational experiences and grab your audiences’ attention.   

From lead generation to promotions, closing sales, and re-engagement efforts, omnichannel communications can elevate each stage and bring more cohesive experiences to your retail customers.  

Customers want a personalized and tailored shopping experience where retail brands demonstrate a strong understanding of their needs and individual preferences. No matter their channel of choice, customers can interact with your brand without any disjointed interactions. Retailers can collect insightful data across channels and use that information to build better experiences and remove any siloed data.   

Unifying data and customer communications are essential for becoming a customer-centric retailer and transforming interactions into meaningful connections.  

Minimize the effort required by customers to connect with your brand, share proactive support, and provide an always-on digital experience across every channel and context – to increase customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention.  

With unified customer conversations and centralized data, retailers have the tools to evolve the contact center into a revenue generator, capturing customer insights that can be used across the entire organization.  

Developing a strategy around using multiple channels to communicate with customers is essential for retailers to meet high demands. Keeping the trends and benefits discussed in this blog in mind, let’s dive into the steps required to create the right strategy for your business.  

Understanding the crucial role customer data plays in omnichannel communications is the first step. But how do you start using this data to your advantage?  

Segment your customers based on their behaviors, preferences, demographics, and history with your brand. Doing this will help you target the right individuals for specific marketing efforts and simplify personalization.  

After segmenting your customers, you know about their preferred channels, platforms, and mediums.  

According to that data, you should adopt the channels your customers actually use. You will discover which channels are worth the investment based on where they are located, how they use their messaging apps and additional data you collect on their communication preferences.   

Journey maps will help you visualize every action and engagement key customer personas take to achieve their goals.  

Use a customer journey map to define an omnichannel customer engagement strategy that adds value across individual journeys – based on a customer’s needs, preferred channels, context, and more.  

Brands with top omnichannel customer engagement see a 9.5% yearly increase in annual revenue. According to research, solid omnichannel brands witness a 7.5% yearly decrease in cost per contact. 

Within your journey map, identify which channels are the most appropriate for which messages. Use different channels for sales, marketing, and support use cases to find the perfect combination of channels for your customers.   

This is how you will start to offer better brand experiences online, which can also transfer to in-store experiences.  

An omnichannel strategy works best when paired with automation tools and techniques. Add automated message flows that walk customers through stages in their journey with CTA buttons or pre-defined responses to make your customer service agents more efficient.   

Add a chatbot to level up your customer support solution. When a chatbot can no longer assist a customer, the conversation is seamlessly transferred to an agent who picks up right where the chatbot left off.   

Collect data on how your messages perform on various channels, which messages gave you the most clicks, engagement rates, conversions, and highest satisfaction scores.   

Measure performance and optimize your engagement strategy to continually improve the customer journey, improve ROI, and deliver a more significant impact against your goals.  

For brands to survive in a competitive landscape, omnichannel communications for retail experiences is essential. Consumer behaviors and expectations have changed – from viewing the digital side of your business as just another channel to thinking about it as the front door.    

The future of omnichannel retailing will be about making every interaction conversational, driven by AI and machine learning. For many retailers, this is a new realm of technology that they haven’t conquered yet.  

But we’ve got you covered.  

Our experience working with retail and eCommerce businesses and expertise in customer communications gives us an in-depth understanding of the retailer’s context, challenges, objectives, market, and solutions landscape. We can help you face the challenges of today and future-proof conversational solutions for tomorrow.