Delivering a great customer experience may mean something different for every brand. For some, it is about the ease of shopping from product search to placing an order. For others, it is about allowing their customers to pay with their preferred payment method.
Make no mistake – customer experience can make or break the buyers’ relationship with your business. Since shoppers are keen to use both online and offline channels, they expect your brand to deliver an omnichannel experience that is integrated across several touchpoints.
In terms of statistical numbers, improvement in customer experience has witnessed a 19% point increase in priority since 2019 (McKinsey). On the other hand, around 73% of consumers prefer buying through multiple channels, indicating the need for an omnichannel retail strategy. Even the mighty Google says that as many as 85% of online buyers start purchasing on one device and finish it on another.
Given how vague the definition of customer experience can be, it can be quite difficult for some businesses to pin down their capabilities. If you consider both customer experience and omnichannel presence the key competitive differentiators, you must understand the prospect of omnichannel retail in detail.
What Does Customer Experience Imply?
Look at it from a customer’s perspective and you will realize it is nothing but a sum perception of your brand based on the customer interactions throughout their journey and even beyond. It is about making your buyers feel heard at every step in the buying process – be it helping them with product selection, resolving issues or pain points if any, or handling customer support later.
At every touchpoint where customers can interact with your brand, there is a possibility to deliver a positive customer experience. Without an omnichannel strategy, the much-needed interconnection between different touchpoints will be missing.
For example, you might have already set up social media channels or support emails to deal with customer queries. But if they are not interconnected with each other, any customer will have to repeat himself to share the problem he faces.
Omnichannel retail, as an integrated approach to e-commerce, can make your buyers’ journey convenient and seamless.
Having a clear understanding of implementing an omnichannel retail strategy can help ensure a customer experience that leads to:
- A higher customer retention rate and brand loyalty among the buyers who would like to purchase from you again after the positive experiences
- Enhanced brand awareness through word of mouth
- Happier employees at your side resulting from delivering a good customer experience
Looking at Customer Experience from Omnichannel Lenses
You cannot control where the target audience would prefer shopping. However, you can be available to them wherever they are under an omnichannel retail experience. While there are so many factors that determine the overall customer experience, three primary things form its foundations:
Seamless payment experience
Irrespective of what you sell and how you sell it, you want to get paid on time. While setting up the stage for an omnichannel retail experience, it is also important to ensure that the payment experience is secure and seamless at all customer touchpoints. While there are several payment providers in the country, only a few provide a range of omnichannel payment products that can cater to various sides of your business.
Personalized buying experience
Back in time and even today, brick and mortar stores are the frontrunners in delivering a customized shopping experience. Buyers can get to interact with the same staff members, ask for demonstrations, and even benefit from upsells or cross-sells within the store.
However, with the evolution of technology, automated tools are now available to deliver the same level of personalization for online shoppers. For example, you can make product recommendations based on a buyer’s previous orders. Also, you can remind the buyers of products they added to the online cart and even suggest in-store pick up from a nearby brand outlet.
Impeccable customer service
Excellent customer service is yet another contributing factor to a positive customer experience. When you ensure top-notch customer service, you give your customers a reason to feel valued. When they do, they are most likely to return to your store later to buy more.
Of course, great customer service can take many forms. From addressing customer queries or needs quickly to resolving their complaints on the first call or visit, you can take the lead to keep your customers at the center of your business operations.
Support team availability at multiple touchpoints
A crucial component of customer experience is interacting with your buyers where they want. It means allowing them to connect with your business wherever they are – be it via social media channels, emails, messaging apps, or phone calls.
For instance, a prospect might see one of his friends sharing his experience of buying from your brand. This makes him check out the social media pages related to your business. From there, he might lead to your website or app to explore the product range and place an order.
The key to managing these omnichannel encounters is consistent management of customer expectations with the right experiences throughout their journey.
Interesting Read: 3 Ways To Simplify Your Expansion To Offline Channels
How Does Omnichannel Retail Result in a Good Customer Experience?
Now that you know the need for an omnichannel retail strategy to make up for a good customer experience, you need to make amends to the way you currently deal with prospects and existing customers. In simple words, a satisfactory experience means ensuring buyer-centric personalized journeys, delivering amazing customer service, and interacting with buyers wherever they are.
Wondering what can go wrong in ensuring consistent customer experiences? A buyer may feel like your team is trying to cross-sell or upsell products that are of no use to them. Similarly, some buyers may feel bad about the poor customer service delivered and start to doubt your brand’s legitimacy.
How can you then ensure that each customer gets a great experience every time he/she interacts with your brand? Here’s how it is possible:
Deliver delightful interactions to your customers
When you do your best to meet your buyers where they are, delighting them during each interaction is important. One of the easiest ways to do so is to tweak your transactional emails in a way that they feel more personalized than a default copy.
Willingly ask for feedback
There are two types of customers – those who call the customer support team in the first place, and those who look for answers and solutions by themselves before calling for help.
The solution using which you can cater to them both is creating an integral mechanism that asks every customer for their feedback for every order. You can also pair it up with a self-service solution in the form of FAQs or a dedicated knowledge base. This way, you will be in a better position to resolve customers’ queries.
Use technology to enhance the human experience
The fact that humans love to connect with humans preferably and not bots says a lot about the angle from which you must steer customer experiences. If everything related to your brand is automated, customers might have a hard time relating to your brand.
Therefore, it is important to strike a balance between automation and human elements while communicating with your customers.
Interesting Read: Payments as a Part of Product USP: Why Does It Matter?
FAQs
What does omnichannel retail mean?
It refers to the strategy to engage customers via both physical and digital touchpoints. As customers switch across the channels, their data moves alongside, hence allowing the businesses to deliver a consistent, on-brand experience.
What are the main components of omnichannel retailing?
In general, businesses that require omnichannel retail strategy need to work on four primary areas, which are platforms, processes, implementation, and human resources.
What are some of the benefits of omnichannel retail?
With the correct implementation of an omnichannel retail strategy, you can benefit from high customer retention and a loyal customer base, simplified customer journey, integrated business planning, and access to detailed customer insights.
Can a business fulfill the changing consumer behavior with an omnichannel presence?
From being a nice-to-have to a must-have, the importance of omnichannel strategy has evolved over the years. It is possible to define growth by ensuring a seamless buying experience to the shoppers from the very first touchpoint to the last one.
Build a Superior Customer Experience with Paytm for Business
A great customer experience strategy should be at the heart of your business if you want to spread wings in both online and offline spheres. Since it is crucial for the bottom line, make every customer experience seamless with the payment suite offered by Paytm for Business.
QR codes for your offline stores, payment links for remote payment acceptance, or a payment gateway for your business website or app, Paytm for Business has it all for your benefit. Using the Paytm for Business app, you can track and reconcile payments from different sources via a single dashboard. In case of any payment-related issues you may face, a dedicated account manager will be there to assist you.
