A retailer selling electronic sound systems faced a problem that most brands dream of – customers really wanted its products. However, the catch was – it only had stores in Indian cities while it received customer queries from across the globe.
The sale process was like this – a potential customer would test its sound systems at one of its local stores and go home with a product specification guide and card authorization form to be filled out. As obvious, many buyers found the process difficult yet unique. After all, the products were in the premium range and the distance between the local stores and customer locations often made the sales loop hard to close.
Fast forward a few months, its overall sales grew significantly with the secret ingredient named – unified commerce.
If this example wasn’t enough to attract your attention, these numbers surely would – Unified commerce presents a global opportunity worth £2.6 trillion for merchants, says a retail report. It is an attractive solution for merchants across industries – be it online, retail, or hospitality. Those who embrace unified commerce today will cheer tomorrow as the future unfolds. But how so?
Let’s get into the details of unified commerce and what it holds for your business.
Defining unified commerce
Unified commerce refers to the process of connecting your customer-facing channels with your backend systems via a single platform. It is something that both big and small brands require to support omnichannel customer experience and create a singular view of products, buyer interactions, and management systems.
Since unified commerce involves a centralized platform, it can give you a comprehensive view of your business that allows you to capture data insights. Using these insights, you can plan to serve your customers in a better way and adopt modified business strategies as needed.
The importance of unified commerce can also be gauged from the numbers that say 50% of unified commerce sellers saw consistency in transactions even during the pandemic (says the report linked above).
Unified commerce means selling from one platform and more: benefits
When you have a single view of orders, inventory, and customer data, you can keep track of what’s happening across your business in real-time and make decisions that further drive revenue. On the other side, your buyers will benefit from having up-to-date inventories and the ease of browsing, paying, and fulfilling orders the way they want.
Let’s talk about various benefits of unified commerce in detail.
Smooth buyer’s journey
Through a unified platform, you get the benefit of extending more purchasing/financing options to your targeted customers at checkout. For instance, a buyer can add a product to his online shopping cart, pay for it online, and then choose in-store pickup. Similarly, you can integrate shipping into the platform to allow him to track the order across all touchpoints. From purchasing a product to fulfilling the order, to tracking, every side of order management becomes simpler with unified commerce.
Now, think from the customer’s perspective here – Such flexibility at every step of the buyer’s journey will eventually lead to a loyal customer base.
Customized shopping experience for your customers
You can only offer customers what they want when you actually know what they want. It’s that simple.
Most customers expect a personalized experience. With a unified commerce platform, you will get a single view of their purchase history and preferences, which can help you tailor their shopping experience and the marketing communications they receive.
For example, you can use payment analytics to understand the buyer’s preferences around selecting a specific payment method for purchase and predict their shopping behavior more accurately. By recommending the right payment method to the customers when they buy, you can create a brand recall that will help retain more customers.
Recommended Read: Access Insights on your Payments Data with Payment Analytics on Paytm Payment Gateway
Accurate tracking of customer interactions
Remind yourself of the pre-Internet shopping days. Having an eye on customer behavior merely involved keeping a tab on who visited your store and what they bought. On the flip side, now customer journeys are quite complex as they use several different channels before making a purchase.
Having a consolidated view of the customer data via a unified commerce platform can make it easier for you to track customer behavior at multiple touchpoints. Here, each touchpoint represents a path to re-engage and nurture the required connection.
For example, if a buyer starts his journey by clicking on a Google ad, he can create an account with your brand, look for products, add them to the cart, and leave without buying. In such situations, you can email them about their incomplete order and items in the cart, also telling them about the nearby stores where they can visit to complete the purchase.
Real-time product inventory tracking
When customers get into the visibility of your product counts, they are more likely to stay loyal to your brand. This transparency can only be achieved when you maintain accurate inventory numbers. Tracking inventory in real time via a unified commerce platform helps in the following ways:
- It prevents you from losing customers resulting from unexpected stock-outs that can also hurt the brand’s reputation.
- It helps you avoid pricing disparity that may arise from having multiple storefronts. When all your sales channels are in sync, you can ensure consistent pricing across the board.
- You can move products within different stores as per their demand. As out-of-stock issues could result in a $1T loss for retailers, you can ensure you won’t join this group with unified commerce.
Simplified exchanges and returns
A disconnected system can lead to an unregulated inventory, and then an unsatisfactory customer experience.
But with unified commerce, you can make the online store and retail store work in tandem to ensure a positive post-purchase experience, including returns and exchanges. As the numbers say, 89% of customers having a return or exchange experience are likely to buy again (Source). This can potentially improve the retention rate and result in higher revenue.
If you have already heard about the omnichannel commerce, you might also want to know –
How is unified commerce different from omnichannel commerce?
There is a slight difference between the two that can be best understood this way –
Omnichannel commerce links several backend systems with each other. While these systems have different functionalities and hold different sets of data, they are seldom in sync. It also means data is not updated in real-time and is thus, not reliable enough to ensure a seamless customer experience.
Take this example into consideration – a store executive searches for a specific product for a customer locally. While the demanded product is not available in that store, he can see it available online but in limited stock. Can the executive trust the stock number? Since the stocks of local stores and online stores are not connected in real time, the product available online could be out of stock soon. Hence, the numbers are not reliable.
This is where unified commerce steps in. As the name suggests, there is no difference between your webstore, physical store, or linked marketplaces. You can think of unified commerce as the next evolutionary step ahead of omnichannel commerce.
Online payments and unified commerce – what’s the connection?
When every channel of sales is cross-linked to ensure a seamless customer experience, you also need a payment solution that can be tied to each channel. What is important here is a singular merchant account tied to all the payment collection channels on different platforms.
This requires you to select a payment solution provider that offers:
- QR codes
- POS machines
- Payment links
- Payment gateway
- Payout solutions
- POS billing software
- Financial services such as nodal account, salary account, current account etc.
TL;DR
- Omnichannel commerce is when every sales channel communicates with similar other channels.
- Unified commerce is more consumer-centric and allows all the sales channels to be connected in real-time for a constant flow of data between different systems.
- Unified commerce ensures complete accuracy and transparency. It also enhances and improves the customer experience, making them more loyal to your brand.
