Going omnichannel: why’s and how’s

Do you run your sales through different channels which are not integrated? Or do you only sell through your web-store? If you answer yes to any of these questions, it is very likely, you lose your possible profit. Read on to know why and how to avoid this.

Let’s imagine that when you started your business, your clients used to call operators and make orders through them. The business grew and you decided to add a new option, self-service vending machines. Once online shopping became popular, you introduced that ordering channel as well. However, those channels turned out to be completely separated from each other. This was not convenient for customers: not only they were unable to start and complete the process quickly using different channels, but also any issues with an order couldn’t be tracked and solved fast enough as it would take time for the data to get into ERP and be available for a support team. Besides obvious profit loss caused by unsatisfied customers, managing several independent distribution channels would mean excessive operational costs

What is the solution?

Uniting all the existing selling channels in one single environment. Adding new ones. Integrating them with your corporate systems (ERP, WMS, CRM, etc.). That is what a well-constructed omnichannel solution is capable of.

How would it look like?
In some simple case, a shopper might open a chatbot and talk to it starting an order process. Then he might turn to a mobile application to continue there. Finally, he would access his shopping cart in a webstore and complete the purchase. All changes are immediately reflected across all the channels. It is easy for an end-user. It also makes support quick and effective.

Speaking of chatbots and mobile applications. We highly recommend adding them. Growing importance of messaging applications is an obvious trend. People tend to spend more time chatting in messengers. And what is important for businesses – people prefer to contact companies via chats and messengers as well. And when they reach out to a company they expect an immediate response. That’s why chatbots is the first thing to consider when going omnichannel.

Summing up advantages of omnichannel solutions.
Marketing stats claim that 73% of customers prefer having different shopping options. Such shoppers are more loyal, they make repeated purchases and are ready to recommend the brand to family and friends. Moreover, omnichannel shoppers spend 4% more in physical stores and 10% more online than single-channel customers.

From our experience, we can say that in addition to increased customer loyalty and sales, reduced operational expenses and total cost of ownership, there is another advantage which might be not obvious at first. Observing an entire journey of your customers helps you gather such data as their preferred channel, time of the day when they are more active, preferred content, where they usually start ordering and where they are likely to complete a purchase, how they usually contact the business, which of the channels is better for reminders and retargeting. This information gives you almost unlimited options to effectively reach out to your customers and meet their needs very precisely.

A final word.

With all the benefits of an omnichannel solution listed above, there is still one more great news. Building something cutting-edge like a fully integrated, interconnected multi-channel platform is not a rocket science if you go with some reliable e-commerce provider, such as nopCommerce, in our case. And it is affordable not only to enterprises, but any mid-size business.

Want to discuss an omnichannel solution for your business contact us