- 15 de October de 2022.
Omnichannel is not a new concept in the Retail market. It has emerged to bury once and for all the idea that Marketing and Sales are purely e-mails and calls. Even though we have been shopping online for a few years and we are more familiar with self-service and chatbots, the pandemic of the coronavirus has boosted this sales strategy permanently.
From the start, we can already say that the balance is positive. Brands can offer impeccable and integrated services, both in physical spaces and digital channels; and consumers are free to choose where, when and how to buy products or services.
With Black Friday approaching, it is essential to take a deeper look into the advantages and challenges of Omnicanality, both for consumers who want to shop smarter and for companies that want to deliver the best user experience.
What is omnichannel?
Omnicanality or Omnichannel is multi-channel communication between company and customer. In a more robust definition, we can say that Omnichannel is:
Multiplicity of communication and buying & selling channels between customers and companies, enabling a unified, fluid, standardized and integrated user experience - whether digital, human or automated.
The idea of this concept of sales and service strategy is that the consumer can be seen in a 360° way and that he or she also has the option of starting a conversation in the physical and ending it in the digital, all with maximum fluidity.
To make it more tangible, you can understand 'omnichannel' as, for example:
- a contact in the physical store that ends in an app purchase
- or website contacts that end in self-service in the physical store
- and even contacts that start with a QR Code in a TV or magazine ad and end in a chat purchase
Do you notice that all touch points always try to meet the customer wherever he or she is? This is because this technology is totally consumer-centric and promotes these bridges to attract and retain customers more fluidly and quickly.
But for the omnichannel strategy to work and bring results, your company must structure itself to serve the customer in all these channels - without giving preference to one - and also organize itself to know the customer deeply, discovering the best way to relate to him/her, understanding his/her pains, interests, preferences and consumption behaviors.
Relevance of the omnichannel strategy
Now that you know better the concept of omnichannel, we can start talking about specific advantages and steps to make this sales strategy real in your company. By adopting an omnichannel communication with the customer, the advantages are many:
- Integration of experiences: it becomes easier to retain audiences with so many contact channels for targeted communications, campaigns and offers;
- More efficient and agile service: by mapping all interactions up to purchase histories, the operations team can more accurately track and assist each step;
- Finding new opportunities: by testing different communication and approach formats, new sales opportunities are identified more easily;
- Customer loyalty: with more recurrent purchases stimulated by segmented communications in multiple channels, customers become more loyal to the brand and may even carry out spontaneous marketing;
- Increased average ticket: the quality of product and customer service motivate the public to buy more recurrently or in greater volume;
- Improved management: the use of integrated communication technologies, with a history of interactions, in addition to customer service software, chatbots, and self-service checkouts, all in a single platform, allows the extraction of consolidated reports with performance indicators;
- Lower costs: If a customer has more channels to ask questions and receives more clarification throughout the purchase journey, the chances of him/her generating return or exchange costs are much lower;
- More unified employees: your marketing, sales and customer service teams will need to work together to make your omnichannel management work. When there is transparency in this process, the operation runs more smoothly;
- Where there is transparency, problems are seen from a mile away: problematic, underperforming or high-risk operations can be identified more quickly with areas integrated by an omnichannel strategy;
- Improved company reputation: when the integration between channels and communications occurs fluidly, your brand wins points with customers - being more recommended by them, as well as more tagged in social networks;
If you're still not convinced by the advantages of an omnichannel experience, we've separated a Customer Experience Trends Report from Zendesk that lists some relevant data about customers in relation to companies.
Only 18% of consumers are satisfied with the number of channels offered to them. Less than 20% think the speed of problem resolution is strong and only 21% said there is ease of interaction with brands.
As corroborated by a 2021 Opinion Box survey, 84% of respondents have ever searched for a product in-store and chosen to buy online, just as 54% responded that they have ever shopped in-store and chosen to have the product delivered to their home.
In fact, today there are already many companies investing in omnichannel experience.
You or someone you know may have already solved banking problems or requests through a website or app, or logged into a store system using a social network, or even got, through a chatbot, a contact phone number to finish your service, right?
The sense of urgency may have grown in there, but we know how daunting it can be to manage so many contact channels. So, let's get to the tips for implementing omnichannel.
How to apply an omnichannel strategy?
1. Use technology to your advantage
Even if an omnichannel strategy is 100% aligned across areas, it can only be put into practice through an intelligent, data-driven system.
Just as a CRM focuses on customer service, there are other important software programs that will serve to promote this integration in your company or as a point of contact or data collection.
Tools that store data, operate in an integrated way, and facilitate the query of this information are great allies that help your teams save time, act in a fast and standardized way, and extract reports more easily.
Thus, technology allows them to focus on human interactions and the interpretation of this data to generate competitive intelligence.
2. Transform the culture and train your team
It is not enough to hire high quality software if your company does not make a cultural change. The omnichannel strategy depends directly on the work of the frontline staff, who are in frequent and direct contact with the customer.
Therefore, they need to experience the values so that they can transmit them during customer service and also reflect them in operations. The main areas to be involved in the omnichannel strategy and that must take care of it are Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, and any other that relates directly to the customer.
In this process, it is important to define the best approach, the type of dialog to be maintained, provide guidance on inappropriate practices, and define leadership and goals that will help ensure the quality of the process.
3. Know the client: personalize customer service to build loyalty
With technological tools and an aligned culture, your company can deeply know your public, understand the entire sales process, and provide impeccable customer service.
By mastering which are the preferences and needs of your consumer with data, it is possible to know which channels are preferred by each one and make increasingly accurate communications and offers.
With an interpreted consumer history in the face of business challenges, the service can act more intelligently - keeping people attracted to the right products and solving problems more quickly.
Product creation and marketing areas can even use this data to think of combos or launches that are unbeatable and aligned to the customers' needs. And such care is what contributes to customer loyalty.
The role of Smart Wi-Fi in this strategy
If, on the one hand, the implementation of an omnichannel management can be laborious, once done, it allows to better understand customer behavior, develop more accurate strategies, and correct the course of those that are still in progress.
In this sense, investing in data sensors, capable of collecting important information from your customers and removing your team's blindness to who attends your physical points of sale, can be one of the best decisions to make.
A high quality Smart Wi-Fi will allow your business to not only access data in simple consolidated dashboards, but also communicate with the customer in a targeted way via Wi-Fi - through advertising pieces such as coupons, discounts, offers, notices, and more.
In this sense, Smart Wi-Fi goes beyond providing free internet in your physical space. It can help you map the customer's path through the different sections, know which ones they spent more or less time in, and even be able to impact them in real time, or use the information collected to improve future communications.
Se quiser conhecer mais sobre as possibilidades com um Smart Wi-Fi, agende uma conversa sem compromisso com um de nossos especialistas fazendo uma ligação gratuita para +55 3003-0442 ou preenchendo o formulário.
If you would like to learn more about the possibilities with Smart Wi-Fi, schedule a no-obligation conversation with one of our experts by by filling out the form.
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