BRAND MANAGEMENT.... Winning edge for brands: How to provide exemplary customer experiences

Winning edge for brands: How to provide exemplary customer experiences

Most customers today are looking at the 4Cs-Convenience, Comfort, Customization, and Credibility, which is at the core of their buying behavior.

In today's times, a customer has infinite options to choose from. If their expectations are not met by one brand, they have many other brands to opt for. Most customers today are looking at the 4Cs-Convenience, Comfort, Customization, and Credibility, which is at the core of their buying behavior. Hence, the term "OmniChannel Marketing" came into the scenario.

What is Omni Channel?
Omni Channel marketing refers to a unified brand experience for consumers irrespective of the device or channel they use to interact with the brand. Nearly 50% online customers switch four channels for buying products and services.

So where does omnichannel marketing fit into this realm of a new retail battlefield?

Millennials switch between tablets and laptops browsing the products according to their convenience and visit a physical store for the trial before buying the product. During this journey, if customers feel jilted by one channel, they will immediately discard that company from their interest list and move on. They also might slam the brand with negative reviews which will impact other buyers as well. According to a finding by Adweek, 61 percent, online customers read product reviews before making any purchase.

Orchestrating a well-balanced omnichannel strategy is crucial for the success of the business through customer retention. A utopic omnichannel approach lies in the seamless design and delivery of consistent service levels across all channels involved in a customer journey. Executing this requires relentless coordination, empathy towards customer pain points, investment in technology and manpower, and most importantly time. But once the holistic vision to deliver omnichannel experience is implemented, it is worth the challenges. In a survey by Oracle3, retailers said that omnichannel strategies delivered valuable results for their business with a 66% improvement in customer loyalty.

How is omnichannel different from multichannel?
With the advent of e-commerce, marketers realized that customers were using one primary channel to engage with the brand, either a brick-mortar store or the web. So, they formed separate processes to manage each of these channels, isolated from one another. The perception of the online store was different from the offline store.

For example, one of the jewelry brands of India has online store but does not give as many options to customers as the physical store. Therefore, customer footfall in the physical shop leads to more conversions than the web. But there has been a shift in buying behavior, and customers no more prefer just one channel. Today it is about the overall feel of the brand, irrespective of the channel a customer chooses. So, if customers don't feel valued at the online store, they will not shop from the brand through other channels. This is where the omnichannel approach gives a winning edge to brands.

These are two ideologically different marketing approaches, though; both use more than one channel for their retail business. Marketers must adapt to the customer-centric omnichannel strategy to adjust to the mindset of the new age consumers and leverage this to increase customer retention and revenue.

What are the difficulties one faces in creating a single seamless experience?
Keeping up with the heightened expectations of the customers in the omnichannel age is not an easy job. When McKinsey/Periscope researchers surveyed the participants at April's World Retail Congress 2016, 45% retail executives expressed that their omnichannel efforts were not advancing fast enough despite investing heavily on technology, processes, and people.

Handling confidential consumer data is a crucial task as data across multiple channels and touchpoints is susceptible to data leakage and fraud. Fake social media profile, fake bot data, and ad tech frauds are serious concerns impacting omnichannel execution across industries. Tracking customer journey is another challenge when businesses are habituated to working in silos. Sharing data across channels need a shift in the mindset of the people working in the system. Only then can organizations be able to map their customers' journeys successfully to deliver a truly unique customer experience.

3 Ways to orchestrate omnichannel marketing for retail growth

Understand your customers with data: 
Data rules the digital marketplace. So, gather data about your customers from different channels such as email, social media, in-store, web, and geographical location. Decode your customer's digital behavior to understand their needs better. Figure out channels preferences for various scenarios and draw up a channel use graph for different customer profiles. Standardize this data so that your CX strategy can make use of it and deliver relevant information and personalized experience to your customers.

Act on customer feedback:
Omnichannel marketing cannot be perfected in a day. Analyzing customer feedback and drawing relevant insights from the feedback data are essential steps in strategizing your brand's customer engagement. Such data can be obtained from online surveys, click through rates, shopping cart abandonment rates, and similar marketing campaign results. Analyze which channel contributes to better engagement and higher conversions and where do the other channels falter.

Create brand advocates:
At least 74% of consumers are influenced by 'word of mouth' while making purchasing decisions. According to USM5, 91% of B2B buyers are influenced by peer reviews when deciding about purchase orders and 61% of IT buyers give maximum weight to colleague recommendations.

Therefore, it has become more important than ever to create brand advocates by delivering exemplary customer experiences to existing buyers through an omnichannel marketing strategy. 

By Pavan Chandra

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