The following post was written by Roy Erez, Co-Founder and CEO, Loop Commerce, an online gifting solution company and partner of Redstage.
J.C. Penney once said that “the well-satisfied customer will bring the repeat sale that counts”.
Corporations are constantly taking note of how their customers are purchasing, making sure that they have a presence where their customers shop, and that they have what it takes to make them happy.
It’s no surprise that technology (such as smartphones, among others) have introduced new ways of shopping, bringing additional dimensions to both traditional retail and eCommerce. Indeed, the modern customer is one who embraces technology in every step of their purchasing journey.
For example, a customer may browse online before going to a store in person, and once in the store, might search for reviews on the mobile phone before deciding on the purchase or vice versa.
In an interview on the National Retail Federation’s blog Retail’s Big Blog, Terry Lundgren, President, Chairman and CEO of Macy’s, Inc. shared his thoughts on Macy’s best customers, saying that they are “those who shop us in-stores and online – we strive to have a 360-degree view of the customer.”
Darren Hitchcock echoes Lundgren’s sentiment on his blog post in Econsultancy, pointing out that omni-channel retailing is “seeing things from a consumer’s point of view, (and) not from the comfort of your own business boundaries”.
In other words, omni-channel retailing is a seamless approach to the consumer experience through engaging the customer on all available shopping channels.
As the eCommerce industry is relatively new to omni-channel retailing, companies are becoming increasingly interested in ways to streamline and optimize the customer experience.
For a start, companies are taking steps to seamlessly integrate their eCommerce operations with their retail stores, paying more and more attention to how customer data can be used to get a ‘360-degree view’ of their customers.
Taking it a step further, many retailers also realize that their interactions with the customer extends beyond meeting them offline and online, and that the challenge today is to provide a great experience across different technological mediums. In fact, eBay shared at Magento’s Imagine 2013 that 21% of their users are ‘multi-screen’ when they buy something, and observed that engaged consumers tend to buy twice as much.
The rapid rates of change and innovation signal a transforming retail paradigm. Today, retailers need to be present wherever their customers are, armed with the proper functionality to meet the evolving needs of the modern customer.
About Loop:
Based in Silicon Valley, CA, and backed by top industry executives as well as PayPal, Loop Commerce is changing how retailers approach their top eCommerce pain-points by providing an innovative, patent pending shopping and gifting platform that removes the obstacles consumers face when trying to buy a real physical product as a gift. They were recently selected by Forbes as one of 12 companies “moving global commerce forward”.