Attracting a customer into your shop is one thing. Ensuring that the person reaches the point of sale is another.
With the dawn of the digital age, it’s obvious that customer expectations are continuously changing. Now more than ever, it’s important for brands to enhance the fluidity of the customer journey.
How are brands progressing to create a “seamless customer experience?” Let’s explore.
Fighting against customer dissatisfaction at the point of sale
It’s no secret, the customer is the ROI. Because of this new phenomenon, the customer experience has become a focus for marketers. The key being – how to make sure the customer follows the sales funnel and comes out of the store with a bag full of new goodies.
So how do marketers speak the language of every human? Well, they can’t. But with the help of digital media tools, it helps create a universal language by bridging the gap between e-commerce and traditional brick-and-mortar shopping.
What are marketers doing to further create a bond between the effortless experience of online shopping, and the intimate experience of the physical store? They are creating platforms to merge the two desires by creating a seamless customer experience.
What is a seamless customer experience?
Linked to cross-channel and omnichannel marketing, the seamless customer experience is based on the notion of fluidity. This approach allows customers to experience different channels of contact, which ultimately integrates them into the customer journey. In our digital world, this increasingly takes the form of a digitized journey.
In order to merge the two (digital media and physical media), there cannot be opposition.
- Prices must be the same
- Campaigns and promotions have to be similar
- Information collected online must be applicable to the physical store
- Customer recognition regardless of the channel
- The purchase and delivery are made according to the needs of the customer
An initiative that falls under the seamless customer experience is
- Click and collect, or buy online, pick-up in store – in order for retailers to compete with Amazon, this has increasingly become a more popular strategy,
Omni-channel solutions in store
Achieving a seamless customer experience can be difficult from the start since it requires omnichannel processes from the start. However, as technology has evolved, there are solutions that get retailers and marketers closer to this goal.
Leveraging technology
Think digital. Apps can generate coupons, interactive in-store catalogs can streamline browsing, and price checkers can speed up comparisons.
Tablets
Despite the digitization of exchanges, the seller remains a key player in creating the seamless customer experience. With a tablet, retailers are easily able to respond to requests from customers and real-time data from the store. It can even obtain personalized user information including search history and saved preferences.
This allows the seller to personalize the customer relationship and to promote relevant products that can spark interest and a purchase.
Digital displays
The seamless customer experience also includes a clear display of information and news from the store. This process can be a preface to the click and collect strategy with a timeframe that allows the customer to collect the product from the shelves, as well as a display of promotions and other special offerings.
Combined with artificial intelligence, the digital media display can also promote products available in stock, or on the contrary, report items that are out of stock.
Loyalty card
Perhaps the oldest of the strategies, nonetheless it’s still effective.
Armed with a wealth of information such as purchase history and bank date, it can also encourage purchased through special and customer-specific promotions. Thus, bridging the gap between the digital experience and the physical experience.
As more brands are faced with intimidation from e-commerce, creating a seamless customer experience is a priority for many brands. Today, digital media technologies make it possible to approach the customer dynamically which greatly encourages a fluid experience.
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