Retailers must evolve their omnichannel capabilities to keep pace with the changing behaviours of customers
Being omnichannel is the main preoccupation for retailers today. To benefit from this strategy and support their performance whilst adapting to customer behaviours, retailers have to put in place business metrics to follow up their omnichannel progress.
We know that Forrester Research, one of the world leaders in market research, is focused on how new technologies impact different industries and the public. Forrester recently released a report about the benefits of business metrics and being omnichannel for retailers (Evolve Retail Metrics To Measure Omnichannel Performance Effectively, September 2019). OneStock’s collaboration with Whistles has been identified and quoted in this report, in our view, due to Whistles’ great results thanks to Ship from Store.
Before deploying an omnichannel project, it is necessary to understand what exactly being omnichannel is and why it is so important for customers.
Ship from Store: an omnichannel scenario to support business performance
Each company has its own business model and success opportunities. We believe that Forrester Research identified our work with Whistles as an example of efficiently defining objectives and a strategy for success.
Whistles chose to work with OneStock to develop an omnichannel strategy based on OneStock’s Order Management System unifying stock and using the agile Ship from Store scenario. Thanks to a modern retail business model, Whistles redefined their objectives and identified OneStock’s solution as an opportunity to support their commercial success. Ship from Store enhances the experience for store teams and customers, whilst increasing the brand’s global turnover. Indeed, this omnichannel scenario allows online orders to be fulfilled by stores. OneStock provides Whistles with some performance metrics to track the fulfilment of online sales by the store assistants.
Following the implementation of this omnichannel project, we identified immediate benefits:
- a 10% rise in e-commerce sales since utilising Ship from Store
- 15% of online orders being fulfilled by Ship from Store
- a boost in both e-commerce and physical store operations.
Being omnichannel is a key element in the customer lifecycle
To improve their performance, retailers must think about developing specific metrics to measure the customer experience, ensuring that they have a better understanding of their customers’ needs and can measure their efficiency as a retailer at the end of the process. A reliable view of the customer lifecycle is based on:
- PAST – Descriptive vision: Which products were brought or liked by the customer? How much money did the customer spend with the brand?
- PRESENT – Omnichannel vision: Is the customer satisfied? Is the customer engaged with the brand and what are the touchpoints?
- FUTURE – Predictive vision: Which products could interest the customer? Is there a churn risk?
Why is being omnichannel important? Being omnichannel is a key element of the customer lifecycle, as it is about their experience with the brand “today”. To engage their customers with their brand, retailers must understand the need to build an omnichannel strategy: a fluid customer journey on every channel, which in turn provides an improved customer satisfaction rating.
At OneStock, we believe that metrics are fundamental in order for retailers to have a comprehensive understanding of their customers. We provide data to manage omnichannel order processes and optimise retailers’ profitability.
Learn more about it here
Link to the report (access requires subscription or purchase)
