Connection is important—now more than ever. And ‘connected selling’ should be a part of your cross channel strategy. Why? The reason is simple. Today’s customers are connected to—and empowered by—technology and social media. And consumers now expect the same type of experience from the places they shop.
It’s imperative to have the right sell to connected customers. But it can be a challenge. You need to think about how your customers will want to perceive the buying experience—and not how you want to sell to them. So how can you approach this? Here are 6 key areas to focus on.
1) Connected Customer Profiles
Your customer may touch your brand through multiple channels. No matter which channel that is, you should be able to capture the information and map the interaction back to a single customer profile. This could be a persona-based journey map which can help you enrich your customer profiles through each stage of the buyer journey.
2) Connected Personalization
A large majority of customers will research and touch your brand via various channels before actually hitting the buy button. Are you optimizing these touches to learn everything you can about your customer? Make sure you focus on three data sets: 1) customer demographics, 2) past purchase history and 3) customer behavior towards your brand.
By learning from every interaction, you can personalization your customer’s interaction with you and give them a unified experience complete with recommendations made just for them.
3) Connected Product Information
Can you present your customer with the same product information across all channels? Consumers are more enabled than ever. Make sure you maintain a unified PIM across all channels.
4) Connected Merchandise
Your product information is consistent—great! But don’t forget about pricing, special promotions, upsells and discounts. All those data points need to be consistent across every channel your customer may touch to provide a truly connected experience. To do so, make sure your systems can seamlessly talk to each other.
5) Connected Order Management
A Distributed Order Management System (OMS) keeps all your systems and platforms connected. Your OMS sits at the heart of your commerce and retail operations. It allows you to get a single view of inventory across all your systems and serves as your availability master. With the right OMS, you are ready to adapt to change. And with configurable modules such as Store Fulfillment and Fulfillment Optimization, you can respond quickly to changes in demand or delivery capacity. This all gives your customers an even better experience.
6) Connected Sessions
Picture your customer adding the items they want to a cart on their laptop. Later, they add some more from their mobile device. Will those items still be in their cart from earlier? Your technology should allow for the recall of every session from your customer via any channel.
Connect the Dots
It all comes down to interconnectivity and interoperability. Ensure your systems and platforms are agile yet scalable. This will help ensure you operate with the best-in-breed industry standard technologies while achieving the connection and personalization your customers want. Happy selling!
