Omnichannel
Omnichannel or simply COMMERCE
In recent years we have often heard about Omnichannel, but very often the ideas are not so clear in the company and especially at the top management.
The real question to which entrepreneurs want a clear answer is: “How can this omnichannel increase turnover or improve the visibility of my company towards end customers”.
In fact, let’s not forget that the retail sector is changing, and quickly too. The only way to compete is to increase the level of service offered to the end customer
To explain how I will refer to a consumer survey conducted by Jda Software Group, Inc. out of over a thousand consumers in the USA.
The world of customers is currently divided into two almost perfect halves:
- 54% of those interviewed prefer to make purchases in physical stores,
- 46% favor other channels such as online, mobile and social media.
Online, Mobile and Social represent the last frontier of online shopping, in fact
- just over a quarter of those interviewed (26.3%) used social media for an online purchase, mostly young people aged between 18 and 29 (35%) and on Facebook (81%).
- around three out of four tech shoppers would have no problem returning to traditional stores if they offered them a quick and easy shopping experience.
Well today I want to describe to you in a concrete way one of the most effective actions to implement, which, during my almost twenty years of experience, I have seen actually increase the turnover of companies.
Il Click and collect
To meet this need, the “buy online and pick-up in store” seems to be right for us. In fact, it combines the convenience of online shopping but also the in-store experience.
- Half of those interviewed have used this method in the last 12 months, an increase of 44% compared to the 2015 survey.
- Respondents who have used these services do so to avoid home delivery (39.6%) and receive the product faster (33.1%)
This is the classic service that should be encouraged as 40% of those interviewed who use this option confess that they have sometimes made further purchases in the store.
As you can imagine the problems are mainly related to personnel management. 23% of those interviewed had to wait a long time for the store employee to find the order in the system, and 16% declared that there was no staff dedicated to this task in the store.
In future articles we will also talk about the importance of training sales staff in a historical moment in which staff must be trained to manage new fulfillment channels to be competitive.
Naturally when we talk about Click & Collect we also talk about in-store returns.
In other words buy online and return in store. Well, it seems strange but even returns can bear fruit at the store. Consumers use this formula 20% more than the previous year.
They do it mainly for
- Over 30% to avoid dealing with the problem of return shipping
- 17% because they are convinced they will get a refund or exchange faster
Whatever the reason, these are always potential customers who cross the threshold of a traditional store.
The survey can be downloaded here http://now.jda.com/ConsumerSurvey2017