5 Working Strategies to Increase Omnichannel Customer Engagement

Are you aware that 64% of modern customers find customer experience more important than price when making a purchase?

As a result, more and more retail businesses adopt a customer-centric approach to discover what their customers like and dislike. It has made modern-day shoppers highly demanding. Today's buyers expect multiple touchpoints with the retailers. They want to communicate with their brand across various channels hoping all interactions are unified.

Omnichannel customer experience is the outcome of customer-centricity, one of the hottest retail trends to increase customer satisfaction and engagement. Thanks to omnichannel customer engagement, businesses can now engage customers and provide a personalized and meaningful experience during each interaction.

What is omnichannel customer engagement?

It is a customer engagement model in which numerous sales channels deliver a unified shopping experience to a customer either shopping online or from a brick-and-mortar shop.

In simple words, a customer can reach a business using any available channel. However, the concerned business must respond consistently using the same channel, creating the illusion of a single virtual channel for customers. 

For example, if a customer care call drops in between and the customer uses Facebook Messenger to continue the discussion, they can start the conversation from the point where the call dropped.

Benefits of omnichannel customer engagement

• Retail businesses can engage with customers in real-time using live chat, video chat, screen-sharing, and co-browsing.
• Businesses can gather consumer insight to make more accurate & informed decisions on delivering the best customer experience.
• Retailers can serve the customers without delays and help enhance customer convenience.

Here are five working strategies to increase omnichannel customer engagement.

1. Make your channels work with each other

Smartphones are the new in-store research advisor. 82% of consumers say they consult on their smartphones before purchasing. It is not a great shopping experience for customers when they find out that the in-stock product in the online store is unavailable at the brick-and-mortar shop.

It will help a retail brand if channels work to show the same inventory of products across online and offline channels as customers expect the same information on every sales channel. 

For example, premium footwear brand Ruosh used Fynd's Omnichannel Solutions to make their unified inventory visible on all sales channels. The solution easily integrates all Ruosh stores and warehouses for fulfilling marketplace orders. Customers are delighted by this unique shopping experience when they see the same inventory across Ruosh brand stores, Flipkart, Amazon, and Myntra marketplaces. 

2. Create a personalized experience

Nordstrom is one of the biggest retail brands in the industry known for its personalized customer experience. They rank second, just behind Sephora in terms of overall personalization score. 

So, what have Nordstrom done that other retailers have failed to achieve?

Like so many retailers, Nordstrom collects and analyzes data online, but its real genius is in integrating online data with offline data to produce a superior experience across all physical and digital channels.

Customers can use the Nordstrom app to locate a store and then schedule an appointment with a personal shopper. They can explore the app and choose items to try on in-store. Within two hours, they receive an SMS indicating whether the items are available in-store. The selected items are booked for customers until the store closes the next business day. Additionally, customers may use the app to monitor inventory and manage their loyalty program membership.

Another great example of creating personalized shopping experience is using the in-store solution by Fynd—Fynd Store that helps store consultants to create personalized lists for their customers and also share shopping carts with them. With Fynd Store the consultants can also enable personalised home shopping experience for their customers through video calls.‍

3. Make order completion super easy for customers

The simplest way to improve omnichannel customer engagement is to easily remove the slightest roadblock in completing every order. Some of the reasons for these roadblocks could be: 

• Online retail store is constantly asking guest customers to sign up and reveal crucial details like mobile number, email id, permanent address, and credit card details.
• The shopping limit may be too high to hold customers on your retail platform.
• You may be charging excess shipping charges and extra taxes to deliver customer goods.
• Unavailability of varied and flexible payment options like Buy Now Pay Later, COD, EMI, the redemption of loyalty points & a lot more.
• Unfair pricing of products which is making your customers run away to the competition.
• Customers may be facing issues in the seamless shopping experience for your omnichannel retail brand, and probably retailers are unaware of the problem.
• Customers may be experiencing a delay in receiving the orders due to lack of order fulfillment locations near the customer's delivery address.

4. Integrate instore and online store experience

Fashion ecommerce platform Fynd contributes 8%-10% in-store sales for global shoe brand Steve Madden.

Customer experience before omnichannel integration

Steve Madden lost 10%-15% of sales due to the non-availability of a particular size or product a customer wants to buy. It ruined customers' shopping experience visiting the Steve Madden store as they had to return empty-handed.

Customer experience after Fynd omnichannel integration

Fynd consolidated the inventory of different Steve Madden stores on the Fynd Store app. Now, if a customer walking in the store likes a shoe and his preferred size is unavailable, the store representative will place the customer's order on Fynd Store, which gets delivered to his home.

The wonderful Fynd omnichannel technology bridges the much-needed shopping experience gap between the physical shop & the online Steve Madden store.

5. Create an immersive experience

What if the customers get to visit a company’s experience store to see their products getting sketched, designed, shortlisted & prepared by well-known designers that truly understand a customer's needs?

Yes, it’s true! A customer can come, see, touch, and check the product’s fit and size and customize it exactly the way they want it at their home so that they can make their big purchase online.

Well! India's number one furniture marketplace, PepperFry, is precisely doing the same, using its immersive brand experience centres known as Studio PepperFry.

Conclusion

The critical takeaway from the above strategies is to "always think omnichannel.” Put yourself in the customer's shoes and provide them with what they desire using effective engagement strategies that work.

Omnichannel is about providing a seamless buying experience across all channels, including marketplaces, social networks, and websites. If a customer is engaged across omnichannel, changing their status from a visitor to a loyal buyer becomes effortless.

Get a trustworthy omnichannel solution that improves your brand's customer engagement. Meet us today!