Solutions to create an excellent
omnichannel customer experience

Nothing is more annoying than a package arriving too late, when your customer really needed it to be on time, like a birthday present that suddenly is out of stock. Leaving your customers empty handed on a birthday party and angry at you as a retailer. Fortunately, retailers can easily prevent this situation with Available to Promise (ATP).  

Implementing ATP means:  

• Offering products with a delivery time that you can reach.  
• Managing customer expectations by showing when products will be back on stock, allowing customers to order upfront, knowing that delivery takes longer than usual.  
• Customers receive their order on time, resulting in a happy customer that is more likely to place a second, third or even fiftieth order.  

Click and collect, also known as collect from store or BOPIS (buy online, pick up in store), is the process of ordering products online and picking up the order at a specified location. Instead of having the order shipped to the customer’s home, they opt for collecting the parcel somewhere else. This can be a physical store, a parcel collection point, a parcel robot, curbside pickup, you name it! 

By offering click and collect you:  

• Drive more customers to you shop, which looks good to other shoppers nearby.  
• Customers picking up orders are tended to make an upsell with in-story products. 
• Offering click & collects has proven to increase the conversion rate in the webshop.  
• Turn your shops into small warehouses to optimize the shop- and warehouse stock at all times.  

One of the most important ways to add value for your customers is through customer service. To offer a seamless customer journey, customer service should be able to see all customer data from both in-store as well as online orders. Otherwise, a customer needs to explain this all on the phone, in an e-mail or in a chatbot.  

Omnichannel customer service improves… 

• The time of solving issues with clients 
• The communication with clients, because they can give more information.  
• Collaborations between the customer service department, the DC and local stores, because they all work withing the same system.  
• Which all leads up to a better customer service experience, resulting in a good word of mouth by your customers.  

When customers come to a store, they expect to find the product they are looking for. But what if the right color or size isn’t on stock in store? With endless aisle, store employees can easily order products from another location or warehouse and ship it either to the store or directly to the customer’s preferred address.  

The benefits of Endless Aisle: 

• Don’s miss out on sales, just because a product isn’t on stock at that moment.  
• Help customers with finding, ordering and receiving the right product. This results in customer retention. 

Almost every retailer offers their regular customer a loyalty program where they can collect points for discounts, deals or other incentives. But what if customers order online? Do they get the same loyalty program as in-store? Are there personalized offers? A cross-channel customer loyalty program lets customers use it in any sales channel.  

With omnichannel loyalty: 

• Customers are more likely to make a purchase in a new sales channel if they can make use of your loyalty program. 
• Customers that use a multi-channel loyalty program provide you with new data and insights.  

An omnichannel experience also means that customers can pay, return and get refunds in all channels. So, products that are ordered online, can be returned in-store and are refunded immediately. All while keeping your cash register in order.  

Benefits of an omnichannel payment flow:  

• An omnichannel payment flow offers ease to your customers. Keeping them happy means a bigger change at loyal customers that will buy again next time.  
• By implementing an omnichannel payment flow, you also smoothen your internal cashflow. Customers service can spend less time on refunds and help customers faster.  

Marketplaces are webshops where multiple retailers can offer their products. Connecting your product feed to a marketplace needs to be done carefully, since information is showed in a different way compared to your own webshop. Orders that come in through marketplaces can be fulfilled fast and easy. 

Using marketplaces means:

• Reaching new markets and customers. 
• Creating a better brand visibility. 

If an order is shipped from a brick-and-mortar store, the store in question picks the order and sends it to a customer.  

With ship from store you can:  

• Offer a quicker and/or greener delivery to your customers. 

Online orders can be fulfilled from a warehouse or DC. But in some situations, it can be better to fulfill it from store stock. In that case, the store needs equipment to pick and package orders.  

With store fulfillment you can:

• Use store stock to fulfill online orders.  
• Use shop assistants to pick orders if they have the time. 

To create omnichannel experiences, all systems of a retailer’s IT structure need to connected and integrated. Transactional communication is the exchange and interpretations of information that moves through more systems.  

Benefits: 

• Systems work together to complete orders together and in one flow.