In Retail, It’s an Omnichannel World

Online retail has been a game-changer over the last two decades but it’s still a relatively small percentage of total retail spend, less than 6% according to the US Census Bureau’s Annual Retail Trade Survey. While brick-and-mortar retailers long ago established online channels, powerhouse online retailers like Amazon are moving into physical stores. And just about every retailer has a mobile app.

Retail has become an omnichannel game. While customers spend hundreds of billions of dollars at online stores in the US alone, many use different retail channels interchangeably. For example, customers may buy an item online but pick it up from or return it to a physical store. Customers may research a product online before buying it in a physical store. This can easily happen on the customer’s smartphone or other mobile device while that customer is in a physical store.

Regardless of what channel, or combination of channels, the customer chooses, the onus is on the retailer to deliver a consistent customer experience across all channels: web, mobile, brick-and-mortar store, even the call center that the customer uses to check on an order status or register a complaint.

Omnichannel retail is customer-centric retail. If your customers are the center of your universe, and they should be, you have to meet them by whichever channel they choose, whenever and wherever they choose to engage with your brand.

Fortunately, with products that monitor your retail stores’ performance inside and outside the firewall, from global customer locations or your own physical locations, be they brick-and-mortar stores or call centers, Catchpoint can help you manage all of your omnichannel retail operations and provide analytics that help you uncover new insights, such as how online store performance affects physical store performance in specific locations.

To learn more about the omnichannel retail opportunity and how we can help you take advantage of it, and get a sneak peek into the future of this dynamic space, download our free e-book, The Omnichannel Customer Experience.