Customers are channel-blind – they just want a good retail experience. Yet retailers persisting with fragmented, omnichannel strategies are damaging consumer experiences, undermining retail respect, and actively encouraging consumer behaviours – from discount-only buying to more frequent returns – that are destroying retail profitability. Craig Summers (pictured below), Managing Director UK, Manhattan Associates, asks why so many retailers are failing to focus on delivering a single, perfect customer experience?

After a decade of omnichannel retailing, it should not be news to retailers that customers buy from a brand, not a channel. And yet, channel-specific policies persist – policies that not only undermine the quality of the customer experience, but actively jeopardise brand perception.

How, for example, can any retailer justify an ‘online only’ price when it also has brick-and-mortar stores? Just consider the experience endured by the customer who has seen a price online, but prefers to pop into the nearest store, only to discover the price is 20% higher. The retailer generously offering to ‘price match’ its own website – only when the difference is pointed out by a somewhat miffed customer – is a clear example of the way omnichannel retail strategies are damaging customer perception and experience.

Craig Summers, Manhattan Associates

Similarly, consider the customer receiving marketing emails promoting specific products at a low cost – click through and every single promotional item is out of stock. This is, plain and simple, bad retail thinking. While the retail strategy may appear to be ‘customer first’, the customer experience is completely at odds with this pledge. Where is the respect for the customer? How do fragmented pricing and dated promotions demonstrate the retailer values the customer in any way?

This confused and confusing retail behaviour is undermining already fragile customer confidence and, even worse, encouraging customers to buy only on price. Enticing customers with an online-only price promise doesn’t simply drive customers away from the store; it prompts them to price compare with the competition. It also encourages new behaviours that are further jeopardising retail profitability – such as ordering ten items with a view to returning nine.

Fragmenting the retail experience has only one outcome: it devalues the experience and that retail brand for the customer. Without loyalty or respect, customers will simply escalate those behaviours that fundamentally undermine retail profitability. Buying only on discount and increasing returns is devastating retail performance – and, to an extent, it is retailers’ inability to provide a consistent, end-to-end experience that is contributing to this behaviour.

So, what is the answer? How can retailers reflect customers’ desire for a consistent brand experience, irrespective of channel? The key has to be information visibility: with complete and up-to-date insight into the location of every piece of inventory, from store to warehouse, even in transit, retailers can ensure the divide between channels is breached – and avoid that dangerous omnichannel fragmentation.

Combining this inventory accuracy with effective order management also ensures the customer can gain access to the product, irrespective of location – whether ordered online, purchased in-store, or ordered by a store associate for home delivery. In addition, this single source of information provides an essential platform for understanding the complete cost of retail sale – rather than the channel-specific costs that can be both inaccurate and misleading. With this transparency and deep insight, retailers can fine tune the overall offer to match both customer behaviour and expectation, at the same time as ensuring every sales transaction is a profitable one.

In the decade leading up to 2015, many retailers focused on optimising their frontend sales processes and systems, often investing in an enterprise-grade commerce platform as a cornerstone of their transformation to an omnichannel operating model. Leading retailers have since turned their attention to synchronising backend processes and systems with frontend commerce platforms to provide the seamless, integrated service experience consumers expect. An important part of this effort has been the adoption of an enterprise-grade Order Management System (OMS).

The OMS is now regarded by leading retailers as an equally important technological component in the formulation and execution of a successful unified commerce strategy. More retailers are recognising that a seamless customer experience, and a single view of both the customer and inventory, are the foundation for modern retailing success. Whether offering products via an app, on a website, in-store, or through a call centre, retailers should be able to tell a customer: a) if it’s in stock; b) how quickly you can get it to them; c) which fulfilment options are available/most convenient; d) how they can pay for it; and e) that they can pay, simultaneously return another product of differing value, and can complete multiple transactions with a single swipe of a credit card – all the while ensuring the business can profit on every transaction.

A more recent development is the emergence of the Customer Engagement Solution, which complements the OMS. By giving all customer-facing staff ­– be they store associates or call centre service agents – the tools they need to see the complete picture of the customer, their preferences, and their tendencies. At the same time as having visibility of network-wide inventory via the OMS, retailers suddenly have the opportunity to provide the brand-defining experiences that will keep customers coming back again and again.

Manhattan Customer Engagement is the first solution that combines unstructured data from customer conversations on social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, with structured order information to allow retailers to make instant service improvements. This single, comprehensive view of the customer eliminates multiple applications and simplifies the process of analysing each customer’s buying journey. Customer Engagement works seamlessly with Manhattan’s Enterprise Order Management to predict and identify potential issues and automatically create cases to correct them before they become problems.

Customers may behave in an omnichannel fashion – checking prices via a mobile while standing in-store, for example; but they don’t think 'channel', and they certainly don’t think 'omnichannel'. Retailers need to reflect and support this customer sentiment: success is not about giving customers a strong omnichannel experience; it is about giving customers a good retail experience, every time.