Most retailers are feeling the pressure to continually add new physical, online and mobile channels to keep pace with new technologies and changing consumer demands.
But if you’re only adding and not actually integrating these channels with the rest of your organisation, you can end up with silos that frustrate your internal teams and customers.
Instead of letting customers hop between channels in one seamless interaction, silos mean that customers have to deal with inconsistencies and gaps, such as partial sales histories, different answers to questions or having to start conversations afresh in each channel.
They inevitably lead to disappointment and frustration, a lack of trust and even a sense that your organisation is dysfunctional and incompetent.
Customers typically have to cope with three types of channel silos:
Sales: Customers interact with a plethora of channels during a buying decision, including stores, web, mobile, email, social, phone and partners such as concessions, franchises, wholesalers, resellers and marketplaces.
However, this variety is overwhelming retailers, with 47% saying there are simply too many channels for them to effectively deliver the best sales experience. While 94% of retail leaders are deploying multi-channel strategies, only 65% say their pricing and promotion strategy is consistent across all the channels. That leaves a significant 35% with inconsistencies in pricing and promotions.
Service: Customer service and support also spans multiple channels – such as phone, email, website, mobile, chat social and customer forums - supported by advancements in generative AI.
However, many teams struggle to design and implement a common experience across interaction types and touchpoints. Research shows that many organisations fall into the trap of silo management, with 44% struggling to deliver a consistent brand experience across every channel and two-thirds (66%) conceding they could be using digital channels more efficiently.
Marketing: Customers receive loyalty and promotions messages across a wide range of channels, including the web, mobile, email, print, social, e-receipts, stores and new retail media networks.
However, marketers operate within siloed ecosystems and information isn’t easily shared between teams, offices or regions. Processes aren’t always well thought out and, in some cases, they’re non-existent. That means customers receive different branding and messaging across different channels.
While 59% of retailers say their organisations have differentiated strategies by channels, as few as one-in-10 (11%) believe there is no differentiation and – perhaps most concerning – 29% don’t even know.
And retailers seem to be focussed on digital channels at the expense of physical retail. Only 11% of budget is expected to be spent on bricks and mortar and under one-in-five (17%) think it’s the easiest channel to sell through.
The silo challenge is growing
Retailers also recognise that the problem of channel silos is growing.
Customers today are ‘channel agnostic’. They not only want to transact when, where and however they want, they want to experience a single interaction with your brand – no matter the channel.
Their tolerance for poor customer experience has also decreased. Retail innovators like Apple and Amazon have set the customer experience bar incredibly high, and customers now expect the same level of speed, convenience and variety from every business they deal with.
How are retailers responding?
Many retailers still rely on a multichannel approach to bring their channels together, but most attempts fall short.
They often create innovation teams isolated from the rest of the organisation in a bid to fast-track solutions, but end up reinventing the wheel and creating customised products using different and duplicate technologies.
They’re investing in new customer-facing technologies and self-serve channels – supported by advancements in AI - but until they have a single source of truth to manage inventory, order and customer data most of these investments won’t deliver the unified experiences customers’ demand.
Managing inventory still remains most retailers’ biggest challenge and biggest cost – no matter their size. Many retailers don’t have an accurate view of inventory and can only access rudimentary sales and inventory positions. That prevents them from integrating their channels to offer the ‘buy anywhere, fulfil anywhere’ options that are best for customers and most profitable for them.
Retailers also struggle with legacy technologies that have been customised and are infrequently updated and then bolt-on new digital solutions that don’t easily integrate. Often loosely connected with manual processes and complex integrations, these omnichannel systems are fragile, inefficient and costly to maintain.
When you add in ever-increasing channels, disrupted supply chains, faster fulfilment and new payment options, most brands can’t keep pace.
Break down those silos!
To get rid of your channel silos, you’ll need to move from multichannels to a unified commerce approach that gives you a single source of truth for all inventory and customer data.
A unified commerce platform will combine data from every system and channel across your organisation, including store point-of-sale, websites, call centre, mobile apps, field staff, DCs and warehouses and any other channels, such as pop-up stores, concessions and marketplaces.
That gives you a stable hub for all your channels, reducing integration, duplication and operating costs, while increasing efficiency and accuracy.
With all your customer engagement points connected in near real time, you can deliver a unified and personalised customer experience more consistently. That means you can treat each customer as the individual they are all the time – one person with one account, interacting with one unified brand.
Unified commerce is also your springboard for innovation, letting you bring new channels and services to market faster to create frictionless experiences that delight customers, build loyalty and improve profitability.
How Infinity helps
The Infinity platform has been designed specifically for unified commerce in today’s modern retail enterprises.
Not only does it have all relevant retail functionality available via a simple, easy-to-use interface, it’s built for the demands of fast-paced, data-intensive environments where any downtime is unacceptable.
Infinity lets brands deliver personalised, empowered and seamless experiences, no matter when, where or how customers shop.
It eliminates the pain points and amplifies the ‘wow’ moments. You’re free to add new channels and take advantage of new capabilities to deliver results at a speed and scale that aren’t achievable within a traditional omnichannel model.
We also give our clients the right level of customisation for their industry requirements without compromising on our ability to consistently upgrade the platform. And because Infinity is a mature platform, your teams can focus on delivering innovation, because the core functionality they need already exists.
This blog was originally published on 13 August 2019 and updated on 27 June 2023.
Want help to smash your channel silos?
If you’re experiencing technology challenges that prevent you from unifying your sales, service and marketing channels, get in touch. We’d love to help you develop the ability to create unified retail experiences for competitive advantage.
