How a unified commerce platform solves retail inventory problems

To provide the purchasing and fulfilment options you need for seamless experiences that delight customers and minimise costs, consider a unified commerce approach to get tight control of your inventory within your retail management system (RMS). 

Managing inventory is a retailer’s biggest challenge – no matter their size. It’s also the biggest cost. It’s a balancing act to strike the right stock levels and easily adjust those levels as your business changes. Understocks lead to missed sales and dissatisfied customers, and overstocks tie up your capital and result in markdowns that can hurt your margins. And in our on-demand world, customers expect access to products wherever and whenever they want.

But many retailers struggle with some of the fundamentals of inventory control, such as stock taking, demand forecasting, planning and receipting. Others launch self-serve channels that can only access rudimentary sales and inventory positions. That prevents them from offering the ‘buy anywhere, fulfil anywhere’ options that are best for customers and most profitable for them.

Unify your inventory 

A unified commerce platform gives you a single, accurate and up-to-date inventory view so you can be sure that you have the right product at the right place at the right time.

With unified inventory management across all locations, you can make better decisions about what stock to order and how to distribute it amongst your warehouses, call centres, and physical, mobile and online stores. 

You can react to trends quickly, and forecast demand based on historical data, sales forecasts and seasonal variations. And with the platform’s open architecture and APIs, you’re free to add new features, channels, apps and services that will increase customer satisfaction and benefit your business in many ways:

• Increase sales with ‘endless aisle’ capabilities that let you sell products stocked in any location and have them delivered direct or collected by the customer

• Reduce inventory costs by moving stock to the right location when it’s needed and cutting your overall stock requirements

• Offer more purchasing and fulfilment options to customers so they can locate items in-store, buy online, collect in-store, reserve online, receive the same day or at a time and location of their choice

• Optimise your product range by matching stock to each store’s location, community and demographics while still giving access to your complete range via endless aisle 

• Extend your range across more sales channels such as in-store kiosks, shoppable screens, pop-up stores, concessions and mobile devices

• Lower fulfilment costs by delivering direct to the customer using store-to-door, warehouse-to-door, click-and-collect or optimised sourcing.

---

Retailers reaping inventory benefits with the Infinity unified commerce platform

Cue delivers anywhere, anyhow

With a ‘buy anywhere, fulfil anywhere’ strategy and Infinity’s centralised hub providing the inventory and fulfilment smarts, Cue Clothing is using its 240+ stores across Australasia to take on online giants like Amazon and changing the way customers shop.

Night ‘n Day gets tight control of inventory

By simplifying inventory management with Infinity, convenience grocery retailer Night ‘n Day is cutting costs, freeing up time and increasing net profit to around $12,000 per store each year.

T2 Tea unifies experiences

In 2019, T2 Tea chose Triquestra to modernise its retail system. Infinity will provide a central hub for T2’s inventory, point-of-sale and customer loyalty across its concession, wholesale, marketplace and ecommerce business, plus a growing global footprint of over 100 stores.

---

To see the difference that an accurate and single view of inventory can make to your business, contact us.

---

For more on unified commerce and why it’s the future of retail, download this free ebook. 

GET YOUR FREE GUIDE

What’s the difference between unified commerce and omnichannel?

There are many terms to describe retail management systems these days. And while they are used interchangeably, there is a difference between ‘omnichannel’ and ‘unified commerce’. Unified commerce is the next progression of what’s come before and simplifies the technology you need to give customers a consistent omnichannel shopping experience.

---

Omnichannel offers options, and limitations 

With an omnichannel approach, you give customers the ability to shop in-store, online, via your app, over the phone, etc. 

But there’s a good chance these systems rely on out-of-date information and old or closed integration technology. Which means you might be connecting new channels to systems that aren’t updated in real time. And you could be duplicating data and finding that interoperability with each new technology is difficult, expensive and slow. 

As a result, many seemingly omnichannel experiences are held together with manual processes and complex integration. You end up with silos across your business which negatively impact your customer because they have to deal with information gaps, fewer fulfilment options, or having to start new conversations in each channel. 

For example, an omnichannel setup might enable data sharing between physical and online stores, but the contact centre is left out. So if a customer has a question about something they like online, they call your contact centre and your rep can’t see the customer’s recent online purchasing history or whether the customer’s nearest store has the item available for collection. 

Internally, staff must duplicate tasks because there’s no single version of data that everyone shares. This day-to-day inefficiency means teams have less time to spend on innovation and giving customers the personalised experiences they expect.

---

Unified commerce simplifies consistent customer experience

Natalie Berg of NBK Retail says we no longer ‘go’ shopping, we just ‘are’ shopping. The only way to give consumers this seamlessness is to move beyond omnichannel to unified commerce.

Unified commerce is a platform. It centralises your customer and inventory data for one version of truth and its open architecture (using APIs) exposes that data to all your channels. 

With this single view of your data, you can move stock, update prices, add loyalty program rewards – whatever you like – across all your channels. The data stays in sync and transactions can be viewed in near real time. So customers get a ‘one brand’ experience: one person with one account, interacting with one unified brand. No hitches, no inconsistencies.

From a business perspective, unified commerce resolves issues inherent with traditional channel integration, and offers many more benefits:

• More accurate information for decision making

• Reduced inventory holdings and increased availability

• Optimised supply chain and order management

• More payment and fulfilment options

• Efficient processes and less manual overhead

• Faster innovation and speed to get new products and services to market 

---

See how unified commerce solves many more of omnichannel’s limitations and how it can set you up to create the retail future you want. Download Unified Commerce is the Future of Retail now.

GET YOUR FREE EBOOK NOW

What is unified commerce and why is it so important to retail success?

If you want to be more competitive in today’s retail world, you have to give customers the purchase, payment and fulfilment options they demand across your in-store, online and mobile channels. The best way to expand your offering and improve each customer experience, while lowering costs, is to unify your retail management.

Unified commerce is the term used for a retail software system that connects all your inventory and customer data to all your sales channels. It’s also known as frictionless retail, new retail, headless commerce, digital commerce, boundaryless retail and omnichannel (though we believe unified commerce is the nirvana of omnichannel as we explain in this blog).

According to Gartner, unified commerce is one of the top 10 trends that will impact the future of digital commerce. That’s because it gives consumers consistency across channels and a continuous experience throughout their journey with you.

BRP’s annual POS/Customer Engagement Survey shows that 94% of retailers have indicated that they have or plan to implement a single unified commerce platform within the next three years. And in Australia, there’s a $92 billion opportunity for businesses that are successful in rolling out a strong unified commerce platform. 

---

So what exactly is unified commerce?

Unified commerce is a retail management system (RMS) that unifies all your customer and inventory data on one open, centralised commerce platform that exposes one version of truth to all channels. 

Which means that data stays in sync – across websites, apps, stores, call centres, kiosks, concession stores, wearable devices – and transactions can be viewed in near real time. So you can give each customer the best price and experience, whether they shop with you in-store, at home, or out and about.

With all these customer touch points connected, unified commerce lets you deliver holistic and personalised customer experiences more consistently. And treat each customer as the individual they are – one person with one account, interacting with one unified brand.

A unified commerce platform also helps you and your technology partners innovate quickly, reduce integration and operating costs, maximise margin, and deploy new services – efficiently and profitably.

Here’s how unified commerce helps you retail better

Inventory management

When you’ve got a single view of your inventory, you can move it around your business quickly and react to demand changes fast. You’ll find it’s much easier to manage stock to maximise sales opportunities and reduce holding costs.

Order management (OMS)

Because your inventory is optimised and visible across channels, you can offer a range of fulfilment options like click-and-collect, ship-from-store, endless aisle, split shipments – whatever suits your customers best.

Loyalty and customer management

Capture customer details via any channel. Then analyse their purchase and browsing history to show them you know them with communications, rewards and offers that are timely and relevant. In-store teams can see this information as well to offer personalised service and encourage conversion at point of sale.

Pricing and promotions

Pricing is shared across channels so customers can trust that they’ll pay the same price whether they shop with you in-store, online or in the field. And you can try out different promotions and pricing strategies quickly when an offer succeeds or doesn’t do as well as planned.

New product, service and channel innovation 

Using APIs on an open platform, you can connect third-party services and expose data in real time. Helping you build your competitive advantage and create a world of opportunity to give customers new, faster services and personalised interactions.  

No more silos

When everyone is using the same system and seeing the same data, you’ve got better internal collaboration with fewer roadblocks, and customers are happier because they’re getting the frictionless ‘one brand’ experience they want.

---

If it’s time to take the next step from omnichannel and consider a unified commerce approach for your retail business, get the ebook, Unified Commerce is the Future of Retail.

It discusses the unified commerce business case, the four stages of transitioning your business to unified commerce and much more.

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE COPY NOW

Introduce customers to smart, digital receipts with Slyp and Infinity

Attention Australian retailers – Slyp now integrates with Infinity, giving you another option to help customers track their purchases. Slyp partners with banks and retailers to send interactive smart receipts directly to shoppers through their banking app after they make a purchase with a bank or credit card. So you can both say goodbye to paper receipts.

Consumers get itemised purchase and warranty information, and you can even include links to related products in their receipt. You get rich in-store data and can easily set and review marketing campaigns inside receipts. 

---

Here’s a closer look at how Slyp works:

1. Slyp and your Infinity POS are seamlessly connected via API.

2. A customer makes a purchase with their bank card.

3. Slyp extracts the purchase data and matches it to bank transactions.

4. Transactions are sent to the customer’s bank app or by SMS text message and displayed as feature rich, intuitive smart receipts. 

5. You view analytics in real-time through your MySlyp dashboard. 

---

If you want to go paperless, improve customer experience and have a new way to engage with customers when they’ve left your store, talk to us about Slyp and Infinity today.

New in Infinity – November 2019

Here’s what’s new in Infinity so you can do more to improve the experience you offer your customers. 

Infinity is a modular platform and you may need additional components or licencing to access some functionality.

---

INVENTORY MANAGEMENT

---

Understand stock levels even better

The stock adjustments report has been enhanced to let you filter by reason, see subtotals by reason, show or hide item details, and sort by SKU or date. These changes will help you understand why stock levels are being adjusted and by how much. So if you’re experiencing stock losses, you can address and limit them quickly.

---

ORDER MANAGEMENT

---

Order and quote enhancements give your call centre and other teams more pricing and fulfilment flexibility

• Transactions can be repriced using the Cart API so if you have variable pricing across your store network, call centre staff or those in another branch can price items based on where the order will be fulfilled.

• The ‘Pick up from another branch’ screen now includes a saleable column which shows quantity on hand for each available branch less any allocated stock. This is helpful so you don’t commit inventory that’s already been allocated to another order, such as a click-and-collect order that’s still in the store but hasn’t yet been collected.

• Several existing configurations can now have branch-specific settings. That means you can limit functionality to selected branches – for instance if you only want your customer service team to be able to use certain functionality when you’re rolling out a new business process.

---

New EDI service lets you automatically send purchase orders to your suppliers

You no longer need to manually email purchase order numbers. With Infinity’s new EDI service  (electronic document interface), your purchase orders can be automatically converted into one of two supported EDI file formats and sent automatically to the supplier by email or FTP.  

---

LOYALTY

---

Virgin Australia’s Velocity Frequent Flyer programme now integrates with Infinity

If you use Infinity Loyalty, a customer can now associate their Velocity membership details with your Infinity loyalty programme to earn Velocity points that they can then redeem for flights and upgrades, fuel, car hire or hotel stays. It’s a valuable way to extend your loyalty programme.

---

The Givex integration has been extended from gift card to loyalty

An enhanced Givex integration service now enables Infinity Loyalty customer data and purchases to be sent to Givex Loyalty for store credit and rewards. 

---

Continuous performance improvements

One of Infinity’s key design principles is speed so we’re always making it work faster for you –  especially in regards to loyalty functionality when you want to make transaction and data processing time as quick as possible for your customers. 

Infinity now uses an optional read-only SQL node within an ‘always on availability group’ (AoAG) to enable the use of the secondary node to spread data processing times.

---

INFINITY APIS

---

Customers can now sign up to your loyalty programme using your external partner services

With the new Loyalty Import API, a customer can use the details from one of your other loyalty partners (like Fly Buys or Air New Zealand Airpoints) to join your loyalty programme.

The customer scans their partner card at the POS and Infinity can automatically validate their details with your partner’s system and then create the customer as a new member of your programme.                

---

Let customers prepay for products then use their balances when they want

By using your mobile app and the Infinity Loyalty Prepay API, you can give customers the ability to pre-purchase products and then pay for them with a scan of their phone when they shop with you. 

It’s a great way to help customers buy your products in bulk, buy at a discounted rate, and budget for purchases. You can also share these prepay products with a select group of friends and family if you choose to.

---

Attention fuel retailers: Give customers cents per litre discounts through Infinity 

The new Fuel CPL Discount API lets you give customers cents per litre discounts as part of your loyalty programme. You can let customers redeem discounts each time they visit or bank them for future purchases.

---

Integrate Infinity with your external CRM for the best of both worlds

An enhancement to the Loyalty API means it now has an ‘external CRM ID’ identifier type.

So if you use a CRM like Salesforce, that system can share a customer’s identifier number with Infinity Loyalty. Then that number can be used by both platforms for two-directional integration. 

Infinity remains responsible for transactional functions like pricing and offers, and your CRM manages your customer segmentation, 360 degree views, journey planning and marketing campaigns. 

---

The Infinity API platform now automatically monitors its own health

You’ll have even greater API peace of mind because the Infinity API orchestration service now has a health endpoint. The service will poll the endpoint of each configured API and return an ‘ok’ message for each healthy API, or automatically restart any APIs that are in an unhealthy state. 

---

SETTINGS

---

Manage passwords at store level

Now instead of going to head office for support, store managers can save time and effort by resetting staff member passwords themselves if they have the appropriate permission.

---

To find out more about any of these new enhancements and add them to your Infinity platform, contact us.

Contextual commerce: Shane Lenton on the next chapter of retail

Contextual commerce is the game changing idea that people can transact the moment they have an urge to buy, instead of forcing them into a traditional purchasing channel. It’s the future of retail with massive opportunities to capture new audiences and incremental transactions.

I spoke with Shane Lenton, CIO at Cue Clothing, to get his thoughts on contextual commerce and advice on how to make the move. Shane is a retail leader who has transformed Cue with innovation and technology to give customers personalised and frictionless experiences across physical, online, mobile, concession and call centre channels.

At Sydney’s 2019 Online Retailer conference, you won over the audience with your assertion that contextual commerce is the next big thing in  retail. What’s your definition of contextual commerce? 

SL: Contextual commerce is the idea that we can seamlessly implement purchase opportunities into everyday activities and natural environments. In other words, customers can buy anything, anytime, anywhere, with the click of a button. Or even just their voice. It’s a purchase made in the moment, with no need to stop what you were already doing.

That means thinking well beyond the boundaries of the traditional physical store and our current digital channels.

It has been talked about for quite a few years now, but few retailers have capitalised on the opportunity. As the technologies that support it have become more available and the social media platforms and messaging apps have evolved, it’s becoming more relevant in the Australasian market and there'll be far greater adoption.

It’s a game changer for retail because it creates new opportunities to create a frictionless experience for the customer and foster loyalty. Retailers that are willing to move early will benefit from higher conversions in new places and increased sales. Those who don’t keep up will be left behind very quickly.

---

What’s an example of contextual commerce?   

View fullsize

SL: Shopping on Instagram is one example that many people will be familiar with. It was a big moment for retail when it was introduced in early 2018. We were one of the first retailers to tag products in organic posts, which customers can then tap on to find out more information and make a purchase.

However, today customers are still required to add items to a cart and transact in the traditional way by logging onto our website to enter payment info and delivery details. With Instagram’s proposed new ‘Checkout on Instagram’ feature (currently in beta with a select group of brands in other markets), shoppers will be able to buy items without leaving the app. They will only need to enter their name, email, payment information and shipping address the first time they check out. 

This ability to allow the consumer to transact in the moment, within the context of the Instagram browsing experience, really hit home with the Online Retailer audience.

---

What’s driving the adoption of contextual commerce? 

SL: There are three things triggering its growth. 

One: Consumer behaviour is constantly changing and people's attention spans are shortening. Everyone's busier and we’re being overloaded with content across every part of our lives. People now want to act on their impulses and buy at the time and place of their choice, with as little friction as possible. As the lines between shopping, buying and browsing blur, commerce is happening wherever consumers are and however they wish to interact.

Two: Contextual commerce is going to happen in retail because the social media platforms are going to ‘own’ the customer. Social networks like Facebook and WeChat know what we implicitly want and have the potential to take us from discovery to purchase in a few microseconds on their platforms. This shift to social commerce could be one of the biggest disruptions in retail, and threatens the dominance of Amazon and Google. That also means you're not going to have a direct one-to-one relationship with many of your customers, and you won’t receive insights into their needs and behaviours.

Three: The availability of new technologies that support contextual commerce. These technologies range from smart speakers and messaging apps that can be used to make a purchase by voice command, through to facial recognition such as ‘smile to pay’ and immersive VR and AR platforms with hot spots that customers can click on to purchase items.

---

What are the different types of contextual commerce? 

SL: The first is conversational commerce – a way of shopping or purchasing products through chat interfaces that ‘speak’ to people in natural language. This includes the messaging platforms that people already use every day, such as SMS, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Apple Business Chat and WeChat, along with messaging services on your brand’s website or mobile app, like live chat.

Voice commerce is still in its early stages but over 25% of US adults already own a smart speaker that they can use to make purchases by voice command. And smart speakers will soon outnumber tablets, with one study predicting that they will grow by 82 percent, from 114 million units globally in 2018 to 207.9 million in 2019.

Even though smart speaker adoption has been slow in Australasia, the opportunity is massive. An Adyen and 451 Research global study says that while more than half (53 percent) of smart speaker owners have used these devices to shop, only 13 percent of retailers currently enable purchases on them. 

The second big opportunity is ‘click to buy’, which removes the shopping cart form and allows people to purchase with one click. It’s included in digital wallets with ‘buy now’ capabilities using common payment apps such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, and social media platforms where users can purchase within the app itself (and not on the retailer’s website), like shoppable Instagram. 

Today, 44 percent of consumers already use social media to shop, however, only 18 percent of retailers currently enable purchases on social media (according to the Adyen and 451 Research study). And two in five consumers aged 18-24 say the ability to make purchases via social media would increase their online shopping frequency.

The third opportunity centres on the immersive VR and AR platforms that enable consumers to make a purchase from within the virtual experience. The technologies supporting this include search engines that offer reverse image capability such as Google and TinEye, image recognition technology such as Google Lens, and mobile devices with native support for AR and VR.

AR and VR also improve the online and offline shopping experience, from the pre-purchase phase where people are looking for information, through to purchasing in the store or online, and post-sales services where augmented reality can become an ‘immersive’ assistance service for the user. 

Finally, there’s the Internet of Things (IoT), where consumers can shop through connected devices like smart appliances and smart TVs. 

---

Have you introduced any other contextual commerce services at Cue?  

SL: While it’s still early days for Instagram shopping, the opportunity is massive. We’ll add the new ‘checkout’ feature when it becomes available.

Instagram reports that over 130 million consumers tap on a shopping post to learn more about products each month, up from 90 million in September 2018.

We’ve led the market with digital wallets and will continue to add new options as they become available. Cue was the first brand globally to launch Afterpay in stores and one of the first online. We were also the first fashion brand to accept mobile payment platforms Alipay and WeChat Pay in stores, and now accept ApplePay online. 

Style Finder is another example of how we are making commerce fast and easy. We worked with Alibaba Cloud to become the first Australasian fashion brand to give customers a visual search tool using images uploaded from their phone.

The uptake and response to all the new options has exceeded expectations. And the customers who use these new services are spending more and shopping more frequently.

---

What are the implementation challenges retailers can expect? 

SL: Contextual commerce is all about getting your retail fundamentals right. Make sure your inventory, feeds, connections and data are all in good shape when you're connecting to these upstream platforms. Create a single source of customer data and inventory, and automate as much as possible.

You’ll need to use APIs to expose data and functions and easily plug in and deploy new services, channels and devices. That will let you implement the new payment options and capabilities as soon as they become available.

And you always have to be thinking about how to provide the best customer experience. It’ll require new processes and solutions to manage the end-to-end process, particularly in a complex, multichannel environment, with services like endless aisle, same day delivery, 30 minute click-and-collect and multiple shipping options.

---

What tools or technologies do you recommend?

SL: Fortunately, many of the tools retailers need to create a contextual commerce strategy already exist. The contextual commerce ecosystem ranges from payments across different platforms and new delivery service partnerships through to smart device integrations and geolocation capabilities.

For example, there are conversational commerce platforms (such as Live Person) that can speed up your deployment and ensure you can connect to a growing mesh of customer touchpoints, now and in the future.

---

What’s your advice for retailers wanting to know where to start?

SL: You first need to understand how and where your customers want to shop so that you can give them the tools to engage and transact anytime, anywhere.

Look for where you can seamlessly implement purchase opportunities into your customers’ everyday activities, keeping them on their existing devices and touchpoints as they go about their daily activities.

I suggest you start off by focusing on social and conversational commerce, such as live chat, messenger apps, digital wallets and social media platforms to complete the purchase.

If you start now, you’ll capture incremental customers and revenue, generate conversions in new channels and establish a competitive early mover advantage. 

---

Cue Clothing is a leader in retail innovation. Read the Cue case study to find out how they’re unleashing seamless new services that deliver extraordinary business outcomes.

Subscribe to the Infinity of Things newsletter for more retail insights.

Loyalty case study: how Z is boosting sales and repeat visits with Infinity

Z Energy has been using the Infinity unified commerce platform since 2015 to manage more than 80 million annual sales across 350 Z and Caltex retail sites, as well as in 100 commercial sites.

This case study shares how Z is now using Infinity for its new Pumped loyalty programme to create more compelling offerings for customers, build a competitive advantage and lower customer acquisition and retention costs.

Andy Stewart, Owner of Site Systems Platforms at Z, explains that the launch of Pumped was a huge success: 

“The transaction volume and number of new customers created were unprecedented. Week on week, we have continued to increase our loyalty volume within the Caltex network.”

Dan Coffey, Z’s Marketing Strategy Manager, says that its new  loyalty solution is just the beginning: 

“Infinity is the cornerstone of our future innovation and Pumped has the ability to go much deeper than the first iteration we’ve delivered. We’re looking forward to using our new platform to give our customers valuable rewards that keep them coming back for more.”

A new view on retail process improvement

I recently joined Triquestra as Account and Channel Manager after spending five years with a business process management software company.

Working with customers to simplify their operations and sustain a consistent improvement culture was my goal there. Now I’m looking forward to helping retailers support their processes, culture and innovation mindset with better systems.

---

In this increasingly connected world, it should be getting easier for teams to collaborate, share, and learn from each other, but the reality for many is quite the opposite. A growing problem is operation complexity – having a range of web, in-store and mobile channels, and the desire to reduce duplication and operating costs while increasing efficiency and accuracy. All this can actually make it harder for retailers to innovate and improve.

So how do you simplify operations and sustain a consistent improvement culture across different channel requirements whilst staying competitive?

It is not enough to run improvement initiatives and simply ‘hope’ that changes will be embraced and sustained. The right environment and structure is needed so that people are motivated to participate, and are personally invested in sustaining ongoing change and improvement.

---

3 reasons why Infinity will give you a process improvement edge

1: Simplify your operations with greater visibility

If you’ve had separate databases for your call centre, or your staff couldn’t see what customers were doing on your website, those frustrations can be a thing of the past with Infinity. 

Infinity connects your point of sale, inventory, order, and customer data in one centralised hub so that previous channel limitations or legacy system incompatibilities no longer get in the way.

By giving your team access to consistent information whether they work at head office, in-store or in your distribution centre, you’ll streamline processes, reduce errors and be able to deliver more seamless, accurate customer experiences across all channels.

2: Building that improvement culture

With the building blocks for a strong improvement culture in place, your teams will feel more empowered to collaborate on improvement efforts. Engaged teams armed with the right attitude and tools can do amazing things for your customers and your bottom line.

The Infinity unified commerce platform is very easy to learn. It eliminates pain points and silos for your staff so they get greater enjoyment out of working together and have more time to think about what will surprise and delight your customers. 

3: Continue to innovate quickly

Because Infinity is a mature platform, your teams can focus on delivering innovation because the core functionality they need already exists. Add the access you’ll have to Infinity’s open API environment, and your developers and third parties can act quickly to create and deploy new services, channels and devices with confidence. 

---

Take a closer look at what Infinity can do to improve your retail operations:

It’s the small things that make a big difference in retail

I recently joined Triquestra as Key Account Manager. I have more than 20 years’ experience in sales and marketing across vendor management, business planning, implementing go-to market strategies and partner development. 

My big focus here is customer experience, which got me thinking about what makes me choose one brand over another and how I can help my new clients lead the way in loyalty. 

---

It’s not just what you want to sell but how you want people to feel

I fully believe that it’s the small things that create customer loyalty and keep me, as a consumer, coming back for more.

I was visiting a friend and she served a chipotle mayonnaise that was delicious. After searching in various supermarkets, I was unable to find a bottle. I reached out to my friend who gave me a website to try. I found it and decided to order three bottles while I was at it.

When the package arrived, to my surprise, the fourth compartment held a free bottle of mushroom sauce which was equally as yummy and which I will definitely be purchasing again.

Although a pointed, persuasive sales message is important in winning customers, it is the subtler and smaller appeals that create real loyalty and in turn repeat business. 

Instead of focusing only on what you want to sell, consider how you want people to feel. The customer experience is a critically important driver of emotional connection. An emotionally connected customer will buy more of your products and services, visit you more often, exhibit less price sensitivity, pay more attention to your communications, follow your advice, and recommend you more – everything you hope their experience will cause them to do. 

This emotional connection is something that I have grown to expect. I have a wallet full of loyalty cards and my phone is loaded with apps – some belonging to the clients that I look after here at Triquestra. I am always excited to see personalised offers, redeem my points and be treated in a way that makes me feel valued. 

I make my purchasing decisions based on these good experiences, and in turn, I consciously decide not to shop at companies that don’t make an effort. Multiply me by all the shoppers out there and you see how you have to things right from the start.

---

Building those opportunities to wow

In my conversations with Infinity clients, we talk about optimising the end-to-end customer experience – every aspect of how customers interact with their brands, products, promotions and service offerings, on and offline. I’m looking forward to helping with both the big picture and the little things that will maximise customer value and build that emotional connection. 

If you want to build a better loyalty programme and get closer to your customers, contact us and we’ll work with you to make that goal a reality. You can also find out more about Infinity Loyalty.