Channel Consistency for Better Customer Experiences

7th December 2017

Channel consistency is an essential part of any successful customer experience. By analyzing not only your current arrangement but by also having a clear idea of where you want your brand to go, you can create a consistent image and experience that will keep your customers coming back.

Customer experience. It’s a phrase that almost everyone hears on what is starting to seem like a daily basis – and it’s not going to go away anytime soon either. According to a study by Gartner, 89% of companies surveyed planned to compete primarily on the basis of customer experience, so it’s clear that if you’re not working behind the idea of customer experience, you’re missing out.

Though there are many things that go into an effective customer experience strategy, having consistency between your different channels (digital and physical) is the foundation that you’ll need, to create a truly immersive and positive experience down the line. In this post, we’re looking at how to achieve consistency in your retail business across the many channels and formats that are increasingly available to today’s customer.

Achieving Customer Channel Consistency

• The first thing you need to do is view your retail business from the customer’s perspective. Take the time to go through each different channel in as many different formats as possible. Try the buying experience. See what makes sense and where it struggles. And of course, listen to your customers! You can do so passively through surveys over email or text. Remember, every customer can teach you something and by understanding them, you’re much more likely to create an experience that not only is pleasant but can be maintained across channels.
• Once you know who your customer is and what they expect, it’s time to look at your mission statement. It should be clear and in conjunction with your newly-collected customer data and be the basis for every customer interaction that you have. This can be used to distinguish your voice so that you can stand out from the crowd and have a brand that reflects this. It can also help you to create an effective and memorable branding strategy across all of your different locations.
• Stick to your plan!

How Can I Support This?

All of these things sound well and good, but how can we practically apply them to our practices? For many retailers, an ERP can be the perfect solution to this problem. Some ways that an ERP can help support a consistent customer experience include:

• Product and stock consistency and availability. It may seem like a given, but if you don’t have the same high-quality products available in all of your different locations, it is quite literally the opposite of consistent. An ERP can support this by actively ‘learning’ and ensuring that the right stock goes to the right places at the right time – based on data collected from all departments, not just sales
• Data availability for employees. Having the right customer information available in a single dashboard is essential for effective and consistent employees. No customer enjoys telling the same story 10 times to 10 different people, so by having a CRM solution that allows for real time updates based on input customer information, your employees can all provide the same high level of service – no matter if it’s online, over the phone, or in-store.
• Retail app experience. If you have an app, it must not only be synchronized with your other e-commerce and physical efforts to ensure stock availability, it must have the same look and feel as your other

Managing it all from a single place. One of the most useful features of an ERP is that it centralizes your channel management. When all information is centralized and so is its management, it’s much easier to be sure that all changes get applied across all locations and that the different ‘pieces’ come together seamlessly. Not to mention the increased opportunities to see patterns and make better decisions based on them.

Conclusion

Channel consistency is an essential part of any successful customer experience. By analyzing not only your current arrangement but by also having a clear idea of where you want your brand to go, you can create a consistent image and experience that will keep your customers coming back. An ERP can be a great way to support this by helping you collect accurate data and to create customer experiences that can be replicated and automated as much as possible.

Know that you need to improve your customer experience but aren’t really sure where or how to get started? Let us help! Write to us at marketing@levtechconsulting.com for your complimentary consultation.