If you’ve been following the newest ecommerce trends and retail consumer research, you may have come across the term “omnichannel.” But what does that mean exactly? Omnichannel commerce is a strategy that seeks to provide a uniform experience for customers across several channels. In fact, it is so powerful that all of the major retailers use it.

This article will teach you everything you need to know about retail omnichannel and omnichannel commerce and how its relates to voice commerce.

In ecommerce and retail, omnichannel refers to a business strategy that strives to give a consistent shopping experience across all channels, such as in-store, mobile, and online.

That could mean offering the same inventory, price, and promotions across all channels, or it could mean giving a customized experience based on how people interact with your business.

For example, you may have a website, an app, and a physical store, and you want each experience to be consistent with the others. You may also want clients to be able to switch channels without having any difficulties. A customer can begin looking online and decide to pick up the item in-store. Once in-store, the associate could recommend additional items to complement the online buy, increasing the average order value.

Furthermore, firms who use an omnichannel strategy frequently do so to give a better consumer experience. According to research, omnichannel consumers are the most loyal and profitable for retailers.

Consumers are more connected than ever before, and they expect businesses to meet them wherever they are. You’re more likely to establish loyalty and retain customers if you can give a uniform, smooth experience across all channels.

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to how omnichannel works, as the strategy can be implemented in a variety of ways. However, some general principles apply to all implementations.

First, businesses need to have a strong understanding of their customers’ needs and behaviors. They also need to have the technology in place to support multiple channels, and they need to be able to track data across those channels.

Second, businesses need the resources to manage all aspects of an omnichannel strategy. This means having a team in place that can coordinate efforts across channels and ensure that everyone is on the same page.

Last, businesses need to be prepared to evolve their omnichannel strategy constantly. As customer needs and behaviors change, companies need to be able to change with them. That means being open to new ideas, trying new things, and making adjustments as necessary. In fact, many retailers are rethinking omnichannel retail performance metrics.

What is Voice Commerce?

At its heart, voice commerce is any purchase or shopping decision that leverages voice-enabled technology. It allows consumers to use their natural language when interacting with digital assistants or smart speakers, such as Amazon’s Alexa or Google Assistant. This makes voice commerce a profoundly intuitive and convenient way to browse, purchase, and manage products and services.

With the growth of virtual assistants and AI-driven speech recognition, voice commerce enables users to inquire about product details, place orders, track deliveries, and perform various e-commerce activities, all through spoken commands.

The emerging v-commerce trend is actively reshaping how customers engage with brands, offering a hands-free, seamless shopping experience that holds immense potential for the future of online retail.

What are some examples of voice commerce?

Any time a customer uses a voice command to engage with brands or manage a purchase online, we see voice commerce in action, including:

• Using an Alexa-enabled Echo device to order products from the Amazon online marketplace
• Adding a product to an online shopping cart through Google Assistant
• Using a mobile interactive assistant to interact with the bank’s app through voice commands

How does voice commerce work?

Here are the required elements that make voice commerce possible.

• Voice-enabled devices

First, voice commerce requires a voice-enabled device. This can be a smart speaker, smartphone, or tablet equipped with a built-in virtual assistant, like Alexa, Siri, or Google Assistant. These virtual assistants use natural language processing (NLP) and voice recognition technology to accurately interpret and respond to users’ spoken requests.

• Integrated product and service catalogs

Second, e-commerce platforms and businesses must integrate their product catalogs and services with voice commerce technology. Companies must ensure their content and product data is up to date and voice-optimized before offering secure, voice-enabled payment options. 

• Automated payments 

Finally, voice commerce requires automated payments. Businesses need to be able to conduct transactions on behalf of the customers securely once customers provide their card details and authorize it as their preferred payment method on the site.   

What Is Omnichannel Retail?

A effective omnichannel retail strategy combines customer engagement and operational solutions ranging from e-commerce platforms to in-store digital signage, kiosks, mobile device-enabled interactions, and point of sale (POS) systems. Intel® technologies provide as a basis for data collection, storage, sharing, and analysis across all channels. As a result, merchants and brands can gain better business insights and provide individualized purchase experiences that increase customer preference and loyalty.

Read Also: Voice Commerce for Small Businesses: Opportunities and Challenges

Omnichannel retail is a technique in which retailers interact with customers across many digital and physical touchpoints. Customers travel between these channels, and so do applications and data. This ensures a consistent, on-brand experience from beginning to end. With this insight, large businesses are now utilizing an omnichannel store as a media strategy, as well as other experiences within a brick-and-mortar site, to increase their reach, exposure, and influence with their consumer audiences.

When today’s customers shop, they use everything from traditional brick-and-mortar stores to websites to social media to mobile apps. Customers expect connected journeys, and 76 percent of customers expect consistent interactions across departments. Customers also expect the omnichannel retail process to address product delivery options, including curbside pickups, lockers, buying online and picking up in-store (BOPIS), and all other touchpoints in their relationship with a retailer.

With an integrated omnichannel strategy, retailers can provide hyper-convenient, personalized shopping experiences at every point in the customer journey—whether that customer is shopping online, via their mobile device, or in a store. The idea behind omnichannel retail is to create frictionless and personalized customer experiences at the exact moment of relevance.

Creating a better experience for customers across all channels, in turn, fosters greater satisfaction and loyalty, as well as additional benefits for the businesses themselves. By analyzing the customer journey, retailers can improve their strategies around marketing, merchandising, loyalty programs, and inventory management, and they can dedicate resources where they will matter most to meet their customers’ fast-changing expectations.

Major Benefits
Customers spend more.	Customers are willing to pay more for the omnichannel experience—as much as an additional 18 percent.
Customers are more loyal.	Seventy-five percent of US consumers are more likely to be loyal to a brand that delivers a personalized customer experience.
Brand focus grows stronger.	Multiple digital touchpoints create a stronger brand experience and more meaningful customer service. Customers receive the right message at the right time, in the context of a consistent brand experience.
Improved inventory visibility.	Retailers can see inventory stock levels per location in real time, which also helps monitor potential shrinkage.
Better understanding of customers.	Using data analytics effectively enables retailers to better understand their online and in-store customers’ wants, needs, and preferences.

Omnichannel Retail Strategy

A unified omnichannel retail strategy ensures a uniform brand experience and accurate information at all touchpoints. Wherever possible, experiences are incorporated into the customer’s activity through other channels.

For example, a customer might see an online promotion, log in to a brand’s app to view their loyalty rewards status, place an order, then go to retrieve their purchase from a secure locker. The customer’s information would be retained throughout the process for a seamless shopping experience across all channels.

Alternately, a customer could do an online search and save items to a future purchase wish list. At a later date, that customer could go into the store or online purchase portal, retrieve their wish list, and buy those items using loyalty rewards points toward their purchase. Once purchased, the stock level in the supporting inventory management system and the customer’s purchase history record will be updated.

With this data available in near-real-time, the retailer would have an accurate picture of available inventory as well as valuable insights into customer behavior. The customer experience is seamlessly integrated and branded at all touchpoints for consistency. And the physical store becomes integrated with a digital experience from both the customer and data analytics perspective.

A well-executed omnichannel strategy will eliminate confusing experiences that disappoint customers. For example, a customer could check the availability of a popular item on the phone, see it is available at the nearest store, and have confidence it will be in stock when they arrive for pickup.

Designing the Strategy

An effective omnichannel strategy is a continuous journey that is carefully curated to maximize linkages between multiple data points from consumer-facing technologies, back-of-house operational systems, and supporting technology infrastructure in order to provide a seamless customer experience. Customers and retailers gain from the ability to share data across a unified ecosystem.

Businesses can provide targeted sales recommendations, confirm customer account information from any source where the consumer has previously supplied it, and improve the customer experience during the transaction, whether it is conducted online, at a kiosk, or on a personal device.

With the introduction of in-store edge-enabled gadgets and technology, such as edge computing and artificial intelligence (AI), businesses may now access near-real-time customer information. They also gain an extra layer of data protection by processing data locally at the edge rather than sending it to a centralized data center, putting less data at risk in a single transaction.

With intelligence from edge to cloud, retailers can use insights from deeper customer and merchandising data analytics to better understand long-term trends, create targeted campaigns, and forecast the future.

Together, these integrated technology solutions enable not only the omnichannel experience but also its seamlessness.

Optimizing consumer engagement and experiences across channels is a continuous process. Customers want ease, so digital experiences must have smooth transitions and integrate seamlessly with in-store processes.

Given recent shifts in consumer behavior, shoppers may anticipate convenience to include not having to visit a store. If customers do need to visit a store, they will want a compelling cause, such as an experience that cannot be obtained online or that begins online and ends at the actual place. As a result, merchants will need to provide distinctive, thoughtful purchasing experiences that cater to their customers’ interests and needs.

For example, imagine a customer using a mobile device to search for or purchase a product. The data from that buying journey or purchase gets transmitted to the business’s systems that look for trends, patterns, behaviors, and product updates. The brand’s sales representative can then access and use the information derived from that data in near-real time, through point of sale (POS) systems or other enabled devices, to provide that customer with personalized upsells or promotions. Even more, retailers can use the data analytics to see buying trends, track product performance, and update sales strategies and marketing campaigns.

Opportunities for frictionless customer experiences are becoming commonplace:

• A customer can buy a product online or from a mobile device and easily pick it up in the store, curbside, or from a locker.
• An item placed in an online shopping cart will appear in the customer’s mobile app and in in-store platforms, such as POS or sales assist systems.
• A customer can use a mobile app or self-service kiosk to find an item in the store. If it’s not available at that location, the customer has the ability to easily find and order it from another store. By sharing insights across the cloud from multiple stores, the second store can not only respond locally to larger system-wide trends but also have the item pulled from inventory and ready for pickup when the customer arrives.
• When a customer is returning an item, the POS system will accept a proof of purchase from any channel using the customer’s membership details or credit card.

Omnichannel retail requires a cohesive, 360-degree experience in store, curbside, and online. Social commerce will become a more significant strategy using, for example, livestream videos that promote in-store-only deals.

Curated products that forecast as popular based on customer buying data will become a focal point in future marketing campaigns that drive demand. Suggestive selling will be customized based on integrated insights from consumer information.