The modern shopper expects to be able to shop at any time, from anywhere on any device, and have the experience be seamless.

According to Forrester, 60% of shoppers interact with brands they like across multiple channels. However, Zendesk reports that 87% of shoppers think brands need to put more effort into providing a seamless experience.

This seamless channel to channel experience is called omni-channel, and is a concept that we, at Unata, believe is 100% necessary to thrive as a retailer today.

Although implementing an omni-channel experience might feel daunting for many retailers, we believe it can be simply achieved by:

  1. Unified Customer View: Having access to both historical and real-time shopper data, i.e. what they have browsed, added to their list, purchased in-store, purchase online, reviewed, on what channels, at what time.
  2. Unified Customer Login: Aggregating and connecting siloed customer experiences — i.e. eCommerce, loyalty program, eCircular — in order to create a unified login and enable the unified view of each individual customer.
  3. Digital Experience with Support for 1-to-1: Enabling a digital experience that can deliver an “individual conversation” – content delivered at user/account level so that it can be consistent across devices.

Looking at the three simple steps above, we believe that grocery retailers are in a particularly advantageous position to be able to deliver on this today. Here are 3 reasons why:

1. You have way more opportunities to collect shopper data.

  • Your customers shop with you on a weekly basis, buying dozens of items at each shop
  • Due to the frequency and scale of their shops with you, they are much more likely to use your loyalty program in order to redeem rewards and save
  • They are also much more likely to use your app (if you have one) to browse, explore offers and create lists

2. Chances are, you already have an easy way to connect all of this data to a single user profile.

  • Chances are, you have some form of customer identification program (i.e. loyalty program) or the technology and POS systems to support one
  • These programs provide you with a unique ID for each shopper, allowing you to build a unified view for each shopper. If you don’t yet have one, setting one up can be easily done via a mobile experience, and grocery customers love loyalty programs (see reason #3)
  • You can build your digital experience whereby your shoppers log in with the same shopper ID #. Then, you can connect all shopper activity (online and offline) back to that ID, creating that rich user profile for each shopper
  • You can leverage that profile of each customer to engage 1-on-1 with them whenever and wherever they shop with you, providing that seamless experience they expect

3. You have more reasons to encourage your shopper to self identify.

Whether using your website, app, e-loyalty program or e-circulars, your shoppers are happy to identify themselves doing so.

This is because:

  1. A big % of your shoppers’ spend is on grocery. They want a way to save money and will happily identify themselves in order to redeem personalized offers and specials, collect rewards, and more.
  2. You can make one of their weekly activities more convenient: Your shoppers want ways to make the process faster and more convenient, and will sign into your website or app to do things like make lists more quickly based on past purchases, order for pick-up, order for delivery, and more.

In general, implementing a 1-to-1 omni-channel experience that meets the needs of the modern shopper can feel challenging and big.

However, as a grocery retailer, you are in a far better position than other retailers to be start the transition and be successful. So put away those mental roadblocks and get started today!

To learn more about how to create an omni-channel experience for your customers, call us at 437-836-3082.


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