For years retailers have made positive noises about achieving true unified commerce but have dragged their heels when it comes to actually making a change. COVID-19 has forced the hand of retailers across the globe and the race is now on to create seamless in-store and online experiences for their customers.
Digital channels are booming, as is the number of customers engaging with brands through digital channels. However, getting digital wrong is a surefire way to erode customer trust.
Poor ecommerce experiences - like cumbersome return policies and long delivery times - can swiftly lead to customers abandoning brands in search of something else.
It further highlights the importance of building and establishing digital trust. Technology can transform your business, and can be welcomed with open arms, but it has to give confidence to your consumers, enhance the experience you give them, and benefit the business.
Here’s three ways you can build trust and transform your CX with better technology and digitalization:
1. Purpose, Functionality & Performance
Investing in technology simply for the sake of it is a recipe for disaster. As a starting point, identify what problems you want new technology to solve. For example, if you can’t accept online returns in your physical stores then investing in a unified commerce platform will instantly solve this.
Once you’ve established a purpose, you need to make sure the tech you’re investing in has the functionality you need and everything works all of the time. Complex tech should still be simple to use. Whether it’s your managers or your employees using the solution, it should be intuitive, easy to understand, and require little to no training.
From a customer’s perspective, watching your associates struggle to operate a POS system, for example, will set alarm bells ringing and create a poor experience.
This is why Sitoo has an intuitive interface requiring little to no training - your associates pick it up and it works. Traditional POS processes, and even complex tasks like receiving inventory are made simple and fast. Everything from clienteling to checking inventory availability across all sales channels in real-time is handled through the same POS app, enhancing the experience for both shoppers and store associates.
What’s more, one of the major advantages with Sitoo is that the longer you use our solution the better it becomes. In ten years the technology will not be ten years old - it will automatically be ten years better. There is only one version and new features and new functionality are made available for everyone with SaaS. Development is driven together with retailers and the solution evolves with any advances in retail technology.
It’s this kind of technology you should be looking for to build trust and transform your CX.
2. Unified Commerce
Almost all in-store commerce now begins online – with customers looking up products and stores, viewing stock status and buying or reserving products. This means, as a retailer, you need to make sure all sales channels act in unison by being connected in real-time.
Your customers won’t understand the intricacies of your warehousing, fulfillment centres, and inventory management. As far as they’re concerned, there is only one view. And they expect consistency across all your different touchpoints - another vital component in building consumer trust.
While omnichannel retail sees all sales channels connected, unified commerce goes a step further by integrating all channels and backend systems in real-time.
Investing in technology that gives you true unified commerce will help you deliver better experiences to your customers (across all channels) and to give them what they need, when they need it.
The result? Increased trust and loyalty with a strong likelihood of repeat business, recommendations, and positive reviews.
3. Awesome Associates
In-person, human-to-human experiences are perfect for building trust. And while digital experiences should strive to instill the same feelings in your customers, technology can also greatly improve the experience your associates give to your customers.
From tech that reduces time spent on admin through to advanced clienteling, digitalization can make your associates even more awesome than they are already.
Take a cloud-native point of sale as an example. It becomes a ‘point of service’ when it empowers your store associates to deliver an ‘above and beyond’ customer experience - which they can do when they have access to real-time data across all sales channels. With assisted selling, omnichannel fulfillment and in-store inventory management in the same app, you streamline the in-store experience for your customers and associates. Both the employee experience and your customer experience are enhanced and it’s the perfect example of technology being the catalyst to building lasting trust and brilliant relationships.
By making trust a priority - and using technology and digitalization as the tools to do it - you’ll turn your customers into brand champions and lay the groundwork for having a thriving, successful business both now and in the future.
If you’d like to learn more about the benefits of a unified commerce platform and a cloud-native POS we’d love to speak to you.
