Today’s customers want to be able to shop how and when they want, whether online or in stores. Adapting your business around this changing pattern in behaviour is becoming essential for retailers and those most successful will be the businesses actively personalising the shopping experience across channels and catering for increasingly flexible shopping habits.
As major retailers appreciate the need for this approach, many are now putting a multi-channel strategy at the heart of their proposition to enhance customer experiences and build relationships. However, there is still more to be done around engaging with and harnessing the customer data produced to achieve real business value.
Understanding who customers are, what they want and how and where they want it has become perhaps the biggest challenge that retailers face, and they must ensure their data architecture, business processes and people are in the right place.
Embracing multi-channel
Our review of the most recent annual reports of top bricks and mortar retailers including John Lewis, Marks & Spencer, Home Retail Group and Alliance Boots found that although they are widely focussed on expanding a multi-channel experience for customers, in many cases no broad explanation was given around the business value of the data.
The research was measured by analysing the reports for mentions of data usage within business to gain insight into how effective retailers currently are at interacting with customers through different channels.
The review found that Marks & Spencer, Dixons Retail and Home Retail Group are leading the way when it comes to improving the multi-channel experience and increasing levels of customer engagement across the business.
Translating the metrics
While the research found there is an increasing amount of information around metrics, these are generally figures such as consumer satisfaction statistics or social media likes, from which it is difficult to gauge the actual business value. Achieving millions of Facebook fans might highlight the popularity of a brand and a notable level of engagement with customers, but the measure of its value to the business and progression is less clear.
According to the review retailers with loyalty schemes such as Homebase (Home Retail Group) also focused more on customer behaviour data and how the organisation processed this to boost sales. This is a lead that should be taken by all retailers with the data they now have available to them, whether they run loyalty schemes or not.
Channel the data, uncover the business value
Data is an extremely valuable asset for retailers and can open up a wealth of opportunities; however it is not a real focus in many of the annual reports reviewed. Retailers might be considering how to harness this information to generate value but the research highlights they are still trying to grasp how to make it work best for the business, particularly when it comes to combining and comparing a range of different figures.
They must now focus on extracting the information from their data that will complement a multi-channel approach, support their business strategy going forwards, build lasting relationships with their customers and enhance their retail offering.
Many retailers are still viewing data in silos, therefore while it’s encouraging to see a push towards multi-channel approaches, retailers may still be struggling to process the large amounts of customer data produced to maximise business value.
