What small retailers can learn from Disney about omnichannel strategies

First of all, offering brick-and-mortar, website and digital app options to customers is not omnichannel. This is just a multi-channel approach. A true omnichannel strategy must present an integrated brand message embedded in a clear operational framework, with a consistent user experience across these channels.

Unfortunately, many retailers who have been rushing to get online during the pandemic have become stuck in a siled, multi-channel model, resulting in customer churn and cost inefficiencies across the business.

Disney, on the other hand, provides an example of an organization with an omni strategy at the highest level of sophistication. Disney has a highly responsive website and mobile apps that offer a wide range of features while providing a fully integrated, real-time customer experience at the physical location. This reflects years of research, development and capital investments.

But omnichannel is not only reserved for the large international retailers. Indeed, successful implementation of an omnichannel strategy relies heavily on the key competencies and differentiators that family-owned retailers already possess, such as: B. Knowledge and understanding of their market and customer base.

Steps to Implementing a Robust Omni Strategy

1. The core principles of retail—connecting authentically with customers, instilling trust, and demonstrating enduring value—remain relevant and at the heart of any omnichannel strategy. Therefore, the first step in an omni strategy is to identify the channels, devices, and platforms that your existing customers use on a daily basis. You also need to gain insights into how they interact with them, their preferences, their experiences, and their pain points.

2. Create a set of customer personas and the journeys they take when interacting with your company. This includes identifying customers (both in-store and online) with the highest lifetime value and the common traits they share. The modern customer journey has five touchpoints: Awareness, Findability/Accessibility, Reputation, Conversion and Experience.

The diversity of these elements ranges from TV/print advertising, search engines, GPS, social media, influencers, mobile usability, in-store salespeople and after-sales service. These are all elements that allow the customer to interact with a company or brand.

While time-consuming and granular, creating consistency of messages and experiences in these areas is key to a successful strategy.

3. The above fundamentals enable a focused, streamlined approach to underpin the most important phase of the strategy – the seamless integration of all touchpoints, both digital and physical. To unify all channels, you need to track the customer shopping experience across all touchpoints and understand that they are connected.

From reading online, to in-store, to visiting the physical store, to making a purchase on the mobile app—regardless of the order of such events, it is critical to ensure the user experience remains consistent throughout.

Delivering this integration understandably requires an overhaul of existing management information systems for many operators and identifying and deploying the technological support that best suits them.

However, investments in technology need to be nurtured to thrive. Appropriate staff buy-in, cross-departmental collaboration, and cross-functional cohesion are key factors in making it work.

4. The development of an omnichannel strategy and the associated integration of technology systems can sometimes distract from the core function of customer service development.

Numerous studies have found that the number one reason consumers switch retailers is not related to the product, price or technology, but to the level of service. An omni strategy must therefore enable a customer model based on convenience, consistency, relevance and agility. These are the core elements of a highly functional service environment that meets its true goals and maximizes return on investment.

5. The performance measurement scorecard should reflect the breadth and scope of the Omni strategy across the organization. It should consist of five main pillars: Revenue Growth/Retention, Margin Development, Cost Management, Customer Satisfaction/Net Promoter Score, and Employee Engagement. Incoherent, underdeveloped implementation of the strategy will only be captured if a broad impact assessment is consistently conducted.

For retailers taking their first steps, this means integrating all physical stores with their online portal. Now when a customer orders a product, the order is no longer fulfilled from a central warehouse, but if the retailer has a physical store within 50 km of the customer’s address, the order is fulfilled from that store instead.

This reduces delivery times, fuel costs/carbon footprint and creates a better customer experience. Expect more retailers to use their physical stores as “micro-fulfillment hubs,” with the in-store and online strands acting together.

Effective omnichannel is not possible without channel mastery and competence across the organization – not just sales and marketing, but also commerce, purchasing, customer experience, innovation, IT, store design, human resources and finance functions.

When implementing omnichannel, proper skillset training that not only teaches the how, but also the why of the strategy is essential.

In the rush to implement digital transformation, companies too often end up with fragmented management systems and incompatible technologies. An omni strategy is only successful if a true end-to-end approach is followed

Owen Clifford is Head of Retail Sector at Bank of Ireland