Enhancing Customer and Omnichannel Buying Experience has become table stakes for Retail Industry!
Let me tell you about a recent retail experience and what it could have been. Spring is in the air and outdoor youth sports seasons are ramping up and families are starting to take advantage of nice, warming weather. It’s Friday night and we have a get together with some neighbors in an hour. My son needs turf cleats for upcoming baseball game on Sunday, so I log into a national sports chain App like I do for most of my boys’ sporting goods needs. And for this purchase, I had a 20% discount promotion through our Youth Sports Organization for local store locations in our area for the weekend. I am assuming I will be able to log in, find one that my son wants, in correct size (not always the easiest as many parents with young kids can attest), order it on-line and pick it up through curbside on Saturday, in time for Sunday’s game and then we can head to the party.
Surprisingly, first part was quick. I was able to find one that my son wants (same one as one of his teammates) but there is only one pair available in the area in his size. I quickly add it to cart and move on to checkout, but 20% discount promotion does not work through the App. At this point, I am thinking, do I just order it without the discount ($20 difference) and pick it up tomorrow or go to the store and pay for it there where I know it works based on previous year. The store is only 15 minutes away and fearing others may be looking for same shoes (turf cleats are much more limited), we decide to head to the store. When we arrive at the store, it’s pretty busy as many families are gearing up for various sports. We head to the shoes area but we cannot find the shoes. All the sales associates are tied up so we circle the entire, large shoes area couple times to make sure we didn’t miss it but cannot find it. Really, we don’t see any turf baseball cleats for youth at all. At this point, we’re about to be late to the party but going home empty handed for a 9-year-old is bigger challenge, especially without guarantee of having them by Sunday. My son and I discuss walking over to a national sporting shoes store nearby (yes, we’re at a mall and some do still exist!). As we’re walking out, I spot a sales associate not with a customer. I inquire about the shoes, and he pulls out his handheld device to look it up. I lean in to look at his device and it looks like the App and shows that they have 1 in stock. He goes to the back and finds it and my 9-year-old is a happy camper! But we’re now late to the party.
On the drive to the party (late), being in technology industry with a problem-solving mindset, I couldn’t help but think about how easily my experience could have been better. Why did the promotion not work in the App when it works at the store? Surely, they have mastered location / store data and it should be easy to have promotions that only work at certain stores, even when ordering through the App. It’s merely relating the store location data to promotion data. Taking it a step further, I thought, wouldn’t it be great if the store knew I was there (I did have the App still open) and proactively popped up a message / alert through the app to see if I wanted the shoes that was in App Checkout Cart?
The moral of the story is that most large retail companies have various, automated systems and some integration between those systems. There are many mature solutions out on the market, including Informatica Data Management Cloud (IDMC), that facilitate integration of all systems for right, mastered and clean data to be available at the right time that can be leveraged to improve Customer and Omnichannel Buying experiences today. Those companies that lead the charge and adopt early will grab market share and customer loyalty.
Posted by PDI Marketing Team
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