Article

Survey: Retailers unsatisfied with cross-channel abilities

Only 21 percent of retailers are satisfied with their ability to deliver across channels.

July 4, 2011

This commentary is provided by John Stelzer, global retail executive, Sterling Commerce.

For retailers, tomorrow's commerce winners will deliver a smarter commerce experience – one that takes customer-centricity to a new level – creating the ultimate in cross-channel brand intimacy.

Smarter commerce is all about redefining the customer/brand relationship in the age of the empowered customer, where social commerce and mobile commerce have created a paradigm shift. But how well-prepared are retailers to deliver this seamless, brand experience?

We recently commissioned an independent survey of retailers to answer this question. The findings demonstrated several significant gaps between what consumers expect and what retailers are currently delivering.

The survey, conducted by Edge Research, investigated the business concerns of 297 retail IT decision-makers in December 2010. It found that most retailers are not satisfied with their ability to meet customer expectations for a seamless cross-channel brand experience. For example, when asked how satisfied they were with their ability to provide a positive retail experience:

• 39 percent were very satisfied with their abilities in physical locations.
• 35 percent were very satisfied with their abilities through their ecommerce operations over the Internet.
• 31 percent were very satisfied with their abilities over the phone.
• But, only 21 percent were satisfied with their ability to deliver cross-channel capabilities

The survey also compared retailer preparedness with consumer expectations identified in an independent survey of 3,600 U.S. consumers conducted late last year. Findings included:

• While 85 percent of consumers say they expect a seamless brand experience across all channels, only 1 in 10 retailers feel they currently excel at cross-channel execution, with 6 out of 10 retailers claiming they cannot yet provide cross-channel order history.
• While 87 percent of consumers say they expect retailers to be able to track an order via any channel, only 46 percent of retailers offer this capability.

A critical first step for establishing brand intimacy is to maintain a single, cross-channel customer purchase history. In the consumer survey, 53 percent of respondents expected retailers to deliver this capability, but only 40 percent of retailers currently offer it.

For more insight into consumer shopping habits, Coremetrics, an IBM company, recently released its fourth annual Online Retail Holiday Readiness Report. The report provides an in-depth analysis of key trends in online shopping and usage based on data from more than 500 leading U.S. retailers. Key findings include:

• Mobile devices are increasingly being used for online shopping. In the last 6 months (November 2010 – April 2011), sales through the mobile channel as a percent of total site sales nearly doubled to represent 6.5 percent of overall online sales.
• Mobile visitors are also less engaged...often viewing fewer pages, spending less time on a site, and having a lower conversion rate and a higher bounce rate. This reinforces the need for retailers to integrate and optimize the mobile channel just like any other shopping channel they offer.
• Creating a personalized brand experience across all the channels is key. And, one way to demonstrate that cross-channel finesse is to offer consumers personalized product recommendations based on their entire purchase history (regardless of channel). Data shows that making smart product recommendations can net retailers an additional 10 percent or more in total site sales.

Overall, these findings point to the fact that consumers are more empowered than ever before. And, with each new channel that links them to the brands they love, their expectations increase. They expect a seamless cross-channel brand experience. And, retailers are racing to respond to that expectation. Even the majority of those retailers claiming to have at least some cross-channel capabilities are not satisfied with their efforts to date and are planning to increase their investments in this space.

In fact, 84 percent of those cross-channel-capable retailers surveyed have placed a medium or high priority on improving their cross-channel capabilities this year.

Said differently, if you're a multi-channel retailer but not already providing – or preparing to provide – cross-channel capabilities to your customers, you are about to fall very far behind.

(Photo by centralasian.)