Ruth P. Stevens Articles and Columns: IM Press (Interactive Marketing Press)

Online/offline integration: What retailers are doing to provide a seamless customer experience across channels

From a customer's point of view, a brand is a brand. Whether they interact with a re-tailer online or offline, customers expect that their experience with the brand will be the same through any channel—the store, the website, the telephone, the catalog.

But retailers are still figuring out how to deliver a seamless customer experience online and offline. This is understandable—the Internet only arrived as a sales channel in the last decade.

The integration problem stems from a variety of factors:

Technology. Early e-commerce systems were built to stand alone. So, for example, an online purchase could not be returned at the store—the inventory systems didn't speak to each other.
Politics. The Internet developers and managers were housed in a separate department, and rewarded on web-based sales. No wonder they were not motivated to think about the entire picture from the customer's perspective.
Culture. Internet marketing has been a tech-y kind of thing, with little cultural connection to the traditional merchants who run the show in retail companies.

But it's now essential to get integration right. Not only because customers expect it, but also because multi-channel buyers are in fact the most valuable customers. retailers need to do everything they can to satisfy this segment.

Retailers are experimenting with a number of exciting new strategies, among them:

Integration of inventory systems. Nordstrom has launched a project to connect its store, catalog and e-commerce inventory. This gigantic initiative will cost the store an estimated $150 million in IT infrastructure upgrades, and take 3 years to complete. But it's essential to the brand's objective of lifting web-channel sales to $1 billion per year within the next 6 years. The inventory integration system will give inventory and merchandise managers a full view across all three sales channels, allowing them to allocate and re-order product effectively. Also, sales reps will be able to retrieve products from any channel to fulfill a customer need.

Cross-media integrated marketing. When communications are coordinated, and working together across channels, each message builds on the other, and each channel makes the other stronger. For example, traditionally single-channel e-tailers like Amazon, Red Envelope and eBags have recently launched print catalogs. Forrester Research found that 39% of multi-channel retailers have increased the number of customer segments receiving catalogs. Backcountry.com, an e-tailer of outdoor gear, uses its catalog as a reactivation tool, to attract dormant customers back to its website.

Integrating web sales with telemarketing. High-ticket considered purchases can be tough to close online, so adding a phone call can improve sales conversion rates dramatically. BuyAPuttingGreen.com, whose prices begin at $669, knew that a rep could answer customer questions but didn't want to make the site visitor take the initiative, so they installed software from Jaduka that pops up a box asking for the phone number, and the call center rep makes the outbound phone contact on the spot.

In-store pick-up of online purchases. Wal-Mart is piloting a project called Site to Store that allows customer to buy online and have their products shipped for free to 750 stores in 12 states, a real convenience for heavy Wal-Mart users who are already visiting the store on a weekly basis anyway. The Ace Hardware chain has a similar program in place, and 70% of its online orders are now fulfilled through their MyLocalAce store pickup service.

Multi-channel metrics. As multi-channel management takes off, retailers also need to move away from channel-specific P&L management strategies, says the customer experience gurus Don Peppers and Martha Rogers. "A multi-channel P&L will provide an enterprise-wide assessment of your marketing efforts, and the data behind such a P&L will reveal a complete picture of your customers' preferences and buying patterns," they recommend.

Bringing the store to the customer. As more shoppers spend more time online, retailers are experimenting with techniques for making the store content available via not only e-commerce but also through their mobile phones. An Adidas shoe store in Las Vegas sent an alert about a special NBA promotion and sold out the stock of 200 pairs of shoes within an hour. They were then pleased to see store sales rise 25% over the rest of the weekend.

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