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The frictionless future of commerce: Getting ahead of evolving customer expectations

It’s never been harder to satisfy retail customers, but companies can still thrive if they make a company-wide commitment to frictionless customer interactions

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I was chatting recently with a CXO of a major retailer about how much has changed over the past decade for clients like them. I know we all thought customer expectations were high back then, but wow, have things changed. I was saying how happy I was when something I ordered online arrived a week later; now I get antsy if my tracked food delivery doesn’t show up in 20 minutes, or turns a wrong corner along the way.

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The reality is that customer expectations have changed for every part of the online buying process. People expect a product they search for to be easily findable, in stock, and in the color and size they want. They also want it delivered to them within a day or two, or available for in-store pickup within hours. Returns should be seamless, with a quick printable QR-coded label to be dropped off minutes from their house.

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To consistently meet these expectations, retailers are evolving from a siloed view towards each component of their ecosystem to a cohesive approach to completely digitally transforming their businesses. As we’ve worked with hundreds of retailers, branded manufacturers and distributors on these projects, we’ve discovered that the key to a successful digital transformation is to understand and eliminate every potential point of friction that customers may face along the path to buying a product.

We call this state of seamless interaction with customers, “frictionless commerce.”

These sources of friction include finding an item on a website, placing it in your cart only to be notified that it’s out of stock at checkout, or even after an order has been processed. It can mean that the item is available at a store across the country, but that it’s not available for pick-up at the store around the corner. Friction might be that the ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ option available on a competitor’s website isn’t available on your website, causing the customer to make that purchase elsewhere. It can mean that a shirt that doesn’t fit can’t be returned or exchanged at a local store.

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Customers today expect that every purchase from every store is as frictionless as what they find from (ahem) the world’s largest online retailer.

To achieve this experience of frictionless commerce, we believe retailers must continue to transform across three areas: commerce, data management, and supply chain. And we’ve learned that this transformation will only be achieved if it is approached holistically. With almost endless competition and fast evolving technology, this ongoing state of transformation is no longer an option, it must be built into any retailer’s strategy and digital structure.

At Pivotree, in fact, we’ve transformed ourselves around this belief.

We’ve created integrated teams with expertise in all three of those areas because our clients are best served by making sure data is available to drive better decision making across the organization based on real-time information.

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We’re constantly thinking about data because all digital transformation begins with ensuring a company’s data is consistent, available in real-time, and accessible by everyone in the organization who needs it, in the location where they need it.  If these data flows are broken, the customer experience will be broken.

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If you’ve ever ordered a product and received an email the next day apologizing that it’s no longer in stock, that’s a data issue.  If you’ve expected a delivery to arrive on a certain date, and you’re notified after that date that the product won’t arrive on time, that’s a data issue.  Brands cannot create a consistent, frictionless experience without clean, clear, consistent, and accurate data available to empower every customer touchpoint.

We also know that supply chain optimization continues to be an area of focus for all retailers, so we weren’t surprised to read in a recent survey that 85 percent of Canadian retail executives expected to invest more in supply chain automation and inventory management solutions in 2022. Retailers must proactively address new trends in the market for customers, such as buying online and picking up (or returning) in store, curbside pickup, and even faster delivery options than ever before. To offer these frictionless experiences, retailers must ensure that supply chain operations run seamlessly, nonstop – and this, too, requires data to be reliable and available across every step of the supply chain.

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Finally, brands need to adopt new technologies to meet these ever-changing customer requirements.  There’s been lots of talk in the commerce world about a shift to what’s been called “headless” online selling platforms.  Headless refers to separating the part of the website that the customer sees from the technology that powers the website.  There’s lots of misconceptions around this concept, but the key piece for retailers to understand is that modern, headless commerce architecture allows for a higher level of flexibility and adaptation to changing customer demands that simply is not possible with the software available even just 10 years ago.

For retailers, now is the time to be bold and to digitally transform the experience they provide to their customers. Given how fast customer expectations have changed, next year may be too late.

To learn more about Pivotree and its journey as a market leader in frictionless commerce, click here.

This story was provided by Pivotree for commercial purposes.

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