Multichannel Retail Roundup

Having watched my Google Alerts stack up, I thought it was time for another brief round up with a couple of highlights from what I've been reading recently...

Cranfield School of Management's view on what it takes for Multichannel Success
This recent article on the MyCustomer website caught my attention. An interesting article and a surprise to find a Management School article with a focus on technology.

As I pointed out in the comment I left, whilst I agree that integration forms a large part in terms of gaining single view of several important data elements, the real hurdle within long established retailers is securing stakeholder buy-in and funding. This is made much more difficult if the organisation is siloed and the stakeholders you are targetting do not have incentives to encourage cross-channel behaviours.

A nice cross-channel customer service anecdote
RightNow's CEO, Greg Gianforte, posted a nice anecdote on his blog of a recent experience with iRobot's customer service. It's an area I'd not paid a great deal of attention to, but it's just as important as your multiple sales channels - having a joined up aftersales customer service will generate brand loyalty and increase your customer retention.

An elegant definition of Multichannel vs Cross-channel
This interview with Kevin Ertell is an interesting read. A couple of good points in there, namely the difficulty in measuring conversion rates as retail websites evolve beyond just simply selling stuff to us and I had to quote this too:

“Multi-channel” is more than one channel while “cross-channel” is leveraging the strengths of each channel to create an overall customer experience that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Kevin has also picked up on a growing view that mobile will find a use in-store, providing the ability for customers to make purchase decisions based upon reviews, recommendations, etc right from their mobile phone. I believe Bazaarvoice's Customer Reviews offering comes out-of-the-box with the capability to deliver reviews via mobile phone.

A discussion on Web access within the store
RetailWire have published an article on web access in-store (registration required). However, it's not the article that's particularly interesting, it's the subsequent discussion. Several of the panellists hit upon the theme that customers will evolve to use their mobile smartphones if they want web access. I'll admit I don't use my iPhone as much as I should whilst shopping in-store, but that's currently because the Apps aren't necessarily there yet. It makes sense for stores to be spending their scarce budgets on targeted mobile apps (reviews/recommends, store locator, stock checker), rather than trying to deploy kiosks out in their store estate. As stated by a couple of the panellists, those investing in store technology need to be aware that mobile applications are coming and are likley to be adopted by their customers before the accountants have depreciated those in-store investments!