Survey: Retailers support seamless customer experience

Increasingly, retailers are recognizing the need to remove boundaries between channels to maximize customer satisfaction.



According to the 2016 Customer Experience/Unified Commerce Survey from Boston Retail Partners, 51% of retailers indicate that creating a seamless experience across channels is their top priority. To support a seamless customer experience, 23% of the retailers surveyed have already implemented a single, unified commerce platform and another 52% plan to implement one within the next three years.



Unified commerce leverages a single commerce platform to eliminate individual channel silos and solve omnichannel integration challenges to offer a holistic customer experience across all customer touchpoints in real-time.



Other key findings in the 2016 Customer Experience/Unified Commerce Survey include:



• 44% of retailers state that increasing customer loyalty is a focus for the next 12 months.



• 75% of retailers plan to have a single commerce platform within 3 years.



• Nearly 90% of retailers plan to have as part of their unified commerce platform, centralized inventory management, order management system and integrated CRM.



• 89% of retailers indicate that within three years social media will be the predominant forum for interaction with the brand.



• At least 75% of retailers plan to have mobile apps for associates and customers within three years.



“The customer journey can be simple or complex and can be different for each customer and each individual purchase,” said Brian Brunk, principal, Boston Retail Partners. “It’s not important that what we have specific labels for these scenarios, like webrooming or showrooming, but simply that we understand that the customer journey is one that is very dynamic and as retailers we have the opportunity to optimize and enhance this experience to drive increased customer loyalty. This is why ‘start anywhere, end anywhere’ cross-channel capabilities are so important, like enabling a unified or shared shopping cart across channels,”



Boston Retail Partners conducted the 2016 Customer Experience/Unified Commerce Benchmark Survey of top North American retailers to understand what retailers are currently undertaking to enhance the customer experience and the current state and future plans of unified commerce.