Enabling Omnichannel Experiences with Customer Identity Management

Digital experiences made up 21% of global retail sales as of 2022. By 2023, that percentage is expected to rise to 22.3% – a slight increase, but one that reflects the growing consumer desire to at least start the shopping process online, regardless of whether the final purchase is completed in-store or online. 

If you’re not leveraging this shift away from brick-and-mortar consumerism to your advantage, it’s time to take a closer look at customer identity for retail. An omnichannel experience gives your customers more than one avenue to engage with your business’s products or services – all without compromising the integrity of their overall customer journey.

The omnichannel experience involves creating ways for customers to seamlessly move from one point in the customer journey to the next across channels and platforms.

Compared to a multichannel approach – which looks at a customer’s experience on channels individually – omnichannel focuses more on the collective journey across all channels.

For example, suppose a customer walks into a physical store to purchase a product, but it’s out of stock. They can immediately log onto the business’s website and order the product. While they’re at it, they can also leave a review of their in-store experience on Google or the business’s social media page. That’s an omnichannel experience.

The seamless nature of omnichannel experiences creates ease, which most consumers expect but consider a luxury. It also personalizes a customer’s journey, allowing them to navigate your business’s channels in a way that works for them.

Proper data management through solutions like Ping makes achieving this vision possible. But before you begin implementing any new technology, it’s important to understand the fundamental aspects of omnichannel customer experiences.

Types of Omnichannel Customer Experiences 

The typical customer journey no longer relies on a single method for browsing, purchasing, and communicating with a business. Instead, omnichannel experiences weave together multiple channels to create a cohesive journey from start to finish.

For example, after getting an email about the latest smartphone model release, a customer visits the carrier’s website to thoroughly research the specs and features of each new option. The next day, when the customer heads to the store to view the smartphones in person, the sales associate easily pulls up their online history and marked preferences while demonstrating each phone’s capabilities and answering the customer’s questions. At checkout, the customer is encouraged to download the company’s app for additional features, as well as to follow the store on social media to stay updated on future promotions.

Each interaction in this sequence enhances how a customer interacts with the store. Here’s a brief description of each of the types of experiences that might factor into an omnichannel journey.

• In store: Customers can visit a physical store to speak to customer service representatives in person, receive personalized product recommendations, or take advantage of in-store pickup options for online purchases.

• Online: A business’s website offers a convenient way for customers to view products without visiting in-store, get customized online promotions, and experience a seamless website-to-app transition. 

• Mobile: Reaching customers through mobile devices often involves sending them notifications or location-based offers through a branded mobile app. Since most people have a smartphone, tablet, or smartwatch, this can be a highly effective way to reach target customers.

• Email: Personalized email campaigns and abandoned cart reminders encourage customers to complete their purchases, helping businesses to deliver timely messages about promotions and other pertinent information.

• Customer service: Customers can receive more personalized support through multiple channels, such as phone-based help or real-time chat assistance.

Overall, coordinating activities across these various channels creates a better customer experience and diversifies the opportunities shoppers have to interact with your products or services. But there are a number of other benefits, as well.

Increased Customer Satisfaction 

Omnichannel customer experiences provide a level of convenience that other, more traditional approaches can’t. The easier it is for customers to transition from one channel to another, the more satisfied they’ll be.

Removing obstacles reduces stress – and when customers feel in control of their experience, they’re more likely to rate their experience highly. In fact, compared to businesses not utilizing omnichannel strategies, those that do have 23 times higher customer satisfaction ratings.

Increased Customer Loyalty 

Customer retention is vital in a constantly changing market, regardless of your product or service. Customers who feel they can trust your business, especially after the first few interactions, are more likely to remain loyal.

That’s important because returning customers spend, on average, 67% more than first-time buyers. Further, companies that utilize an omnichannel approach retain 89% of their customers and are more likely to convert first-time customers into returning ones.

Increased Customer Lifetime Value 

By using an omnichannel customer experience to create a more loyal following, you’ll also achieve a higher lifetime value, bringing in more revenue for your business. In fact, creating an integrated customer journey has the potential to improve your customer lifetime value (CLV) by more than 30%.

Increased Sales

The greater the number of optimized channels customers have access to in order to either purchase from you or learn more about your products and services, the greater the number of opportunities they’ll have to buy from you. For this reason, by the end of 2023, the international omnichannel retail commerce market is expected to grow to over $11 billion – reaching more than $14 billion by 2030.

The positive sentiment generated by proper omnichannel journey implementation helps here as well. One study by Forbes indicates that close to 90% of online and in-person shoppers will spend more if they have a positive experience.

Reduced Costs 

Omnichannel approaches are undoubtedly more efficient than others because they provide a better customer experience and reduce business costs.

For example, implementing more self-service options reduces the need to hire dedicated customer service staff. Centralizing data also is a benefit, as creating a path for personalized customer service reduces the time and effort required to resolve issues.

Investing in creating an omnichannel approach is undoubtedly profitable, but actually achieving it requires consistency, intentionality, and proper customer data and identity management techniques.

Collect Data from All Channels

To fully understand customer identity, you need data such as demographic and contact information, purchase histories, browsing behaviors, and device and channel preferences.

While you can collect much of this data from the channels your customers are currently using, it’s important to implement safety measures as you establish your systems. At Ping, we advise that transparency is key: customers should know what data the company is sharing, how they obtain it, and with whom they share it.

With the appropriate strategies in place, customers retain control over their data, while your business can still use this data to inform future initiatives.

Clean and Organize Customer Data

Effectively storing your customer data is just as important as collecting it. Consolidating and storing data in one place as a single source of truth makes retrieving it for cleaning and organizing much faster and more efficient. Ping’s technology can help you to create a centralized customer database that:

• Organizes data into relevant fields (e.g., the types of information collected)

• Cleans it by removing outliers and standardizing formats

Both of these actions enhance the quality of your customer data, strengthening your ability to deliver accurately personalized experiences and to report on the performance of your omnichannel customer journeys.

Integrate Data from Different Sources

Don’t rely on one source of data to develop customer identities and track omnichannel experiences. Integrating all the available data from all of the sources available to you makes it easier for your business to develop a complete view of each customer. This, in turn, helps you to create a more seamless and personalized omnichannel customer approach.

Integration involves using data compatibility techniques and data management platforms to compile a comprehensive dataset effectively. At Ping, we can unify data into a single entity – eliminating fragmentation and enabling faster system access through PingDirectory and single sign-on (SSO).

As an example of how your business can use integrated customer data, imagine analyzing how involvement with your loyalty program intersects with different customer demographics. Not only can this tell you more about the effectiveness of your loyalty program, but it may also help you to identify ways to improve enrollment and participation.

Use Customer Data to Personalize Experiences and Provide Seamless Customer Journeys

With the wealth of omnichannel customer data that’s available, your business can provide customers with a seamless journey between online and offline platforms.

As you move towards prioritizing omnichannel experiences, try to collect, organize, and analyze customer data from each platform on a regular basis to judge their effectiveness. Use your data to help you answer questions such as, what are my customers interacting with the most? The answers to these questions – along with the implementation of relevant APIs – make it easier and more effective to personalize their experiences.

Omnichannel customer experience is the future of customer service, but customer data and identity management is essential for enabling it. You need programs that work with you, not against you. The no-code, drag-and-drop style interface of DaVinci can help you design, test, deploy, and optimize omnichannel customer journeys to improve users’ experience, while also allowing non-developers to play an active role in their implementation. 

The tips in this article can help you create personalized, streamlined omnichannel customer experiences that increase customer satisfaction, loyalty, and lifetime value. But to engage your customers, you need to understand them. 

Start your journey by reviewing our guide on customer engagement, or reach out to Ping for help implementing an omnichannel customer experience. Contact a member of our sales team here to learn more and get started.