Consumer expectations have shifted dramatically post-pandemic.
People now want the same level of service across all channels, whether shopping online, in a store or via a mobile app. This has led to a growing demand for better omnichannel commerce solutions from large merchants.
In a conversation with PYMNTS, Erica Savka, senior vice president of enterprise payments and merchant services product strategy at Bank of America, emphasized the importance of a seamless, uninterrupted consumer journey.
Consumers want to be able to move seamlessly between channels, without any hiccups or inconsistencies. To achieve this, merchants need to have a strong omnichannel presence with consistency across all channels. And the bigger the merchant, the greater the expectation.
“For example, I shop at Home Depot, both online and in-store,” she said. “I prefer to shop at Home Depot online for the heavy stuff that I cannot carry from the store … and I still go to the store to get things like plants or decorations. If the retailer knows that, if they know my preferences, they can target specific offers and curate that experience for me as a consumer.”
She noted that while many retailers are scaling down their physical presence, consumers still “want the full experience.” This is what omnichannel commerce solutions make possible. By enabling easy transitions in the consumer journey, omnichannel can yield desired results.
“The shift for the merchants needs to be between having that multichannel offering where the channels are not really communicating with each other to truly having an omnichannel presence where there’s consistency across channels for the consumer,” she said.
By knowing preferences and crafting specific offers, merchants can provide a personalized experience that keeps the omnichannel shopper engaged. Savka stressed that data-driven solutions are having the greatest impact.
“That’s the premise of the omnichannel,” she said.
In addition to improving product search capabilities and enhancing checkout, harmonizing payment methods across channels is critical.
Merchants who fail to offer this symmetry in payments risk losing customers to competitors whose systems have been upgraded with pandemic-era learnings. But it’s a high hurdle.
Large merchants face big challenges with hyper-personalization due to data traveling between channels. Savka said high levels of personalization are essential, even though they can be hard to achieve. Larger merchants may have a heavier lift here, but they also have more to gain.
“Today, if you go to an Instagram page and have the ‘click here, buy now’ button as opposed to being redirected to a website, that’s a big convenience add,” she said, describing an optimal payment experience that embedded capabilities bring to the equation.
Those newer channels, like contextual commerce, social commerce and livestreaming, when linked with traditional brick-and-mortar stores, can also be a game-changer for retailers, she said, noting that social commerce alone is expected to be an $80 billion industry by 2024.
Merchants who have integrated omnichannel strategies are more likely to benefit from this and retain more customers. Using data and digital technology helps drive these outcomes.
Savka agreed that using digital tools and platforms to synchronize channels is necessary for omnicommerce to deliver on its potential.
“Having a single API [application programming interface] where the merchant can easily integrate their current channels, some solutions that may already be precertified to make that integration possible, and tokenization of consumer data in addition to the payment data tokenization” can help accelerate adoption, she said.
Many large merchants are making investments and integrations to modernize infrastructure and payments, but adding payment methods can be a pain point. Orchestration layers can help with this, as well as fraud mitigation, reconciliation, dispute management and other functions.
Savka said she believes merchants need to stay on top of what happens after the sale, which can have an outsized effect on the consumer experience with that merchant or brand.
“The post-purchase experience [is] a big one,” she said. “Having that ability to make it so the consumer can return an item in whatever channel. If they bought online, they could return in-store, or have easiness with the refund, but that also requires a lot of the back-end integration. We’re striving to get there.”
Despite these challenges, there are major opportunities for large merchants to improve the online shopping experience. Savka said artificial intelligence (AI), chatbots and voice ordering make it easier for customers to find what they’re looking for.
She said supply chain technology, such as intelligent fulfillment data, can provide real-time inventory visibility, ensuring that customers receive orders promptly.
These are the ingredients of a well-orchestrated omnichannel shopping journey, and although it’s far from perfect, she said she sees more large retailers integrating the payments and data processing power to create ideal omnicommerce experiences regardless of channel or payment method.
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