How well do you know your customers? Do you know what they want, when they want it, and how to keep them coming back as repeat buyers?
The ultimate shopping experience is omnichannel – selling and fulfilling your products to your customers through every channel and avenue through which they shop – because it offers maximum convenience, choice, and ease.
Only after you’ve acquired these customers can you unlock the rich purchase data and buyer preferences that help you to make informed inventory decisions and deliver an optimized customer experience – and even then, only if you have access to software that offers visibility into these critical customer insights.
Getting the products to your customers
Speed and convenience are the new currencies when it comes to meeting your customer’s needs. Research from PWC shows that shoppers primarily have two things in mind: speed and ease, the leading elements of an ideal customer experience.
Ecommerce shoppers expect delivery in one to two days – the standard set by Amazon. Unless your products are optimally distributed across your fulfillment network, meeting this expectation will be a very expensive challenge.
The simplest way to speed shipments (and reduce shipping costs) is moving products closer to end consumers. Once optimally located, one-to-two day delivery windows become feasible, and shoppers become repeat customers as they learn they can rely on you for fast, reliable shipping.
Meet your customer where they shop
As important as delivery speed is ease of access – where can customers find your brand, and will they have the same, seamless experience purchasing it across a variety of channels? What’s more, do you have an understanding of where they shop, and how to keep your brand top of mind, across all those points of contact?
The success of your brand depends not only on your ability to deliver quickly, but to know and understand your consumer, across every channel of interaction, and retain that information across the customer journey.
Only omnichannel software, connected across all your sales channels and shopping carts, is able to aggregate valuable information that can then be used to further improve the customer experience.
The value of insight and information
Collecting your customer data serves not only your brand, but your buyer, as it creates a more personalized shopping experience. According to an Infosys study, 70 percent of Americans are willing to spend an average of 13 percent more with companies they feel provide superior service.
Touchpoints like personalized notifications and form fills, relevant product recommendations, and tailored sales and promotions encourage the customer to feel more satisfied with the experience, inspire them to shop again, and continue to spend with the brand. In short, it benefits both the business and the consumer.
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Satisfied customers appreciate personalized service and will come back for more from a merchant who recognizes them and acknowledges their loyalty as a repeat customer.
An additional data point brands may consider collecting is the Net Promoter Score (NPS) to learn how likely customers are to recommend your product to a friend or colleague. Other insights might come from keeping an updated record of all contact information, user experience data, purchase decision hierarchy, and survey responses.
Take advantage of the holiday season
As peak season is taking place earlier than ever before, brands working with Flowspace can gain customer insights and get a jump on the holiday shopping season, creating a relationship with their customers and benefitting from an extended relationship that will last all year.
Customer insights are key to creating the best experience – which in turn contributes to satisfied customers and return shoppers – and are only accessible via a platform like Flowspace that connects all shopping channels, offering both visibility and control.
Flowspace offers brands the tools they need to meet their shopper’s demands. Flowspace is empowering brands to retain and extract insights from customer data and meet increasingly high customer expectations of fast, accurate delivery with a platform that supports omnichannel sales and fulfillment.
To find out how Flowspace can help you better understand your customers – and optimize their experience – get in touch with us today.
Written By:
Ben Eachus
Ben Eachus is co-founder and CEO of Flowspace, the software powering ecommerce fulfillment for brands. Ben was an early employee at The Honest Company, where he led supply chain operations and scaled the company’s distribution and fulfillment network during a period of rapid growth before its IPO. He previously managed fulfillment operations at McMaster Carr, a leading industrial supply distributor specializing in same-day delivery. Ben earned his undergraduate degree from Princeton University and his MBA from UCLA Anderson. He is a native of New Jersey and currently lives in Southern California with his family.
