Increase efficiency and enhance engagement

In today’s competitive retail environment, success often depends on delivering frictionless customer experiences

As online and offline shopping channels converge, new buying habits are emerging. Customers seek convenience, limit their time in stores and want to research online and pick up in person. As a result, retailers have adapted to trends like buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS); buy online, pick up curbside (BOPAC); reserve online, pick up in-store (ROPIS) and showrooming.

Enabled by innovative technologies, these habits are reshaping how customers connect, shop and complete transactions. Technology advancements create opportunities to enhance the customer experience but also introduce new challenges for your operations, especially at scale.

Legacy systems aren’t always compatible with modern solutions, making integration complex and time-consuming. Keeping customer data private and securing your network can be resource-intensive, and modernizing your systems can disrupt your customers and employees.

How you approach these challenges can determine if your business thrives in today’s — and tomorrow’s — retail landscape. To meet fast-changing customer expectations, consider every retail touchpoint and deploy omnichannel software solutions to create a unified multichannel ecosystem.

Omnichannel solutions are fast becoming industry standards, employing physical locations, mobile apps, websites, social media and delivery services to engage customers. Keeping pace means adopting an omnichannel and hybrid shopping mindset.

89% of customers, on average, are retained by retailers with omnichannel marketing capabilities.¹

What is an omnichannel and hybrid mindset?  

Adopting an omnichannel mindset involves integrating all your channels and touchpoints — digital and physical — to deliver a consistent customer experience everywhere. For your customers, that results in a seamless buying journey.

While an omnichannel approach is about integration, a hybrid approach should seamlessly combine your offerings’ online and offline technology elements for a unified customer experience. This dual focus enables customers to easily engage with your business regardless of their preferred channel, which is key to retail success.
 

Technologies driving omnichannel advances  

Meeting the ever-growing expectations of tech-savvy consumers requires innovative technology that can reshape how your customers shop, connect and transact across your business.
 

Achieving personalization at scale

While newer technology is enabling retailers to adopt omnichannel and hybrid strategies, personalization stands out as a clear driver of retail success.

Retailers hold a treasure trove of customer data. Leveraging that data for hyper-targeted marketing campaigns, highly personalized product recommendations and tailored shopping journeys builds brand equity, customer engagement and loyalty.
 

62% of business leaders cite improved customer retention as a benefit of personalization efforts.²
 

More than half of consumers say they will become repeat buyers after a personalized experience, and 62% of business leaders cite improved customer retention as a benefit of personalization efforts.³ To take advantage of the personalization potential by utilizing customer data, you need fast, secure and direct connections to public clouds and internal data centers.

Bridging the physical-digital divide with IoT

For retailers, the appeal of adopting the Internet of Things (IoT) is bringing digital and physical environments together. Potential applications include sensors and cameras that collect in-store data to enrich customer, store and distribution analytics. Decisions based on this data can increase efficiency and improve the supply chain. The data can also reveal customer shopping patterns, which can help optimize store layouts, tighten inventory management and enhance the customer experience.

Contactless, automated checkout, enabled by IoT devices like radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, is another technological advance that can evolve the customer experience. This approach can make in-store buying as quick and frictionless as it is online. Retailers are taking notice — according to ReportLinker, the global self-checkout systems market is projected to grow from $4.71 billion in 2023 to $7.53 billion in 2027.⁴

Bridging the physical-digital divide is an undeniable opportunity for retailers. However, deploying effective IoT solutions requires robust network infrastructure to enable reliable wireless and wide area network (WAN) connectivity across your enterprise.

Understanding your customers through AI-driven analytics

Customer intelligence can help identify trends, preferences and market dynamics — information you can harness to drive sales. Using AI to analyze data can provide valuable insights about your customers and other aspects of business operations, including inventory forecasts, product demand and price optimization.
 

$29 Billion – Projected size of the retail AI market in 2028.⁵
 

The opportunities AI presents to boost customer engagement and increase revenue are dramatic and fueling a rush to AI across the retail market. Forecasts estimate the AI market will grow from $7.3 billion in 2023 to $29.45 billion in 2028.⁶

AI requires high-performance network connectivity to gather and analyze large data sets. An investment in dedicated fiber internet and Ethernet connections with speeds up to 100 Gbps, along with direct, secure cloud connectivity, can provide the needed performance and scalability to handle massive amounts of customer data.
 

Offering next-level convenience with autonomous shopping and delivery

Automation presents an opportunity to enhance the customer experience and optimize operations at scale. In a retail ecosystem, robotic shopping assistants can guide customers through the store, provide product information and offer personalized recommendations. In the warehouse, robots can accelerate service by ensuring products are in stock and easily located. And for the last mile, robotic deliveries can save retailers money while redefining the boundaries of customer service and time to fulfillment.

Retailers’ adoption of new automation techniques is well underway. The retail robotics market is projected to grow more than 32% annually between 2022 and 2029.⁷ Adoption in the supply chain is also expected to spread quickly, with autonomous last-mile delivery growing at 23.5% annually through 2030, when the market is projected to reach $5.9 billion.⁸

Realizing the promise of autonomous shopping requires seamless coordination between branches, warehouses, headquarters, data centers, clouds and e-commerce platforms. That coordination hinges on reliable, secure network connectivity that has the flexibility to adapt and scale as needs change and can protect customer data as it moves between locations.
 

How Spectrum Enterprise supports your omnichannel and hybrid strategies

Retailers adopt omnichannel and hybrid strategies to meet rapidly evolving customer expectations and keep pace with competitive pressure to optimize operations. That’s why it’s critical to select an experienced partner for your investment in network infrastructure.

Spectrum Enterprise® provides fast, reliable and secure connectivity to support retailers’ omnichannel and hybrid strategies. We partner with our clients to design custom solutions that best fits their needs, backed by our exceptional service and 24/7/365 U.S.-based support. We manage and maintain networks for our clients to ensure that they’re running on the latest technologies, freeing them to focus on providing great experiences for their customers.

Learn more about securing your customers’ data and delivering great experiences across all channels at enterprise.spectrum.com/retail.
 

Sources

1. “Omnichannel Marketing Statistics,” Loyal Guru, September 9, 2022.
2. “The State of Personalization Report 2023,” Twilio Segment, 2023.
3. Ibid.
4. “Self-Checkout Systems Global Market Report 2023,” ReportLinker, August 3, 2023.
5. “Artificial Intelligence in Retail Market Size & Share Analysis - Growth Trends & Forecasts (2023 - 2028),” Mordor Intelligence, 2023.
6. Ibid.
7. “Retail Robotics Market – Global Industry Analysis, Trends, Statistics, Dynamics, Segmentation and Forecast (2023-2029),” MMR, March 2023.
8. “Autonomous Last Mile Delivery Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Range (Short, Long), By Solution (Services, Software), By End-use (Food & Beverage, Retail), By Platform, And Segment Forecasts, 2023 - 2030,” Research and Markets, February 2023.