At the beginning of the decade, retailers had to adapt their business models with the digital uprising in the industry. As a result, they expanded their business to digital channels and focused on being omnipresent – this came to be known as the omnichannel strategy.
What followed, however, was a transformation of the customer journey. As the number of possible digital retail channels grew, digital presence was no longer the only concern. The retailers required seamless connect and transparency across all channels to provide their customers with a cohesive and singular experience.
If you’re wondering where we might be heading with this discussion, we have a quick example to simplify the intent of our article.
Let’s begin.
A potential customer comes across a product on Instagram with a clickable link and a discount coupon. She will expect that coupon to be already applied when she lands on the checkout page through the link. If your business is able to pre-apply her discount, she will be delighted and her chances of actually making the purchase will increase. However, all the aspects of your online business need to be integrated and have clear visibility into one another’s working to achieve this feat.
This is the main function of unified commerce. It entails providing a consistent customer experience in an era where the number of channels and customer touchpoints have increased owing to social media and growth in the number of eCommerce platforms.
Let’s have a quick look at the components of unified commerce
- Interaction: As per research, consumers use more than 6 touchpoints everyday on an average. They interact with you on multiple channels and expect the same response everywhere. To achieve unified commerce, you need to have a single point of access for every customer interaction so that your team can access as well as input every customer information they collect.
- Omnichannel presence: Unified commerce begins with omnichannel presence. Today, a customer may reach your products through social media, text messages or even your offline outlet. That is why it is pertinent that you’re within their reach at all possible places of retail
- Connected operations: Your internal operations must be seamlessly integrated so that you’re able to provide your customers with uniform information and consistent experience. Studies suggest that 50% of shoppers expect that they will be able to make a purchase online and pick up in-store. You may also encounter a similar case and in that case, you will need your offline outlet to be in sync with your eCommerce portal. With a centralised system, your team will be able to access the details of the sale at every outlet and proceed with the transaction as per the customer’s preferences.
- Seamless Inventory management: What if you run an ad about a product on social media while it is actually out of stock? You will not just waste your money on the ad but also have a number of disappointed customers. Thus, it is important that the product information, i.e., its availability, detailed information and price, must be uniform across all channels through a strong unified platform.
A successful retail business with unified commerce will ensure that a customer has a similar experience at every touch point – no matter how complex their customer journey is. Your business shouldn’t have any departmental silos or geographical limitations. Unified commerce propagates the idea of a consistent brand across all boundaries and at every platform.
How to achieve Unified Commerce with Salesforce
The world of today is inter-connected and it will become progressively more entangled as the technology becomes more sophisticated with time. Every information about your prospective consumer is available in the form of data and they expect you to know them well enough even before they start thinking about engaging with your business.
According to research, 85% of online shoppers start shopping on one device and complete it on another and they expect a similar experience on all of them. As a successful eCommerce retailer, you would ensure that your products are accessible from every device, platform or channel a customer chooses to browse.
And, this is where the need for unification arises. Your business would come full circle only if you’re able to tie together the impact of consumer preference and the value of omnichannel presence in a tightly-knit thread of unified commerce.
To truly achieve unified commerce in every sense, you would need the support of a technology like Salesforce that is modern, scalable and enables seamless collaboration. Salesforce can ensure that all your customer operations remain unified and follow a single source of truth. It can help you achieve a unified commerce experience by bringing together every information related to a consumer and the retail business on a single platform by integration of data, business process and customer profiles.
Needless to mention, Salesforce is world’s #1 Cloud CRM and has comprehensive solutions to help boost your conversion rate and achieve success in your eCommerce business. To understand it better, let’s have a look at some of its aspects –
- Sales Cloud: It brings every information related to the customer on a single platform and supports your business by triggering data-driven lead nurturing.
- Service Cloud: It helps you go beyond phone calls for customer support – you can now support your customer via chat, texts, social media through a unified channel which has a comprehensive profile of every customer based on their interaction at every platform.
- Marketing Cloud: You can create and manage data-driven marketing campaigns on a single platform for all mediums – social media, email marketing and text messages.
- Commerce Cloud: A scalable and agile Cloud-based eCommerce platform that helps businesses in providing a seamless shopping experience to their customers across all channels – social, web, mobile and store.
To sum it up in a few words, Salesforce has everything that it takes to build and grow an online business in today’s time. The combined power of all the mentioned tools can lead you to create consistency and curate a business based on the principle of unified commerce.
Now that you understand how Salesforce can be the secret ingredient of your eCommerce success, the next step would be to understand how you can integrate it into your business. There’re many proven Salesforce partners that can provide consultation and help you integrate Salesforce in your business but what if we told you that there’s a preconceived solution that can transform your online business with Salesforce in just 6 weeks.
Yes, it is true. So, without further ado, let’s introduce you to our accelerator program –
Phoenix – A Unified Salesforce eCommerce Solution
Built on Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Phoenix is an accelerator program with pre-built mobile-first eCommerce themes, landing pages, pre-written email notification and the backup of the powerful Salesforce ecosystem.
With Phoenix, you will have an eCommerce store that runs intelligent marketing campaigns, has data-backed insights and analytics, offers personalization and serves customers with live chat and case management. Moreover, you will get a payment gateway integrated along with a local shipping integration.
Phoenix is designed to help retailers like you – we help you reduce your time to market while ensuring that you leverage all the benefits of the Salesforce ecosystem and curate a unified commerce experience for your customers.
Phoenix bestows upon you the power of unified commerce – in just 2 months. If you’re still looking for a reason to opt for this, here’s a list of reason why you should empower your business with unified commerce using Phoenix –
- Enjoy quicker time to market and give your business a head start.
- Ensure utmost data security by leveraging the power of Salesforce.
- Manage peak traffic with auto-scalability.
- Create your own merchandising rules based on your needs.
- And finally, create a high-impact brand that delivers unified and consistent customer experience at every customer touch point.
If you would like to discuss further, we’re only a quick message away, feel free to reach out to us.
