The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed businesses and redefined the way consumers purchase. Conventional sales and marketing efforts have stopped yielding desired results in increasing sales volumes. Today, organizations, especially in the retail sector, are looking for opportunities to innovate, re-strategize, and leverage technology to fuel growth.
According to Forbes, the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped the retail sector. Consumer habits are changing rapidly, and more and more buyers are shifting to online stores to satiate their purchasing requirements. The US market witnessed a 30% increase in e-commerce sales in 2020 against the predicted spurt of 18% during the pre-pandemic years.
Creating sensible marketing strategies in the wake of businesses aligning themselves with this development and delivering enhanced buying journeys is the new norm. This calls for a deeper understanding of consumer tastes, the channels of sale they prefer, and adapting the business infrastructure to align themselves to buyer preferences. Customer experiences and buyer journeys manifest as a culmination of taste, preferences, purchase history, favorite purchase mode, and most importantly consistency of service across these touchpoints.
Working on improved buyer journeys is not only about a fancy online experience with half-decent UI, UX features but also bringing about a transformation through assessment of customer behavior and business goals. Businesses need to work out an efficient digital map of their services with the help of data analytics, a robust integrated environment that yields insights into such efforts.
Data Analytics & Integrated Applications for Omnichannel Experiences
Omnichannel retailers strive to provide their customers with the same shopping experience regardless of the channel they are using to shop. This, as, highlighted earlier is gaining more popularity than ever in the wake of the ongoing pandemic. Customers want the personal touch and consistent shopping experience that they would get in a retail store when they are making a purchase online. How do businesses get started in this direction?
Only a fraction of the businesses is using their data effectively, with most of them missing out on crucial customer-related information that flows in and out of their applications in a disparate manner. By effectively harnessing such data and leveraging digital technology across sales channels businesses can drastically improve a customer’s experience and increase the ROI of the business.
With the help of a robust Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application, businesses can manage customer data to engage with prospects, support their customer queries and work on generating new leads. Let us also remember that favorable customer experiences have a substantial impact on generating new leads.
Powerful CRMs have long found their place in businesses and help handle customer interaction, capture leads, gain insights into business operations, and improve service standards. The presence of such CRM applications can help businesses can integrate their operations, capture customer data more cohesively. Such efforts will create a 365-degree view into customer behavior giving the organization an in-depth analysis of a consumer’s digital footprint across browsers, devices, and channels. Superior Omnichannel buyer experiences begin here.
Intuitive Customer Experiences with Microsoft Dynamics 365
Dynamics 365 unifies back-office, in-store, call center, and online experiences and helps retailers deliver superior customer service while identifying ways to drive supply chain efficiencies. Dynamics 365 helps retailers deliver a seamless, personalized shopping experience across multi-brand, multi-channel operations. Stakeholders and employees have access to real-time, relevant information with the ability to manage initiatives across multiple sales channels easily. With analytics and valuable insights, retailers can easily optimize processes, enabling better business performance and greater customer reach.
By providing better inventory visibility, purchasing options, and a more personalized customer experience across all retail channels, Microsoft Dynamics 365 can help retailers offer a better omnichannel experience. Gemini Consulting & Services can assist you in achieving your business objectives efficiently and increasing productivity with Dynamics 365. Contact us to know more about our services.
Advantages of Microsoft Dynamics 365
Fully Integrated Point of Sale System: It is possible to manage inventory, merchandise, and channel operations in a centralized manner thereby enabling better control of daily operations. Dynamics 365 is a cloud-based solution that can be accessed using mobile devices across web browsers. With access to real-time information for products, prices, and buying habits, retailers can optimize their operations and create improved buying experiences that can be a lot more profitable. A step ahead, integrating the online store system with logistics and payment gateways also reduces maintenance and update costs.
Uniform Shopping Experience Across Channels: Today, customers want to engage with retailers across multiple channels at any time, any place with the convenience of personalized products and services. Whether it’s e-commerce, in-store, call centers, back office, or emerging channels, Dynamics 365 provides businesses with the information needed that ensures customers a personalized and seamless shopping experience. This also means customers can check the stock of a product before they even go to the store. Inventory management solutions in Dynamics 365 also allow customers to buy online, pick up in-store, ship to store and select faster delivery options.
Digital Experience: With its built-in web authoring and development tools, it can effortlessly deliver outstanding digital experiences while creating engaging and intelligent digital storefronts. The application renders insights that can help businesses target selling the right products, at the right price, through the right channels. By consistently engaging across online and offline channels, businesses can foster long-term relationships that can help strengthen the brand presence.
Bonding Through Social Media: With the ease of access to intelligent marketing, social media interaction, and advanced analytics businesses can make smarter decisions about retail operations, based on verified information. Dynamics 365 includes tools to help businesses actively listen to customers’ opinions on social media platforms and interact with them directly by responding to their queries or comments. It is possible to create automated, measurable campaigns and set up dashboards that display relevant campaign information in multiple languages. Further with round-the-clock notifications, it becomes easy to monitor customer posts about the brand, conversations with competitors, and campaign performances.
Enhance Workforce Productivity: Dynamics 365 equips teams with the knowledge required to serve customers better as well as help them be highly productive and organized in their work. Resources can be assigned to specific departments, jobs, positions, and reporting responsibilities while being able to view their assignments and schedules from a self-service portal. With detailed insights, such as real-time inventory and order details, the workforce is completely empowered to better engage with customers. Features such as cross-channel task management and notifications enable better communication and collaboration across teams and locations.
Highly Scalable: Designed for both traditional e-commerce and emerging digital channels, Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a secure, unified, end-to-end CRM solution that’s easy to scale and highly customizable. It also offers flexible deployment options to meet specific business requirements, automatic upgrades with multiple new features.
