The retail industry is readily moving its focus from brick and mortar to a click-and-mortar business model. Brands today are somewhat shifting their focus in leveraging omnichannel marketing strategies. For example, today a buyer prefers to check a product online before purchasing it from the retail shop.

According to Natalie Berg, the co-author of the book ‘Amazon: How the world’s most relentless retailer will continue to revolutionize commerce,’ she said that, “Very few people exclusively shop online or only in stores. They marry the best of both worlds.”

Today the retail world is shifting its focus from selling just the products to actually selling the experiences because now the customer is the king, well customer has always been the king for any business but with changing times and rapidly growing market competition, customers have realized their power and position and in return, they expect the shopping comfort and the best shopping experience. Customers choose brands based on their abilities to offer a better customer experience and they tend to leave a business even after a single bad customer experience, according to studies.

According to a study published by Walker, it reveals that customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator in the next few years.

Retailers now realize that the key to success for them is to build a blended and more engaging customer experience and that if they choose to ignore this crucial aspect they might have suffered the loss of business and might end up losing a big chunk of their customer base. Retailers need to understand that they need to find a way to sort of blend and tie all the customer shopping channels to build a unified and more personalized experience for their customer base. Focusing on just one channel for their business growth might not bring as good results as if they choose to reevaluate their strategies and start investing in bettering the omnichannel experiences for their customers.

What is customer engagement and is it so important for retails today?

According to Albert Mei, Growth Marketer at GlamCorner, “Customer engagement and retention for retail brands is extremely important. Retaining and engaging with customers help brands keep them happy, stay loyal, and up to date with new arrivals, latest promotions, and product recommendations. Moreover, when retaining and engaging with customers, brands are able to keep our ears and heart close to their demands, needs, and expectations.”

If we talk in general terms, customer engagement is a simple process that refers to the different ways a retail brand interacts with its customer base through various channels (it covers both online and in-person). It’s important for retailers to understand this crucial aspect sooner since now the customers expect to receive the customer experience and don’t shy away from choosing your competitor over your brand. Their loyalties lie where they get the best shopping experience. Today businesses that flourish are doing something right in this aspect, they know their customers and they invest in their customer engagement tactics and they invest in their marketing strategies too. You see we are talking about customers in this brave new world, they are quick to adopt the latest retail trends and technologies and just as quick to abandon them — in most cases, even before brands have had the chance to get on the bandwagon. So being quick, agile, and engaging customer strategies you might be able to keep your customers' attention in place for a sustainable amount of time and you never know your customers might become your loyal customers providing a better lifetime value result.

At DT we believe that to build a sustainable relationship with a customer, we must value their feedback. We believe in building a situation-based and feedback-centric client engagement plan that will not only help businesses to leverage the data collected abundantly but also if done right this can turn into a long-lasting opportunity to keep your customers intact and keep the revenue bar up and running.

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