Is Multi Tool/Multi Service the best way to multichannel?

Retail, outlet, online, mobile, mail order, call center, kiosk, vending machines: A steadily growing number of sales channels are targeting the right customer at the right place with increasing accuracy of the message.

All these channels essentially serve two purposes: on the one hand, they provide information to generate or strengthen demand, and on the other, they act as transaction points for closing a deal. Retailers can guide potential buyers from initial interest to the final transaction and make all intermediate customer journey steps so simple that the buyer inevitably goes through the checkout.

We capture impulse buyers by being there when the impulse to buy becomes overwhelming. We provide the information junkie with uniform and/or personalized product and price data, and appeal urgently or less urgently, depending on the strategy. We can tempt the fashion victim with constantly new attractive offers and accompany them to the checkout via all channels.

We certainly haven't seen a fraction of the possibilities that will define commerce in the near future. But one thing is already certain - whether B2C or B2B: Companies will need to target their customers with a consistent, controlled and contextualized offering across many channels.

The customer view

Let's consider the customer journey we can offer today: Tom, a 21-year-old student who plays basketball, enters a sports store where a poster informs him that the new Air Jordan basketball shoe has arrived. He enthusiastically approaches a salesperson, who unfortunately has to inform him that the shoe is sold out in his size.

The Berlin store still has 51 pairs of them in stock, but that's no use since Tom is in Munich. Later in the day, Tom searches for the shoe on the Internet on his iPad. He wants to buy from the new basketball online store, which he has visited a few times in recent weeks. He was directed to the site by clicking on banners on his favorite basketball blog and on a news site. Tom is lucky: the shoe is there, he gets a delivery promise for the next day.excited he completes the checkout.

When he comes home from university the next day, he finds the package in the packing station, as promised.

The online view

Let's look at the same path from a different perspective: our SEO strategy worked, directing a client to a recently launched basketball shoe right on the SERP-(third entry on the first page of results) to our specially prepared landing page, where we run an a/b test showing different recommendations.

Our Web-Analyst realizes pretty quickly that the second option consistently drives our conversion rate to new heights. So we finish the test and put the successful option into production.

Today is our lucky day: Our online marketers generate through Affiliate-programs aggressively drive traffic to the site. Fortunately, our Affiliate tracking ensures that only the last cross-reference gets the well-deserved bonus for generating that successful contact. In line with our ambition to serve customers even better, we have optimized our logistics in such a way that we can offer next-day delivery to certain regions.

The tool view

Now there is another perspective to consider: our marketing has acquired skills in using some keyword analysis tools and has invested in a "state of the art"CMS that generates and publishes high-quality content. That is why we cut in the Google-ranking is more than average.

Also the SEO-consultants were there! Our latest relaunch creates a user experience that appeals exactly to our target audience - as the UX agency said. This is supported by our new search engine, which lets users find what they want to find, in the way they want to find it. What the search engine doesn't do well: help customers find things they don't know they want.

This gap is closed, among other things, by our new recommendation system with precisely tailored suggestions. But only since we received our usage data from the manufacturer of the Cloud-Web analytics tools bought back and forwarded to the Recommendation crew.

Because we are constantly looking for improvements, we also introduced a/b testing. We didn't have the resources to use all the sophisticated testing tool features - our UX agency was able to step in. Of course, we have to monitor all these investments closely - no problem with today's web analytics tools.

Different perspectives - what do we learn from them?

On the store side: you have missed an opportunity. And will continue to miss it if you don't evolve and offer your customers different shopping channels and better logistics. Having the Berlin store send the shoe to the customer and giving them the option to return it in Munich if necessary would be an easy option.

For the online retailer: You do a lot of things right, but little of it yourself, hauling a lot of toolboxes or having consultants haul them for you. You don't need a special tool in its own box for every job! If you apply the fairly reliable 80/20 rule, you'll probably end up with a different tool set and certainly with fewer boxes.

You'll find that the optimization loss is offset by the cost and complexity reduction, as well as the feeling of accomplishment when you implement more interesting tasks yourself instead of handing them off to the next best consultant. Imagine a retail landscape where most of the above functionalities come from a single source or are easy to integrate into that one system.

Imagine a process landscape in which all participants from the back office to the front end share the same functionalities and data. I am curious to see what we will think in five years' time about the many different program packages that the diverse CMS-Cover areas such as search engine, recommendations, online store, checkout, Web-Analysis, a/b tests, Affiliate and banner management, dynamic landing page generation and keyword analysis.

I'm just as curious to see what will happen to the many specialty consultants who sprinkle a bit of voodoo salt on easily digestible public domain knowledge (onsite SEO), use an overly simplistic approach to draw statistically unhealthy conclusions from complex behavioral experiments (multivariate testing).

Time will tell. But one can already foresee that the tool and service landscape should be simplified and consolidated. This will ensure long-term manageability. We should keep in mind that service fragmentation also leads to responsibility fragmentation - de facto to no responsibility at all on the part of the service provider.

My recipe for success

Choose a few, preferably one trade service partner. Identify a few KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that reflect your business success well. And you tie the success of the service provider to these - you will be able to target your business precisely, dynamically and with much greater profit than with traditional premium systems!