Understanding how our customers deal with these two channels and how they use them – whether in combination or not – is vital if we want to reconcile them with each other.

And therein lies the major challenge we face today: following our customer across all the channels.

I already do this online, I can hear you thinking. And you’re right. As soon as a customer enters your online shop, you are aware of every step he has taken around your shop, which products he has virtually sniffed and which not, which products he has effectively decided to drop in his shopping basket and which products he ended up buying. What’s more, your customer was also nice enough to identify him or herself at the cash register, providing you with a name and address.

But what about offline? In your points of sale?

“Hello, my name is Rosemarijn Dumont and I just spent €63.54 on products in your shop. You can now charge these to me. Oh yes, before I ended up here at the check-out, I did not pass by the spirits, I did briefly wonder whether I should buy that delicious chocolate and ultimately I decided to remove the toilet paper from my shopping basket because I found a better deal online!” 

I don’t think I ever said this at the check-out in my local supermarket. Have you ever heard a customer do this? Probably not. And yet we – as consumers and retailers – find this evident during the online shopping process. So why don’t we do this offline? Because offline our customers all too often remain anonymous.

Even though offline is still a very important channel. The BeCommerce Market Monitor has the following to say on the subject:

“Roughly speaking, 60% of all services (such as travel agencies, …) are purchased online, compared with ‘only’ 5% of all products.” 

So you can see how it will become increasingly important to also follow your customer offline. Not just because offline will continue to be an important channel but also because the customer’s expectations will evolve. As soon as a customer is familiar with a certain type of technology and accepts and adopts it, he expects you, the retailer, to also use this technology to improve the service you provide.

Below are four building blocks to ensure your efforts are successful.

1. Collect offline data

You probably already have a database of your customers’ online shopping behaviour. The database with offline shopping behaviour is a greater challenge. Loyalty systems, Wi-Fi sensors and beacons are just a few of the many systems that can help you identify your offline customers. Map your offline customer and his behaviour in the shops or across shops to tap a treasure trove of information that will reveal several new ways of how you can better serve your customer.

2. Connect these to an integrated CRM system

Be smart when it comes to collecting your data and develop a well-thought-out CRM system, which revolves around the customer. This is where you start to reconcile your online and offline channels. Building the system around your customer means that you can connect all the information you collected online about your customer to his offline purchasing behaviour. It is a great way of getting to know your customers better as well as generating useful background information for your helpdesk and shop employees.

3. Honest and transparent

Be honest and transparent about your approach. Explain to customers where you collected their data and why, how you respect their privacy and how this will directly benefit them. Always give them the option to review, adapt or have their own data deleted.

4. Take your service and campaigns to the next level

This combo of online and offline data offers a lot of options. You can improve the service in your shop by optimising your aisles based on the offline tracked data. You can also collect much more information about your customer, allowing you to personalise your campaigns more and better. But the interaction between your online and offline sales channel will also become much clearer. This information will allow you to smartly (re-)organise your physical shop network, taking into account your online channel.

Do you want to know how you can better reconcile online and offline? How you can use new technology to ensure your service and marketing efforts generate more revenue?

Join us at the Retail Innovation Summit on 20 October 2015! You can register at www.retailinnovationsummit.com. The summit is free for retailers.